I Don't Know, How About Switching It Off?

A few days ago, in my quest to fight the antisemitism that lifted its head around the world following the massacre of October 7th, I stumbled upon a clip from a UN assembly where the speaker asked a simple question-

Dear Arab world, where are your Jews?

A lot of people think that Israeli roots come from Europe exclusively. But in fact, Jewish people were hunted in all corners of this world. In Europe, of course, but also in Asia, Africa and other places all over the planet.

My grandma is an Iraqi Jew. Iraqi Jewish community is one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, being the direct descendants of the Babylonian exile Jews, so ancient it is an exile mentioned in the Bible.

Recent studies, in which DNA retrieved from canaanite burial lands was compared to current populations in the area of ancient Canaan, has found that Iraqi Jews share the highest similarity to canaanite DNA out of all Jewish communities, more than 50% of the DNA on average.

All the beautiful, peaceful Jewish communities of the Arab world were wiped out in the blink of an eye.

The Arabic world has never treated their Jewish communities as equal citizens, oftentimes robbing them of any rights and performing violent acts of genocide against them (check 'Farhud' on Google).

But their voice was silenced once they fled to Israel.

So I decided to recap my grandma's story in the comments of the clip:

Soon after, many Jewish people with Arabic, or 'Mizrahi' heritage, shared their stories as well:

Jewish people all over the planet were driven out of their homes, ethnically cleansed by their neighbors, rulers, and governments.

We are still not welcome in most of the countries of the Arab world. Unable to see glimpses of our history.

My grandma still wishes she could see the house she grew up in. Holding the memories, but unable to set foot in that land, because she would be executed.

Nevertheless, she's not a refugee. She might've fled to Israel, but in Israel, her family got equal rights as citizens, and she built a house on a land she now calls her home.

Don't erase my grandma's story. Don't erase the Jewish ethnic cleansing that brought her to seek a safe haven in Israel.

Israel is a home for more than half of the Jewish people on this planet. Out of the ~8,000,000 Jews who live in Israel, there are about ~2,500,000 Jews of Mizrahi heritage.

And as Golda Meir once said: "our secret weapon is that we have nowhere else to go."

Having been a part of the left for decades I think I can sum up how they went wrong

The left used to look to grassroots fighters of injustice as role models. They saw what the Black Panthers did giving school children free lunches. They saw groups like the Gay Liberation Front fighting for rights. They saw so many people in developing countries fighting for freedom and safety

A generation ago we knew why we were fighting. Then minority groups started to gain more of the equity they fought for and membership became about identity; nobody wanted to be a straight white person. The new generation came in after the struggle and tried to continue but so many of the fights were won and instead of picking up the fights remaining, they just wanted to continue with violence

They looked at radical Islam and assumed if someone is being violent there must be a righteous cause. They kept the violence and lost the fucking point

Another Jew on here commented that people were going onto Wikipedia and removing references to certain people's Jewishness, and I just saw for myself that this is true. As a Jew and a fan of old movies and history, I was looking up a list of Jewish actors on Wikipedia. I saw Tina Louise (you know, from Gilligan's Island) pop up. So I popped over to her actual page on Wikipedia. And there were zero references to her being Jewish. So I hopped on over to the Wayback Machine (bless you, Internet Archive) and put in the URL for her Wikipedia page. And wouldn't ya know it: before 10/7, there were at least 3 to 5 references to her Jewishness at any given time on her Wikipedia page. Wtf is happening.

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timesofisrael.com

Sydney Jews decry ‘Sanction Israel’ banner hung at Great Synagogue as ‘antisemitism’

Jewish community group calls incident 'pure, unadulterated antisemitism,' antithetical to Australian life; prominent human rights lawyer den

“Let’s be clear — targeting a synagogue is pure, unadulterated antisemitism which is intended to have a chilling and intimidating effect on members of the Synagogue and the Jewish community more broadly,” the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies said in a post on X.

---- "But we're just criticizing Israel! Those Jews. Always accusing us of antisemitism"

As a historic note - the Nazis in this picture are boycotting the department store of Wilfred Israel, an ardent Zionist who played a significant role in the Kindertransport. If only they could see their ideological descendants today. They would be so proud.

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"call me crazy wednesday, but you keep giving me these signals"

the signals in question:

It’s so obvious that some of the people on this website consider activism as a kind of performance. Nuance is out the window, the idea that their words could cause actual harm is shelved because they’re just “doing the right thing”. They throw around labels they don’t understand, recycle talking points they can’t begin to explain, and they feel good about themselves and that’s the part that matters to them.

Reblog to give the person you reblogged it from motivation to work on their fics.