head full, too many thoughts

Monument in memory of the Jews who were killed in the Farhud which took place in Iraq.  The monument is located in Ramat Gan, Israel; 2010. x

On this day in history, June 1st and 2nd in 1941, the Farhud, a pogrom, took place across Iraq and claimed the lives of over 700 Jewish people with more than a thousand injured.  The Farhud began because of a failed coup from Nazi sympathizing Officers in the Iraqi army.  Nazi Germany had also worked with Arab Nationalists and, through them, spread antisemitic propaganda through both Radio Berlin and local radio stations.  The failed coup, suspected Jewish collusion with British authorities [see antisemitic ‘duel loyalty’ trope], and antisemitic propaganda all mixed to create an explosion of violence against Iraq’s Jewish population - which by 1941 was over 150,000 strong.  The Iraqi Jewish community would all but end with Saddam’s rise to power, as the central government put restrictions on the life of Iraq’s Jewish population starting in 1948. Operation Ezra & Nehemia airlifted 120,000 Iraqi Jews out of the country in 1948 and brought them to Israel.

i also condemn Israel's genocide of the Palestinians.

it's very unfortunate that Israel has confused antisemitism with criticism of state actions. now when we hear antisemitism we don't know what it's referring to. what a disservice to efforts to combat antisemitism.

there is no world where criticizing a genocide, and wanting peace and freedom for all, could be antisemitic. everything I read about Judaism is life-affirming and just. wanting children to get to grow up could never be antisemitic. desiring that the geneva conventions be respected is not antisemitic. wanting an end to checkpoints and restriction of movement for Palestinians is not antisemitic. wanting children to stop being sniped is not antisemitic. wanting everyone to have equality under the law not antisemitic. it's not antisemitic to desire women and children and civilians to have medicine, food, and water.

So the thing is criticism of Israel is being specific - condemning specific Israeli policies that negatively affect Palestinian lives such as condemning West Bank settler violence. That is not antisemitism. And it is not antisemitism to want Palestinians to live in peace and dignity in a state of their own. I want that for them too.

However, statements that make Israel the boogeyman behind every problem across the planet such as blaming Israel for the wild fires in California and Argentina, the dog rape report, saying Israel steals organs from the dead Palestinians they've killed for their organ bank, saying 'Heil Hitler'/doing Nazi salutes at Israeli athletes at the Olympics/at pro-Palestine protests, drawing swatikas on the hostage posters of the Bibas children, saying 'Gaza Gaza make us proud put the Zios in the ground,' throwing molotov cocktails at a peaceful gathering for the Israeli hostages, shooting and killing 15 people including a child at a Hanukkah gathering, ramming a car into a synagogue, saying that Israelis/Jews kill children/babies, hanging an effigy of a Jew by a noose at pro-Palestine protests, etc etc etc

is not criticism of Israel.

All of that is just antisemitism.

It's Shaun_vids.

It's Leeja Miller.

It's Dan Olsen/Folding Ideas.

It's Milo Rossi/Miniminuteman.

It's Jessie Gender.

It's Adam Something.

It's Professor Dave.

It's Sophie From Mars.

- He compares 1910s Palestinians to 1910s Sinn Fein in Ireland, which is a very anachronistic projection through history, because Sinn Fein was supporting the Zionist Mule Corps (and vice versa) as a decolonization project in Palestine at the time.

- He frames 1936-1939 as a Zionist plot to wrest military control of the land from the Arabs to the Jews, which is in my mind a way of doing history backwards. The Zionists are bad -> anything that we ourselves have done that benefitted the Zionists was secretly orchestrated by them behind the scenes -> the failed Arab revolt against the British was a Jewish plot from the beginning. He doesn’t elaborate on how the White Paper (which banned Jewish refugees entrance to Palestine during the Holocaust) was a result of this revolt, which is a glaring omission, because:

- There is almost no mention of the Holocaust in this book. To the point where it almost feels like a form of revisionism; there is absolutely no way of explaining the current conflict without understanding the role that the Holocaust played in it, and, moreover, the role that Arabs and Palestinians specifically played in it. Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, very famously collaborated with the Nazis and spent the 1940s in Nazi Germany trying to bring the Holocaust to Palestine. He is mentioned once, offhandedly. This is probably my biggest problem with the Palestinian narrative generally: 1/4 of the IDF in 1948 were Holocaust survivors, fighting against people who had collaborated with the Nazis, people who had sworn to drive them into the sea in an attempted war of extermination, and they won against all odds. The Nakba is an injustice, but it would indisputably be a greater injustice if the Jews had lost, and the Palestinian response to this is (in English) to ignore it, and (in Arabic) to wish the destruction of the Jews had occurred. Khalidi neglects to engage with any of this, and cherry-picks the worst of Herzl and Jabotinsky’s writing to portray them as akin to the French invading Algeria and the British invading Kenya. So far, this is the most dishonest thing he has done — and I do find it striking, the role that Herzl holds in the Palestinian consciousness, when his specific ideas never held significant weight in Zionist spaces during his lifetime (Jabotinsky is another matter entirely, but even Khalidi has to admit that he was an incredibly fringe case).

- This book claims the Kennedys (bafflingly) had Palestinian-leaning sympathies pre-JFK’s assassination, and doesn’t mention Bobby Kennedy at all. “Why were American-Palestinian relations strained during the 60s-80s? Could it be because the PLO assassinated the brother of a man whose own assassination was one of the greatest cultural traumas of American history? No, it’s the Jews who are to blame.”

- An absurd number of citations here amount to “my dad told me this” or “trust me I heard this as a child.” Most maddening are the ones related to the 1967 war; we could take the word of the numerous records and transcripts made by Israeli and American diplomats at the time, or we could trust Khalidi and his dad by word of mouth. It’s bad history.

- That Egypt, Syria, and Jordan weren’t planning an attack in 67 is taken as a given, and any allusions to the contrary are framed as Zionist propaganda, or, in Khalidi’s words “Israeli myth.” The fact that these countries were blockading Israel and rallying troops at the border is neglected entirely.

- “The hard-line Zionists defined their success on the replacement of Palestine by Israel… for them, if Palestine existed, Israel could not.” Maddening sentence written by a man who has spent the past 116 pages arguing that if Palestine were to exist, Israel wouldn’t. If his goal is to prove the hard-line Zionists wrong, he is failing on every front.

- Beyond ignoring the agency of Palestinians, Khalidi goes out of his way to minimize the agency of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.

- The claim that Egypt and Jordan, from the beginning, “welcomed mediation with Israel” and were willing to acknowledge its sovereignty is such an egregious form of historical revisionism that I’m amazed anyone takes this book seriously. If your understanding of Egyptian-Israeli relations is that Egypt was open to recognizing Israel and Israel “ungratefully” refused to accept their recognition (what???? On what grounds?) you have absolutely no business writing on 1967 at all.

- Finally we get a mention of Syrian agency! According to Khalidi, Syria’s primary role thus far has been to “sabotage” the PLO by “sponsoring nihilistic terrorist groups” (unlike the PLO itself, of course) which “killed Israelis and Jews indiscriminately,” (again, also unlike the PLO, of course).

- We’ve reached the Israel-Lebanon war, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Khalidi should have written an autobiography instead of a history. We’ve moved beyond “my father told me,” to “let me tell you what I experienced in the war,” which would be fine, it would be a very interesting first-hand account in an autobiography, but it has no business taking up nearly a tenth of what is meant to be the foundational text of Palestinian history.

- One thing I find interesting is that there isn’t discussion about competing political ideas within Israeli or Palestinian spaces. Khalidi frames it always as a zero-sum game: all Israelis want to kill all Palestinians, and as a result, all Palestinians want to kill all Israelis. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that whenever the overarching goal is framed as noble and just, all actions towards that goal are framed as being supported by all Palestinians. When anything happens that is harmful to Palestinians, it’s framed as the fault of specifically Arafat, specifically Abbas, specifically individuals or outside forces. In this way, Palestine cannot be held responsible for any Palestinian action that causes harm, nor is there room for debate on the best strategy or course of action for Palestinians.

- It’s really interesting reading this after reading Rabin’s biography. Khalidi portrays the American/Israeli relationship as being strong from the beginning, whereas actual Israeli and American documents and records recount serious animosity and frustration between their diplomats even throughout the 1970s.

- There is no mention of Israel’s offer to return Gaza to Egypt along with the Sinai — actually, I’m surprised that he didn’t talk about Israeli control of the Sinai as proof of them trying to build a “Greater Israel.” Probably too difficult to square that with them giving it back.

- These people always tell on themselves by blaming AIPAC instead of CUFI for American policy.

- We completely skip: the Munich Massacre, ALL OF 1973?? HOW????, Rabin’s assassination, the Ramallah lynchings, Israel withdrawing from Gaza in 2005, and only one off-hand sentence is devoted to all of Black September. At this point this isn’t just revisionism of Jewish history, but Palestinian history as well.

- I was hoping for more of an explanation on the Second Intifada. From an Israeli perspective, it doesn’t make any sense: they were offering Palestinians the right to sovereignty and self-governance they’d wanted, and as they were about to sign the treaty, Palestinians set off over a hundred suicide bombings and said that they would reject all terms of statehood and fight to the death. In Son of Hamas, Mosab Yousef Hussain explains this by saying that Arafat realized he would be richer through aid money and didn’t want to commit to the hard work of building a functional state; this makes logical sense. By Khalidi’s account, the Second Intifada just kind of happened one day, as if it were predestined and unstoppable. Khalidi is exceptionally good at describing Israeli aggression and Palestinian victimhood, but he completely falls apart trying to justify WHY any of this is happening. Anything Palestinians do is righteous and justified. Why are they doing it? Israel, don’t worry about it.

- “Such considerations [negative consequences] were undoubtedly far from the minds of the men (and a few women) who planned and carried out these suicide bombings.” I love this sentence. I’m obsessed with it. Women can commit ill-conceived suicide bombings too! This is feminism.

- According to Khalidi, American media focused exclusively on rockets that hit Israel in the 2014 war, and neglected any coverage of Israeli missiles hitting Gaza. I find this very hard to believe, considering both the past two years, and my own memories of 2014.

[We're talking about this post] Anon is attempting to claim that smashing a Lebanese Christian religious icon is somehow ethical by Jewish standards.

If Anon actually cared about Jewish ethics, they'd know "the Torah says" is almost never the end of the conversation.

Talmud exists because Torah is often vague, contradictory, or culturally specific. If we lived by explicit mandates without the centuries of debate that followed, we'd be executing people for picking up sticks on Saturday. We don't do that, because we're not barbarians.

The Sages didn't just interpret the law - they placed massive guardrails around it. They took the "mandate" to smash idols and asked:

Whose idols?

In what territory?

Under whose authority?

Does it cause more harm than good?

The obligation to destroy idols applies specifically to idols owned by Jews or idols in a sovereign Jewish land under very specific historical conditions.

I'm not a Talmudist, but even I know this:

Avodah Zarah 44b-45b and later codifications (like Maimonides, Hilchot Avodat Kochavim 7:1) restrict the obligation to destroy idols specifically to Jewish sovereign lands. Outside of those lands, there is no general obligation for a Jew to destroy someone else's religious symbols.

(Modern Israel, of course, is rightly committed to religious freedom and protecting sites and objects held sacred by the faiths of others - because those are our ethics.)

For centuries, major Jewish authorities like the Meiri have categorized Christians as "nations bound by the ways of religion," not the pagans and idolaters the Torah was talking about. The Meiri argued that the entire Talmudic framework restricting interaction with idolaters was built around a specific historical category of paganism, namely communities with no organized moral or religious order. Christians, with their structured theology, scripture, and ethics, didn't fit that category.

The idol-smashing mandate was aimed at the cult of Ba'al, not the Maronites of Beirut. When Anon invokes it today against a Lebanese statue of Jesus, they're ignoring eight centuries of Rabbinic progress in order to justify a disgusting act of vandalism and desecration.

They're dressing up something profoundly ugly in religious language - demeaning us in the process.

When you smash a statue of Jesus, you aren't doing a mitzvah - you're acting like ISIS or the Taliban.

Fundamentalism is a suicide pact for a society. Whether it’s ISIS blowing up the temples of Palmyra or the Taliban dynamiting the Buddhas of Bamiyan, the motivation is generally the belief that their worldview is too fragile to share the universe with somebody's else's sacred symbols.

They justify their desecrations with their own fundamentalism, and in doing so, they declare war on history and humanity itself.

That, it seems, is where Anon wants to drag Am Yisrael.

@#$% that. and @#$% anybody who tries to justify barbarism with false, fundamentalist sanctimony.

To justify desecrations in the name of the Torah is to ape the desecrations of those who tried to erase us - Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, Hadrian, and Titus.

oh…

…you know what, no, the frothing rage about this is too over the top, there are some mild rebuttals, at least.

I refuse to look at any other platforms about this because it’ll probably be even worse, but shall we read these apparently blasphemous passages that normalize atrocities?

Bestselling American author Rebecca F Kuang is facing anger from some of her fans after her upcoming book Taipei Story apparently includes a sympathetic portrayal of an Israeli character.

The Chinese-born author of works including Yellowface and Babel is facing anger from some readers after advance reader copies of her upcoming book – set to be released this September in the UK – were apparently circulated to a select audience.

According to Pakistani outlet The Express Tribune: “Readers on X and TikTok claim a two-page sequence featuring an Israeli pianist is described within religious and artistic contexts, which some interpreted as a positive or neutral depiction.”

Some social media users criticised the apparent inclusion of the Israeli character on Kuang’s Instagram page.

“EXTREMELY disappointed. Heartbreaking to think I raved about your work and your stance on colonialism and then you go and add a Zio narrative in your book… please please remove it”, said one comment.

“What was the logic behind the deliberate choice to mention Israel in your latest novel?”, another added.

Another wrote: “We don’t want Zionist propaganda!! Do you even know your audience?”

A different user accused the author of effectively selling-out her fan-base: “Good luck selling your books now girl you literally built your whole audience on your whole anti-colonialism thing just to end up normalizing Israel’s existence that’s just disgusting”.

Last year, Kuang announced her withdrawal from the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature in Dubai following a call by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

According to outlet Middle East Eye, she shared her email to the event organisers saying that she was “no longer able to travel to Dubai” and that she “always respected organized calls for cultural boycotts against genocide from communities affected”.

hey prev!

so a couple of things:

yes, the black plague thing is part of it. jews were very often blamed for the plague and massacred. the population of jews in medieval europe took a HUGE nosedive because of this. the plague was less deadly in jewish communities and christian europeans associated it with their views of us as being "satanic" and accused us of poisoning wells. in reality it was because jews practiced better hygiene (as it is literally part of our religious rituals). jews became associated with sickness, parasites, and yeah, pests. (we can see this carry over into modern day with covid conspiracies.)

one of the most illustrative pieces of Nazi propaganda about this - the rats are Jewish refugees:

another example:

Rats make us think of disease, dirt and infestation, and have been used to represent Jews in antisemitic imagery throughout history into the present. Take a look at this is propaganda poster from the 1940s when the Nazis occupied Denmark. The text reads “Rats. Destroy them.” In a Nazi propaganda film, the Eternal Jew the occupants of a Jewish ghetto are shown in tight quarters likened to rats swarming in a sewer. The statement “Destroy them” is particularly vile due to the common use of Zyklon B to eradicate rats as well as its use in the Nazi death camp’s gas chambers.

PA accuses Israel of engineering 'special rodents' to attack Gaza children - Israel & Jewish News - JNS