ShallaNelprin

"you're just racist"

Crunchyroll is a streaming service, and closed captions for all video content have been upheld as a requirement of the ADA. The courts determined this back in 2012 with Netflix, when they got sued by NAD and as a result had to add closed captioning for all their programs.

It looks like if people would like to file a complaint about this lack of accessibility, they can do so with the FCC here:

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=36040

I am so tired — and honestly upset and scared — after seeing several BAD-FAITH accusations of antisemitism in this fandom lately. 

Antisemitism is a serious problem, right alongside antiblackness and transphobia and Islamophobia and everything else. If you say/do something antisemitic, and someone tells you so, it’s important to take that feedback and learn from it. Because hi, Jew right here, and I’d like to continue to exist, and I’d like to be able to hang out in fandom with other people who think my existence is worth fighting for.

Lots of non-Jews have very little understanding of what antisemitism is and how it works. If that’s you, I find that this resource is a helpful primer. Like with pretty much any system of oppression, telling a fandom person they’re being antisemitic is a good way to either (1) get them to reflect on their behavior and apologize and do better or (2) send the conversation careening over a cliff into bad-faith attacks, defensiveness, confusion, misinformation, and, critically, far away from the original topic.

It breaks my heart to see vitally necessary conversations about racism and fandom derailed in this way, especially when many of the bad-faith accusations aren’t even truly about antisemitism, they’re about antizionism. Which is the opposition to a Jewish ethnostate that privileges Jews over non-Jews. That’s all it is. Plenty of Jews and others who support Jewish liberation are antizionist — we believe an ethnostate is not going to protect us from annihilation, solidarity is. Please stop pretending antizionism is antisemitic when it’s not.

Now, I know talking about antizionism is probably a surefire way to lose the engagement of some of the folks I’m most eager to reach with this post. It’s fraught and it’s ingrained and it accesses the fight/flight response like few other things can. But I bring it up because it’s essential to understanding why some of the recent accusations of antisemitism are so wildly inappropriate. Antizionism is a valid political belief that many people — including Jews — hold alongside fierce support for Jewish liberation. And, to step on another delicate piece of ground, there’s also layers of shit in here about white fragility and the whiteness of European-descended Jews. White people, including white Jews, have a responsibility to control their defensiveness in conversations about racism. But, well, there are plenty of posts about these things, so I’ll leave it there for now. I really, really need y’all to hear me on this one thing:

I hate that Jewish trauma is trotted out in just about every single internet argument because someone can’t seem to understand that avoiding racist fic is different from Nazi book burning. I hate that so many people only seem to care about antisemitism when they can use it to bolster their own argument and thus co-opt it to derail important conversations about racism. And I am sick of doing this work in a setting where Jews seem to only exist in so many people’s minds as either oppressive villains or helpless victims, depending on which role is more useful for holding up the fuckery of the week. 

Jews deserve your solidarity, just like every other marginalized group. Challenging your own antisemitic beliefs and behaviors and making good-faith challenges to other people’s antisemitic actions will make a real difference for me and my people. Please, for fuck’s sake, stop using Jewish trauma and bad-faith accusations of antisemitism as a grenade to hurt other people so you can avoid hearing something that doesn’t actually hurt you, but simply makes you uncomfortable. It is actively harmful to people of color and to the cause of Jewish liberation.

There is nothing antisemitic about criticizing the Israeli government. I am not blaming Jewish people as a whole. I’m blaming the Israeli government. 

Israeli soldiers are literally shooting innocent Palestinian civilians who are literally praying in Masjid Al Aqsa (which, by the way, is one of the holiest sites in Islam) with coated bullets and stun grenades. During Ramadan. 

They are harming people who are peacefully practicing their religion. This is not, and will never be, ok.

The Israeli-Palestine situation is not religious based, it’s land based. Religion came in the picture incidental decades after the conflict began.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

Calling out “Israel” for it’s violence against the land currently known as Palestine is not blaming Jewish people and communities for said violence. There are Israeli Muslims, Palestinian Jews and Christians of both backgrounds.

There were already thousands of Jewish people in Palestine before British rule.

Calling out “Israel” means holding accountable the government/military actions oppressing the people of Palestine. Not blaming the innocent Jewish citizens of the land.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

It’s an opposition to this loss of life and land, not to any religious belief.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

Freeing Palestine means giving its people self-determination on what is and is not their own ancestral land. The optimal way is to peacefully decide this.

The government/military of the state known as Israel have killed hundreds of innocent civilians of Palestine. They were met with peaceful protests. They responded with violence. Then they were met with violence in the name of self-defense. They responded with more violence.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

Of course, Jewish people know far too well the cost of bloodshed and religious persecution that force innocents to become refugees, lose their families and have their homes ripped apart bloodily, inhumanely and unjustly.

That is the current state of innocents in Palestine.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

No, the issue is not black and white. Innocents in the land known as Israel have been hurt regardless of religious affiliation. Innocents in the land known as Palestine have been hurt regardless of religious affiliation.

The black and white of it is that there are the oppressed and the oppressors.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

Freeing Palestine does not mean being diametrically opposed to the original definition of Zionism which is reparations for Jewish peoples in the form of a partial ethnic-state. 

The land currently known as Israel was not the only place considered for said goal; Madagascar, Ethiopia, Germany and several others were considered before outer Western oppressive powers mandated the state of Israel - a choice done with only temporary consent by those of the land then known as Palestine. 

Those same Western oppressive powers would have hurt whatever country they’d chosen and none of that would’ve been the fault of the Jewish people. 

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

Jews have ALWAYS existed in Palestine.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

Free Palestine is simply a call to the end of illegal warfare, eviction, apartheid and religious persecution of innocent people in the land that is known as Palestine by the federal government of the state of Israel.

It is a call to prevent the exportation of refugees, the destruction of innocents, the airstrikes on public places and the bodies of innocent children lying dead and bloodied on the streets in the land of Israel-Palestine.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

It is a call to end the expansion of an oppressive state. Not to hurt Jews, nor kick them out individually nor to kill them. Just to free all involved from the warfare of an imposed and invading state.

Plenty of people with argue against this. I pity them for being uninformed and so adamant on their beliefs which may unintentionally or intentionally perpetuate violence on both communities - to paint either the Jewish or Arab peoples and/or their respective religions as violent or propagandistic.

Free Palestine is not an antisemitic statement.

“Free Palestine” is a call for peace and justice in the face of violent, unjust colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing.

Don’t make me regret posting this.