TurboMitzvah

the other players, all of them goyish, will ask me how i am.

and i will think it is october 1008th

and i will think i wish i didn't know hersh goldberg-polin's name.

and i will think i wish i could see a red headed baby without seeing kfir

and i will think i wish yazan abu jamaa was entering third grade i wish omer ohana got to marry his fiance i wish ariel zohar had family for his bar mitzvah i wish i wish i wish

and i will think i wish you knew about any of this

and i will think i wish i knew if you would say they should've died i wish i knew if you would've mourned me if i was one of them i wish i could talk to you about this

It's stupid conceptually, but do you know who proves it wrong?

Ukraine 🇺🇦

Since the turd got back in office aid to Ukraine has been slashed

And in the last few months Ukraine has made russia its bitch

Ukraine did not collapse as trump his cronies and putin bet it would, they adapted, they found new partners, relied on their own know how, embraced the fact that no US aid means less leverage and more freedom to strike russia as they please

Does it feel good?

Does it feel good to finally have a reason to be the ones who hate, instead of the ones who are hated? Does it feel good to get up and go out in groups and parade around, screaming at any Jews you pass? To send messages to Jews online telling us that we deserve to die, that we are a threat to you and your families and your children?

Does it feel good to be the one who stands up and talks about how there is a dangerous ideology that is threatening your way of life? That is threatening the whole world? Does it feel good to look at Israelis who have adopted Hebrew names and call them the name YOU think they should be called, because they "don't look" Middle Eastern enough to you? Does it feel good to corner the random Jew and tell him that he should just kill himself for daring to exist in public LOOKING like that, so openly Jewish, why does he have to shove it in your face, down your throat? Doesn't he know he should be ASHAMED to be like that?

Does it feel good to push the Jews out of your spaces? To makes it clear that we are not welcome? Does it make you feel better to be able to exclude someone, finally, to FINALLY be able to say "No, YOU don't belong!" after a lifetime of being told you have no place in polite society? Does it feel righteous when you say that Jews, I mean Zionists, are dangerous and should all be put down?

Does it make you feel any less hated when you say the same shit the very people who hate you have been saying for years? Of course, I imagine it must. Because you have made it about someone else, finally. That hatred isn't about YOU now. No, now YOU are the ones who are right, and why can't everyone see that? Now you are the ones who have someone to hate, and you are RIGHT in hating them. You are so CORRECT in hating Jews, there is no way you could possibly be wrong! You believe everything that is thrown at you that allows you to hate more, to focus solely on your righteous, mighty crusade against the bloodthirsty Zios. You're so, so very right, aren't you?

On the one hand, it's kinda satisying to see someone lay out in excruciating detail why Israel has not committed the crime defined as "genocide", although of course the problem is that the people on the other side of this 1) don't care about the actual definition of "genocide", they're just using the word to mean "bad thing I don't like" 2) will therefore feel justified to respond to attempts to explain what genocide is with essentially:

So no one even learns anything ever (well, the "Israel isn't committing genocide" side learns something because we read the explanation as to why it isn't, but we can't use it, because, again, any attempt to explain it will ultimately result in

I don't label my politics, but I'm what someone would call on the left. I spent my teenage years when Tumblr social justice was at its height. I learned things, checked my own biases, and I would like to think became a more empathetic person because of what I learnt from online progressive spaces.

The way these spaces have treated Jewish communities over the past 2.5 years has been nothing short of fucking appalling.

The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was minimised, denied, justified, or outright celebrated.

Jewish people were immediately told to put their grief and trauma over this to away, because Palestine's pain was more important to talk about.*

Jewish and Israeli people were told they needed to try and understand why armed men raped, tortured, and killed members of their community. Because, you know, the murderous rapists are who we need to have sympathy for here. Anyone can be pushed to the point of, I don't know, murdering a young woman and parading her corpse around a street for men to spit on her dead body. If you really think about it, isn't that actually kind of an understandable thing to do?

When raising concerns over the rising antisemitism that was starting to look a lot like the build-up to that little historical tidbit called The Holocaust, Jews were told they were selfish for raising the issue.

When asking people not to call for intifadas that have historically resulted in thousands of dead Jews, they're told they're taking it all the wrong way.

When Israeli victims spoke of the abuse they received on Oct 7 and in captivity, they're told they need to stay silent because otherwise they risk justifying the genocide of Palestinians.

When 15 people were murdered at a Hannukah festival, there were no social media icons, no surge from progressive groups to find out what support they needed.

To be clear here, progressive groups seem more concerned with antisemitism in the Harry Potter books than they are about the actual, you know, string of dead Jews that have been murdered over the past few years. If you condemn antisemitic representations in diction and then turn around and completely ignore real-life fucking murder, then I'm sorry I genuinely do not think you ever gave a shit about fighting antisemitism, you just wanted to fight Jk Rowling. **

Absolutely fuck everyone who has justified or denied what happened on Oct 7th. There were ways to advocate for both Israeli and Palestinian victims, but the people who should have known better have ensured that Oct 7th wasn't just one day of hell for Jewish communities, but that its been currently 2.5 years of hell that seems to just be getting worse.

And the most infuriating part is the people who did justify Oct 7th will never admit they were wrong, because that would mean admitting they argued that the murder rape mutilation torture and kidnap of a Jewish community was acceptable, and that would break their brains. I mean it. The cognitive dissonance between believing you are someone who cares for human rights, whilst also being someone who justified all of that, is too great. The brain will always protect itself. Its why people are currently doubling down on there being no rapes on Oct 7th. Rape is not resistance, it is not self defence, it is not landback, it is not right of return, it is not decolonisation, it is not any of the shit people tell themselves Oct 7th was. Rape is just rape. It is just men torturing people (mainly women) for no other reason than because they enjoy it. You will never see these people admitting rape occurred, because the second they do is the second they realise just how horrifically they have behaved.

And it's not getting better. Hate crimes and murders of worldwide Jewish communities are rising. Jewish people are looking to leave places like the US, UK and Australia, which were once considered some of the safest places for them to live. A KKK slur (zio) is now common online usage. Jewish people are expected to sever any connection to an important part of their culture (Israel/Hebrew) in order to be treated somewhat civily. The more IDF crimes are uncovered in Gaza, the more worldwide Jewish communities bear the brunt of the anger. Typing 'Jewish' into any social media brings you into an absolute clusterfuck of the most horrific things you can possibly see people say about their fellow human beings.

I am just sick and exhausted and furious and it feels like I'm hitting my fists against a brick wall that is not knocking down. How do you even get people to realise how bad this is????

I am not Jewish. I know full well that Jewish people talking about all of this get ignored. I know full well that a Jewish person standing up for Palestine gets thousands of notes, and a Jewish person standing up for their own people barely breaks 100. I know full well that Jewish people are being smeared as paranoid or crazy or selfish. I know full well that non-Jewish people speaking up about antisemitism is taken more seriously than Jewish people talking about their own experiences.

Can you all just start fucking having some fucking empathy for Jewish and Israeli communities who have been facing the worst 2 years of their lives. Fucking please. It is not that fucking hard to feel empathy for lots of groups at once. To empathise with both Palestine and Israel, Muslims and Jews. Empathy for all is part of what brings us away from just being animals and makes us human.

If you can't do it, it is not an issue with Jews or Israelis or Zionists or the IDF, it is an issue with you.

*I am not saying Palestinian pain isn't important to raise awareness of, and the people fearing what the IDF would do immediately after Oct 7th were right to raise it. I'm saying asking Jewish communities to take on the trauma of Palestinians, when they were still reeling from their own inter-community trauma, was wrong and unhelpful. I wouldn't ask Palestinian communities to have centered the trauma of Oct 7th either. Trauma is not a competition and everyone deserves to have their respective pain treated fairly.