bigotry is always bad, you idiots

“white men can’t be oppressed” -> gay men

“heterosexual men can’t be oppressed” -> trans men

“cis-het men can’t be oppressed” -> intersex men

“perisex men can’t be oppressed” -> disabled men

“able-bodied men can’t be oppressed” -> neurodivergent men

“cis-het perisex white able-bodied neurotypical men can’t be oppressed” -> buddy let me tell you about wealth and class and homelessness and immigrants and minority languages and cultures and being a child and being an elderly person and and and

Privilege is also fluid and dependent on context. Most if not all people have ways in which they are privileged and ways in which they are not. Hold privilege over others in some contexts and not in others.

For fuck's sake, even Joe Biden, arguably the most powerful person on Earth, was run out of the Presidency mid-election by his own party because he was old and had a stutter.

His whiteness, maleness, cisness, heterosexuality, Christianity, Americanness, and relative wealthiness did not protect him from ageism and ableism (there was also a lot of indirect racism and misogyny in there, as a lot of the "OMG Biden's OLD!" stuff was actually just blatant code for "What if he dies in office and a woman of colour replaces him?")

Some people have more privilege. Some have less. Nobody is immune to having privilege. Nobody is immune to being discriminated against. It is context-dependent.

Gosh, who could possibly have seen that coming?

Black Lives Matter came as a reaction to the specifics of dehumanization that Black people face, the devaluation of Black lives. Saying "All Lives Matter" in response to that is a very intentional distraction from the problem (that Black people's lives are too often perceived and treated as lesser).

Saying that "never again" means "never again for anyone" does not distract from the specifics of the trauma and suffering of Jewish people. It is not a devaluation of Jewish people's lives in the name of generalization. It is simply a reminder of our communal responsibility for each other's lives, for protecting each other's lives. To never again stand by. I would like to think that I am as responsible for my neighbors as they are for me.

In the same way, "Never again" is a reaction to the specifics of dehumanization that Jews faced and continue to face, particularly when a third of the Jews in the world were murdered as the world stood by and watched.

I understand that you and others want to universalize the Holocaust, but the primary targets of that genocide were Jews and Roma, targeted for their ethnicity.

So when you insist that "Never again," a reaction to Holocaust created and popularized by Jews, must be universalized?

It's very similar to the way that people say "all lives matter."

All lives DO matter, but we were talking about BLACK lives, right?

Genocide shouldn't happen to anyone, but "never again" is about a particular genocide of JEWS.

You're saying that unless you can universalize our tragedies, our suffering, our culture, and our deaths into your moral fable, they have no value.

That's pretty fucked up and I doubt you'd be so cavalier about any other minority group.

I did not say Jewish suffering is only valid when it's universalized and that the Holocaust is not something that happened specifically to Jewish people, just that this specific phrase being applied to any genocide that people might stand by and watch does not distract from the specifics of Jewish suffering and the Holocaust the same way "all lives matter" distracts from the devaluation of Black lives.

You did. Your words:

'Never again' does and should absolutely mean "never again for anyone" because otherwise it is a useless fucking statement.

...and just above:

...I do think that using "never again" to only talk about Jewish safety is useless.

Unless it is universalized, it is, you say, "a useless fucking statement" and "useless."

It's tragic that you don't see the parallel, but I doubt I'll be the one to help you see it.

I urge you to read Dara Horn.

The phrase did in fact originate with Jews as a commitment to preventing violence against Jews, but got universalized into a generalized moral slogan by gentiles. That's how you're using it. That's what you're angrily shouting at a Jew you don't know about a topic you don't appear to have studied.

Horn thinks that Holocaust education often fails to protect living Jews because it focuses on universalizing moral lessons rather than the specific realities of Jewish history and antisemitism. She critiques how Holocaust education tends to emphasize Jewish victimhood while ignoring Jewish civilization, reinforcing a narrative where Jews are only acknowledged when they are powerless or dead and despised when they have agency as living people.

She's a wonderful writer and I think you'd get a lot out of her book. If you'd like to message me, I'll get you a copy myself.

If not, I think our conversation has reached its conclusion.

This doesn’t seem to happen, in my completely anecdotal experience, about other genocides. When we speak of Armenians, we don’t object to Armenians centering themselves in that story; when we speak of Native Americans, there’s not a record scratch and a demand to speak about the Tutsis. Or at least, when these things happen, it’s more on the level of ‘it’s the internet, in any conversation that goes long enough or has enough people there will be outlier fanatics’.

While it certainly cannot be denied that there are certain aspects of the US and her government, just like my own country, that are horrifically, brutally repressive, especially of minorities, keeping a straight face while saying that while the governments of countries like Iran, Afghanistan, China, Russia, exist is deeply, farcically ludicrous.

The existence of anti-Zionist Jews doesn't disprove the fact that antizionism is antisemitic, just like Candace Owens or Jesse Lee Peterson holding racist views about Black folks doesn't prove racism against Black people is a myth.

Members of marginalized groups can and do hold positions that harm their own communities.

Bigotry doesn't require unanimous consent from its targets.

Candace Owens denies systemic racism exists and defends white nationalist talking points. Jesse Lee Peterson has literally said "Thank God for slavery." Does their existence mean racism against Black people is fake? Of course not.

There have always been members of marginalized groups willing to affirm ideas that harm their communities. Sometimes for safety, sometimes for applause, sometimes because they've internalized the prejudice themselves. That doesn't make those ideas any less harmful.

"Anti-Zionist Jews" are a tiny, unrepresentative fringe.

About 80-90% of Jews worldwide identify as Zionists. Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace aren't even mostly Jewish, and the Jews who do participate represent a tiny minority of Jewish opinion. Neturei Karta is a fringe within a fringe of ultra-Orthodox anti-modernists who also think women should be invisible and the Internet is heresy.

Using them to dismiss the overwhelming majority of Jews is tokenism. It's the "I have a Jewish friend" defense. You're not listening to Jewish voices, you're cherry-picking the handful that tell you what you want to hear. Sort of like MAGA folks do with Candace Owens, Clarence Thomas, Jesse Lee Peterson, or Stacey Dash.

Zionism is the belief that Jewish people have the right to national self-determination in a portion of their indigenous homeland.

Antizionism is the belief that the Jewish state should never have existed and must be dismantled.

Notice what antizionism isn't? It's not criticizing Netanyahu (which I do). It's not opposing settlements (which I do). It's not advocating for Palestinian rights (which I do). You can do all of those things and still be a Zionist, just like most liberal Zionists in Israel and in the diaspora. That describes the views of the majority of US Jews.

Antizionism means believing that Jews, unlike all other peoples, should not have a right to national self-determination. It means believing that the one country where Jews are the majority should not exist.

This double standard is the antisemitism

No other country's legitimacy is consistently questioned this way, no other country endures calls to be dismantled.

No one says "China shouldn't exist" because of Uyghur oppression. No one says "abolish Turkey" because of the Armenian genocide. But somehow, when it's the world's only Jewish state, its very existence is up for debate.

When you hold Jews to standards you apply to no other people, when you deny Jews the rights you embrace for everyone else, when you single out the Jewish state as uniquely illegitimate...that's not politics, that's Judenhass.

In practice, antizionism always leads to the same things:

Blaming Jews

Demonizing Jews

Excluding Jews

Endangering Jews

The shooter who killed two people outside the DC Jewish Museum? In his own words, he was targeting "Zionists."

The guy in Boulder who threw Molotov cocktails at elderly American Jews (including a Holocaust survivor), hospitalizing eight and killing one...because they were walking to raise awareness for hostages? Screaming about "Zionists" on video. Eight people were hospitalized. One died.

"Antizionism" has become a permission structure to rationalize violence against Jews while pretending it's political and principled.

It's not criticism of Israeli policy, it's a call for Israel to be wiped from the map. It is explicitly in support of ethnic cleansing and/or genocide.

Anon, you don't get to decide something isn't antisemitic by finding the rare Jew who agrees with you. That's not how bigotry works. The overwhelming majority of Jews see antizionism for what it is, and if you care about actually listening to marginalized communities, maybe try doing that with Jews instead of weaponizing the exceptions.

I mean...unless you think Candace Owens proves racism against Black folks is a myth.

Is that your position?

More on this topic:

Why Antizionism is always Antisemitism

On Antizionist Jews

Zionism is not the cause of Judenhass

Nothing looks as serious when you're making comparisons to two of the worst genocides in human history.

And not a great look to say the horrifying, systemic murder of a population isn't a genocide because they aren't massacring innocents fast enough.

Referencing this post. I'm getting to this waaaaay late.

My argument circles back to the question of intent. As I discussed here, without intent, there is no genocide. Genocide is thus kind of unique among war crimes and crimes against humanity. With that in mind, let's compare.

The Bosnian genocide was perpetrated by the Army of the Republic of Srpska (VRS). The VRS was one of many splinters of the Yugoslav People's Army, and at the time of Srebrenica (1995) numbered about 150,000 personnel (CIA, Balkan Battlegrounds: Volume 2, p. 268). This force was distributed across the entire Bosnian conflict, including approximately 20,000 at the siege of Sarajevo (1992-96) alone. This was an effective army, and it was a brutal army, but it was not all-powerful. Its resources were limited.

Israel, by contrast, had overwhelming military superiority on land, sea, and air. Their Iron Dome greatly limited Hamas' ability to retaliate. Israel, in collaboration with Egypt, had complete control over all people and goods entering and exiting Gaza. They outnumbered their opponent. They out-equipped their opponent. Barring October 7, they out-intelligenced their opponent.

Dates for Srebrenica are frustratingly difficult to pin down. The starting date is agreed to be 11 July 1995, but the ending date...

Wikipedia (7pm EST 22/10/2025) directly contradicts itself, listing 11 to 31 July on the page for the massacre itself, but listing 11 to 13 July on the page for the Bosnian Genocide. Encyclopædia Britannica lists 11 to 16 July. The BBC lists 11 July as the starting date and says it "did not stop for 10 days," which would put the ending at 20 or 21 July, depending on if 11 July is included or not. srebrenicamemorial.org lists Srebrenica itself as lasting until the 15 or 16 July, with nearby massacres continuing until 20 July.

Using the longest time span, 11 to 31 July, including both dates in the count, gives us 21 days. The death toll at Srebrenica was 8372.

8372 / 21 = ~399 deaths per day.

Using the BBC and srebrenicamemorial's final date 20 July gives us 10 days for the duration of the massacre.

8372 / 10 = ~837 deaths per day.

Using Encyclopædia Britannica and srebrenicamemorial's 16 July gives us 6 days.

8372 / 6 = ~1395 deaths per day.

Let's graph those out with the numbers from the previous post for Gaza and Cambodia.

Huh. Even the lowest death rate for Srebrenica is more than twice the highest estimated death rate in Gaza. And, just to refresh your memory, here's Rwanda and Operation Reinhard.

The Army of the Republic of Srpska had less than 3000 soldiers on hand at Srebrenica. They had artillery support, but minimal air power and armor, and yet they were able to kill at a rate 2 ‒ 10 times higher than Israel in Gaza.

Israel has one of the world's most modern armed forces. It has overwhelming armored, air, and numerical superiority. It is operating on its own border.

If Israel had been determined to commit a genocide in Gaza, why did they drag their feet for so long? They have at least 150,000 soldiers deployed right now. If they had sent in a tenth of that to sweep through Gaza, indiscriminately killing everyone they came across—you know, like Rwanda, Cambodia, Srebrenica, Babyn Yar, Nanking, the roving bands of Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front, or even like individual massacres like Mỹ Lai—they could have easily increased the elimination rate of Gazans twenty-fold.

Israel does not lack the means to commit genocide. As far as means for delivering destruction go, Israel has a greater capacity for such than almost any nation on the planet, barring nuclear weapons. As I said in my previous post:

If Israel's intent is to genocide the people of Gaza, they're not doing a very good job of it.

You're right.

People talk about South African apartheid as if what brought it down was a track incorporating the talents of both The Fat Boys and Bruce Springsteen.

Artists United Against Apartheid was a great idea, it had a ton of amazing musicians involved, and the song was a banger in its time - but it didn't bring down the apartheid regime.

But let's take these topics in order.

What was South African apartheid?

South African apartheid (1948–1994) was a system of legally codified racial segregation and domination. It included:

Pass laws: Black South Africans had to carry "passbooks" at all times and were arrested if found in "white" areas without permission.

Bantustans: Black people were stripped of South African citizenship and assigned to pseudo-states with no real sovereignty.

Racial classification: Every person was officially labeled (White, Black, Coloured, Indian) and access to housing, education, healthcare, jobs, and movement was legally dictated by this category.

No political rights: Black South Africans couldn't vote in national elections, hold political office in the state, or have meaningful representation.

Legally mandated segregation: Beaches, hospitals, neighborhoods, schools, transportation, and even park benches were racially segregated by law.

Interracial marriage was banned.

What brought it down?

The apartheid regime fell because of a combination of internal resistance, economic unsustainability, and shifting geopolitical pressures...not because Paul Simon declined to tour in Johannesburg.

Yes, the international boycott movement contributed morally and symbolically. It helped stigmatize the regime, but the decisive forces were both internal and geopolitical.

Mass protest movements like the ANC and the UDF sustained over decades, despite imprisonment, torture, and massacres.

Economic crisis, driven more by South Africa's own economic dysfunction than boycotts, with capital flight, brain drain as skilled and educated people left the country, labor strikes, rising inflation, and the absurd costs of a shrinking white minority trying to dominate a majority through force.

The fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War changed the calculus. The West no longer needed the South African government as a bulwark against Soviet communism, and the ANC was no longer seen as a proxy threat working with the Soviets.

South Africa's regime was economically isolated and functionally unsustainable...so its leaders negotiated their way out.

Now look at Israel:

Arab citizens of Israel (~20% of the population) can vote, serve in the Knesset (parliament), sit on the Supreme Court, and have equal access public healthcare, public education, and public welfare.

There are no pass laws, no racial classification system, and no forced population transfers based on ethnicity.

Arab Israelis live in the same cities, attend the same universities, work in the same hospitals.

Interracial and interfaith marriage is legal.

There are no laws barring Arabs from public beaches, cafes, buses, schools, or hospitals.

Arabic was an official language until 2018, and remains widely used in courts, government, and public life.

Does Israel have problems? Fuck yes. Discrimination? You bet. Ongoing occupation of the West Bank? Absolutely.

But that’s a conflict over land and sovereignty, not a system of racial domination by law.

In fact, the Palestinian Authority which governs the vast majority of the people of the West Bank, bans Jews from living in its territory by law.

Israel, meanwhile, has 2 million Arab citizens.

Which side sounds more like an apartheid state?

Calling Israel an Apartheid state requires knowing nothing about Apartheid, nothing about Israel, or being one of those special idiots who knows nothing about either topic...while lecturing others on both.

So, is BDS likely to bring down Israel?

If the hope is that boycotts will "bring down apartheid" in Israel the way they supposedly did in South Africa, it's worth asking three questions:

Was that even how apartheid ended in South Africa? (Hint: no.)

Is Israel actually anything like apartheid South Africa? (Hint: Not even remotely.)

Is Israel vulnerable like South Africa was? Is its economy a mess? Do geopolitics align against Israel? (Hint: No, no, and no)

BDS isn't targeting a regime that relies on racial categories to govern access to schools, jobs, and voting. It targets a democracy (flawed, like all of them) that's locked in a violent, nationalist, territorial conflict where both sides have agency and blame.

So can BDS destroy Israel?

Fuck, no. The circumstances have almost nothing in common.

Israel isn't isolated. South Africa in the 80s had one major trading partner left: the US

Israel today has free trade agreements with the US, EU, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, India, and more. The Abraham Accords added the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco. Saudi Arabia’s warming up next because it will profit them to do so.

Israel's economy is globally essential in key sectors. Israel isn't an agricultural economy vulnerable to divestment. It's a tech superpower. Intel, NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, and Apple all all have R&D centers in Israel...because Israelis are amazing at R&D. Israeli cybersecurity, chip design, water tech, and medical devices are deeply embedded in global systems. You're not going to get the world to boycott a major source of its innovation.

It's a nuclear-armed state with robust alliances. South Africa had no security umbrella. Israel has the US veto in the Security Council, the Iron Dome co-developed with American funding, and tight military relationships with NATO members. No serious nation sees Israel as a civilizational threat- but they know Iran is.

There's no Cold War calculus forcing abandonment. The ANC gained Western favor in part because the Soviet threat vanished. There's no equivalent shift happening now. If anything, the West is reassessing its reliance on Middle East energy and stabilizing with Israel, not distancing from it.

Israelis don't rely on foreign legitimacy for their sense of survival.

Israelis are not waiting to be liked. They live in a neighborhood that has tried to annihilate them repeatedly and failed catastrophically every time. Israel and Israelis won't collapse if American college campuses disinvite them, or if they can't vacation in Ireland.

BDS weakens the Palestinian economy more than Israel's.

Every time BDS succeeds in canceling a company or project in the West Bank, it's often Palestinian workers who lose jobs.

BDS won't dismantle Israeli democracy or solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So what does BDS accomplish?

It mostly succeeds at demonizing Jews in diaspora, polarizing campus discourse, and pushing actual diplomacy further away.

Haz and Jackson Hinkle are the persons behind "MAGA Communism". Haz attempted a coup in the Communist Party USA to try and "take it back from the libs" and failed, so he made the American Communist Party.

They claim to be "a patriot focused, America first, Communist party" while also supporting and parroting all of the authoritarian propaganda of Russia, North Korea, China and being explicitly in support of terrorist groups that want to see the “Big Satan” destroyed. Now, that’s typical for any of these groups.

We’ve seen variations of Marxists, Leninists, Maoists, and all the other types express these similar things (not the American patriotism stuff, but the open support for anti-Western countries, authoritatarians, and dictators all because “America bad”). But now take all of the bigotry of the MAGA movement and wrap it in anti-West and antisemitic tankie rhetoric. That's this group.

The irony is that they all point the finger at one another claiming the other isn’t a real “comrade” and some sort of CIA/Mossad/FBI/Letter Agency plot. The tankies that are against the ACP and its MAGA communism can’t or won’t accept that their political beliefs and ideology can be shared with people so openly bigoted (while at the same time denying and committing historical revisionism to preserve their pure perceptions).

It’s also very clear that a lot of communists really believed and defaulted to “being communist = socially left” and encountering persons similar to them and spouting similar rhetoric not being or holding the same social beliefs has resulted in a lot of cognitive dissonance and gymnastics.

There are some people who say that the ACP is some form of Redfasc wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, which differs from other Redfasc tankies because they hate the USA. The thing is that the ACP doesn't really use a "proletariat rising up" framework as all the other groups do. They talk about a national identity, which...well we all know which group called itself national socialists now don't we? Obviously they're not exactly like Nazis because they're not blaming Jews for every single thing, but they have been caught using similar symbology and rhetoric. So we have another home grown American "history doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes" moment.

We are not canaries in the coal mine whose deaths you can dismiss while you frame groups you actually care about as the sole human casualties of these policies. I need you to care that laws like the Online Safety Act lead sex workers to have to return to abusive third parties to find clients or to work in brothels we hate or to such poverty that we starve. I need you to care about payment processors refusing to pay out for adult content because it means sex workers cannot rely on online work when selling sex in-person becomes too much for our bodies or too risky.

did Bipin Joshi deserve to be murdered and sent home in a coffin to Nepal? what about Muhammad Al-Atrash? he was Bedouin and left behind a large family. was he not a person? Sonthaya Oakkharasri was Thai, working on the kibbutz. all of them were sent back this week. Joshua Mollel’s murder is on film for all to see and they still haven’t given his body back, he’s from Tanzania but I guess his black life doesn’t matter because he was on Israeli soil and the #resistance were the ones who brutalized him. the terrorist fans sending hate messages don’t care about any of this.

the hypocrisy and cruelty from the “pro Palestine” movement harms actual people in the region, they don’t do anything for Gaza. then they accuse people who actually care about humanity and peace of the exact opposite.

Hersh was still alive, but she didn’t know that at the time (and she would not ever get to see him again, except in a Hamas propaganda video). she stood up there and she talked about how the hostages had citizenship in 33 different countries, that they were Christian and Muslim and Jewish and Hindu and Buddhist, that they were babies and elderly, that many were wounded and others disabled or chronically ill, and no one knew if they’d received medical care. she was adamant that there should not be barriers to helping people violently taken hostage. she never excluded anyone.

she talked about the Nova festival being for unity and love. she talked about the carnage there and on the kibbutzim. and she expressed her worry about the beginnings of war and the civilian toll in Gaza. she never once denied anyone else’s humanity, even though she was met with indifference, cruelty, and cowardice, even though her son was ignored and dehumanized and eventually murdered in a cold blooded execution, a death she can and has described in detail because she needed to know what happened in his final moments. he returned to her in a body bag, and even when her simmering fury is tangible and justified, she still centers compassion.

no one - no one - from the movement that has been loudest through all of this, screaming with rageful bloodlust on the streets and the internet, has ever said or done anything close to this. there has been vitriol, contempt, violence, bigotry, and celebration of death, including at the murder of her son in a filthy tunnel underground. if anyone participating in those displays, if any world leaders, had a fraction of her courage and heart, this would have gone differently. why do they never even bother to ask themselves who their callous cruelty and hatred is serving?

I can’t find a full transcript of this speech online, only bits and pieces, and, of course, only from Jewish sources. it should have been printed everywhere, shared, repeated. if anything ever should have gone viral, this was it.

“[…] We seem like we live in the same place, but I, like all of the mothers and all of the fathers and wives and husbands and children and brothers and sisters and loved ones of the stolen, we all actually live on a different planet...this planet of beyond pain, our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears…where is the world?…where are you?…why is no one demanding just proof of life? this is a global humanitarian catastrophe.”

“[…all of us need to ask ourselves] do I aspire to be human? or am I swept up in the enticing and delicious world of hatred?…hatred is easy, but hatred is not actually helpful, nor is it constructive.”

“[…] In a competition of pain, there is never a winner.”

“One thing gave me a whisper of hope on October 7th, because one of the witnesses with whom I spoke told me that when the rocket fire began, and all of those young, music loving hippies went running into the bomb shelter, there was a Bedouin man who was a guard at the kibbutz across the street and he ran into that same shelter for cover, and as Hamas closed in on the bomb shelter, the man told the young people: ‘shh, stay quiet let me go talk to them,’ and he went outside, and he said in Arabic: ‘I am a Muslim. Everyone inside is my family. We are Muslim. You don’t have to search in there.’ He tried to save them. He could have just said, ‘I’m a Muslim,’ and just saved himself, but he tried to do the right thing, even though it was terrifying, and even though it required unimaginable courage – he was brutally beaten and the witnesses do not know what his fate was, but I take comfort for a fleeting moment, knowing that there was someone trying to do the right thing when everything in the universe had been turned upside down.

We human beings have been blessed with the gifts of intellect, creativity, insight, and perception. Why are we not using it to solve global conflicts all over the world?

Because doing this is hard, and it takes fortitude, imagination, grit, risk, and hope. So instead we opt for hatred, because hatred is so comfortable, so familiar, and so very, very easy.

I implore world leaders, both seen and unseen, who have been working tirelessly to get all the hostages free, I beseech you on behalf of all people everywhere, to remain steadfast, determined, and tenacious, and may Gd be with you, because the time is running out to save them. The time is running out to save all of us.”

again, this was day 18. it’s now day 746. every single day in between we have witnessed a constant stream of people choosing the easy, comfortable, familiar path of vicious hatred, and it’s enticing and sensual and delicious to them, exactly as Rachel described, and they’re making the world sick on it.

in December of 2023, she delivered another speech. it was then day 67, and by that point she was wearing the masking tape to count them - tape she and Jon continue to wear to this day, with markered numbers, waiting for the dead.

until the world can explain to me why she was so very alone in her humanity, her principles, her chesed (loving kindness), I will continue to question and doubt the motivations of those who claim to care for life and justice, and yet express it in the poisonous screed of hatred while championing murderous terror. time ran out for far too many beautiful souls throughout this war, on both sides. we’re blessed enough to continue to have our time, and the power to decide how to use it. if others decide to waste it on their destructive cruelty, then they’re making the choice to make this world worse. that’s on them alone. we can continue to hold the light without their help - we already have.

at this speech, she said:

[…] there are 138 (hostages) being held. They range in age from 10 months to 85 years old. They are from nations all around the globe. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists.

They have not been attended to nor treated by any international aid organization that exists. They are injured, they are starving, they are in pain, they are in fear, they are in torment and they are dying.

And we, their families, want to ask you to look at their photos, read their names and then replace their names with the name of your own daughter, son, father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, grandparent and we want you to tell us that you would do exactly what you have been doing for these past 67 days to get them out. Look us in the eye — all of us hostage families — and tell us that.

We all remain sleepless and we all are running to the ends of the earth. We are the best actors in the world. We act like people, when really we are other beings, frozen in our acutely agonizing desolation.

[…] We are at a crossroads, and when I say we, I don't mean we Jews, Muslims, or Christians, Americans, Palestinians, Europeans, Israelis, Ukrainians, Russians. I mean we humans.

We can keep dividing the world into the paradigm of them versus us or we can start thinking about those who are willing and those who are not willing. And there are people everywhere who fall into each category. The whole premise of compromise is being willing to do something I don't want to do, but I am willing to do it. To give up on something I hold so dear for something I hold even more dear.

There are people all over the world who are willing, not because they're naive or foolish. It's because they want their children to live in a world that doesn't exist right now. And so they have the courage to be willing to do things that are terrifying and uncomfortable. They're willing to do things that are scary.

I also know that on both sides of any conflict there are those not willing. No matter what the price will be for their lack of willingness there is anguish so deep, suffering so profound, and rage so ingrained that there are people ready to lean over, take everyone with them and fall into the abyss. And I don't mean the metaphorical abyss. I mean the actual abyss.

In the Bible, in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 30, there's a curious exchange where Gd gives the people a choice and says "I am putting before you today life and death, and I am telling you choose life."

In our world right now, there is nothing more frightening than choosing life. It's an idea that will require the most brave, creative, heroic efforts and strengths imaginable for those who are willing amidst ongoing trauma, angst and suspicion to build an idea of a future. In most conflicts, there are two sides and neither side is going anywhere. So all over the world, we have got to learn to live together or all over the world we are going to die together.

I will conclude with a poem that I wrote for a woman in Gaza. She knows who she is. It's called One Tiny Seed:

There is a lullaby that says your mother will cry 1,000 tears before you grow to be a man.

I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.

We all have.

And I know that way over there, there's another woman

who looks just like me, because we are all so very similar

And she has also been crying.

All those tears, our sea of tears they all taste the same.

Can we take them, gather them up, remove the salt

And pour them over our desert of despair

And plant one tiny seed?

A seed wrapped in fear, trauma, pain, war, and hope

And see what grows?

Could it be that this woman, so very like me

That she and I could be sitting together in 50 years laughing without teeth

Because we have drunk so much sweet tea together and now we are so very old, and our faces are creased, like worn out brown paper bags.

And our sons have their own grandchildren, and our sons have long lives.

One of them without an arm.

But who needs two arms anyway?

Is it all a dream?

A fantasy? A prophecy?

Over the last two years, many big-name celebrities have made noise on behalf of a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Now that a ceasefire — no matter how fragile it may be — has been reached, the tensions in Hollywood show no signs of ending. In this heated environment, even what you post online, and when you post it, is fodder.

Erin Foster, creator of Netflix’s hit series “Nobody Wants This,” went on Instagram this week to ask: “I’m not sure why everyone is being so utterly quiet today, but there is a deal in place that will finally bring peace to Palestinians. Why are you not celebrating it?”

“After 2 years of screaming ‘Ceasefire Now!!’ It is clear that was never the issue. It was eradicating Israel,” actress Debra Messing wrote on her Instagram this week. (Messing is one of Hollywood’s most vocal pro-Israel voices.) “The silence of the ‘Free Palestine’ movement is sickening,” she re-posted. “Your silence makes it unavoidably obvious that it’s only about terrorizing Jews.”

Pro-Palestinian and anti-war celebrities have used red carpets, award shows and their social media accounts to keep focus on the people of Palestine. Mark Ruffalo, for one, reposted a message this week from Film Workers for Palestine that said, “We share in the relief of Palestinians in Gaza that Israel’s relentless slaughter may be coming to an end.” A week ago, he also reposted a note from the group Artists4Ceasefire that expressed hope about the ceasefire and for the return of hostages to Israel. He was among those criticized for not marking the return of the Israeli hostages since they were released earlier this week.

Cynthia Nixon, similarly, had posted a message to “Free all the hostages and Free Palestine” on October 9, but pro-Israel activists said that she didn’t acknowledge the return of Israeli civilian hostages. These activists also suggested that none of these celebrities spoke up about Hamas executing Palestinians in the streets of Gaza this week.

The execution-style killings of Palestinians in Gaza has a potential to trigger an unraveling of the ceasefire. President Donald Trump warned Hamas this week that “We will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” in an escalation of rhetoric during this brittle moment.

“Celebrities that have been so outspoken and so engaged with this conflict and calling out Israel almost on a daily basis have all gone quiet about the brutal murder of Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire began,” says Hen Mazzig, senior fellow at the pro-Israel Tel Aviv institute, which utilizes influencers online to enact opinion change about both Jews and Israel. He made the claim that these activists didn’t care about Palestinians but were only using the cause to attack Israel, saying that “the mask was off”: “We know exactly what they stand for and we know exactly what it was all about — I think it’s clear it was about using their platform to attack Israel.”

Javier Bardem — who has been one of Hollywood’s biggest critics of Israel and most passionate advocates for Palestinians — spoke to CNN about the executions specifically.

“Of course, I am completely against the execution of anyone including Palestinians by Hamas. It is an atrocious act of violence,” Bardem said in a statement, speaking on the matter for the first time. “Everyone deserves a fair trial where the accusations are shown and proven, and only then be rightfully accountable by a fair law that obviously does not include execution.”

The boycott that will pit studios and talent against each other

Bardem is one of nearly 4,000 Hollywood figures who signed a pledge last month to boycott Israeli film institutions. The pledge said that Israel’s filmmaking industry is “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

On the Emmys red carpet last month, Bardem wore a keffiyeh and did a series of interviews to support the people of Palestine, telling Variety, “I cannot work with somebody that justifies or supports the genocide. That’s as simple as that. And we shouldn’t be able to do that, in this industry or any other industry.”

The Israeli film boycott, organized last month by Film Workers for Palestine, drew support from a substantial number of A-listers, including Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Ayo Edebiri, Ilana Glazer, Susan Sarandon, Ruffalo, Nixon and Bardem. (A representative for Nixon did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Ruffalo’s representative said he was unavailable and in production overseas.)

The boycott prompted an open letter from a different group of Hollywood artists, including Liev Schreiber, Gene Simmons, Sharon Osbourne, Jerry O’Connell, Howie Mandel, Mayim Bialik and Messing who denounced the call to stop working with Israeli film institutions over the war in Gaza, stating that the letter promotes “censorship and the erasure of art.”

Paramount and Warner Bros. – which are both under the leadership of pro-Israel CEOs in David Ellison and David Zaslav, respectively – have issued statements taking a clear stand against the Israel film boycott, in a strong and rare public position from two major Hollywood studios. (Warner Bros. shares the same parent company as CNN.)

Now, they will have to contend with thousands of artists in the creative community who disagree with their company’s stance.

Bardem told CNN that the Film Workers for Palestine pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions is about holding institutions accountable.

“I want this to be very clear. We do not discriminate against any person based on their nationality, race, religion, or gender,” Bardem told CNN. “We of course believe discrimination of any kind is wrong and do not support that and have continued to reiterate this. We support holding companies and institutions all over the world accountable, not individuals, for their complicity and participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the illegal settlement of the West Bank.”

A representative for Artists4Ceasefire – which was the first advocacy group to galvanize prominent celebrities to call for a ceasefire after October 7, 2023 – declined to participate in an interview with CNN about next steps for the movement now that a ceasefire deal has been reached, but provided a statement about their mission of achieving a permanent ceasefire. (The representative also declined to identify who runs the organization, saying that “we are a collective of artists and advocates.”)

That group is behind the red pins that many celebrities – from Ruffalo to comedian Ramy Youssef to singer Billie Eilish – wore on the Oscars red carpet, symbolizing solidarity with Palestinian people. Roughly 500 celebrities and Hollywood artists signed the Artists4Ceasefire petition in 2023; dozens of industry A-listers signed an Artists4Ceasefire letter addressed to then-President Biden, urging the White House for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire.

“Our call remains the same as it has been since October 2023: a permanent ceasefire, a return of all hostages, and the immediate, unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” said the Artists4Ceasefire representative in a statement. “This is the beginning of what is required for healing, rebuilding and a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis.”

As the world watches to see if a ceasefire will hold and bring peace, Hollywood, usually more unified on social justice issues, will continue to wrestle both in public and in private.

“There’s a ceasefire, but I would say that it is far from resolved,” said Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety. “I’ve talked to a lot of studio executives who tell me that they are very aware of who signed what and are not eager to work with people that they strongly disagree with. This was a situation where everyone in Hollywood became a Middle Eastern expert overnight and was chiming in with their opinions one way or another on social media.”

Already over the past two years, stars have been dropped from agencies and fired from franchises over this conflict. “A lot of people feel angry about what they saw,” said Siegel. “Where do we go from here?”

I just want to point out again, for emphasis, that per Variety, this is what Film Workers for Palestine specifically says about their boycott parameters:

no matter how many times they claim it’s not discriminatory, the above reveals a blatant prejudice against and motivation to specifically punish Israeli Jews.

Hating Jews does not help Muslims.

No one benefits from synagogue shootings.

No one benefits from mosques on fire.

"Small hat," is a cheap antisemitic slur which makes it past filtering algorithms, but it's very popular with both Judenhass hobbyists and professionals.

Pairing it with the name of Leo Frank, a Jewish lynching victim, isn't a question - it's a statement about @agasgasblog...but we'll get to that in a minute.

First, let's note that Leo Frank's name is on a lot of hateful lips recently, and maybe this is a good opportunity to explain why that is.

Who was Leo Frank?

In 1913, Leo Max Frank was the Jewish superintendent of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta. He was accused of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee. The investigation was chaotic, and the trial was steeped in antisemitic rage. Crowds gathered outside the courtroom screaming "Hang the Jew!"

The judge left the windows open so the jury could hear them.

The state's case depended almost entirely on the testimony of Jim Conley, a janitor who admitted to moving the body and changed his story multiple times. No physical evidence tied Frank to the crime. The evidence that existed contradicted the prosecution's timeline.

Despite that, Frank was convicted. In 1915, after appeals failed, Governor John Slaton commuted Frank’s sentence to life in prison, citing the lack of conclusive evidence and his duty to uphold justice. In response, a mob of over 25 prominent Georgia citizens, including lawyers, ex-governors, and judges, broke into the prison, abducted Frank, drove him across the state, and lynched him in Marietta.

They photographed his corpse and printed postcards.

In 1986, the state of Georgia issued a posthumous pardon. The pardon acknowledged that the state had failed to protect Frank’s right to due process and life. It did not formally declare him innocent, but historians overwhelmingly agree that Frank was railroaded.

So why are people suddenly talking about Frank again?

Because far-right pundits are using him (again) as a vessel for conspiracy and Judenhass.

In early 2024, Candace Owens started claiming Frank raped and murdered Phagan, calling him a "wealthy pedophile."

In later statements, Owens suggested the murder was tied to Jewish ritual, explicitly echoing blood libel myths. She linked the case to secret "Frankist cults" and claimed the Anti-Defamation League was founded to protect him, omitting all historical context.

Owens, a lazy, cheap seeker of attention, innovated nothing new in this. It's the same antisemitic lie that helped kill Frank in 1915, cleaned up and fed to a new audience.

It appears on Instagram, on Twitter (the only entity I choose to deadname) , and in conspiracy podcasts.

It spreads because it flatters people into thinking they've uncovered something hidden when all they've actually done is repeat the prosecution's closing argument from 1913. That's the same argument shouted by a lynch mob two years later.

This person cited Frank because they absorbed that script. This wasn't, therefore, a question.

Let’s be specific about what that means.

They chose a slur, referenced a lynching victim, and repeated an accusation designed to frame Jews as predators and liars. This was meant to provoke. That pattern matches the people who built the original case against Frank and the ones now trying to rewrite it for modern audiences.

They didn’t cite a historian, just TikTok ragebait and second third fourth-hand judanhass propaganda. They didn’t check trial transcripts or read the governor's commutation letter. They echoed a lie because it gave them the thrill of sounding dangerous while still hiding behind a layer of anonymity and deniability.

They don’t care about Mary Phagan. They're not interested in justice. They're performing loyalty to a worldview that thrives on enemy narratives and in which Jews are secretly-plotting enemies.

The message wasn't clever. It was a photocopy of a photocopy of a rewrite. The worldview isn't rebellious, insightful, or incisive, it's inherited from mobs who proudly mailed postcards of a hanging corpse.

Frank was innocent.

The people who killed him were not.

The people revising his story today are not.

And neither is the adolescent who owns @agasgasblog.

Sources: