Malificandy - Salt, Spite, & Everything Slight

Non-Jews: please reach out to your Jewish friends tomorrow. They will need it.

I say it as someone who doesn’t expect any of my non-Jewish friends to do so, because they didn’t do it last year either. When I asked a couple of them about it, they said they didn’t know why it would affect me. They didn’t know why the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust would affect me more than them. So if you can, please hug your Jewish friends.

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."

Race as Social Capital: LGBTmazight’s Blatant Racefaking for Fandom Points

The Old Guard fandom has its own HIVliving, MedievalPOC, Rose Christo, white girl who is totally a Cherokee Princess because she did a test and found that she’s 1% Native American, and the charade has been going on for too long.

This post is about Len (better known as LGBTmazight, romiosini, figure8, junmotions). The information compiled here has been found and organized by people of many ethnicities, including those she pretends to be (namely two Moroccans, one of whom is Amazigh, who were raised in Morocco and speak the language), who are now exhausted by her uncontrolled racism. This post is not an invitation to send her hate: it’s a compilation of her unbridled racefaking for internet points, and comes with the invite of blocking her and not using her as a reference when it comes to information regarding MENA countries. 99% of what she says, she copies from Google and often attributes to the wrong country.

As of summer 2021, Len is claiming to be a brown Maghrebi-Greek woman who comes from poverty and whose parents weren’t able to afford to give her an adequate education, works in manual labor, was raised between Greece and Morocco for the first seven years of her life, is dark-skinned enough to get harassed by the police everywhere she goes, and has learned pride in her heritage from her Muslim Moroccan father. She claims to be able to speak, among other languages, Darija, Arabic, and Tmazight.

However, in her internet career Len has also identified as being: white, white-passing, brown, Muslim, Orthodox Christian, animist from a family of shamans and in line to become the next “Darwisa”, French, Spanish, Peloponnesian/Pontic/Anatolian Greek, Sephardic Jewish, Jewish with family “in Europe during WW2", partly Romani, Moroccan, specifically Riffian Moroccan with solely Amazigh descent, and with “close ties to Asia Minor”. Her economic status has shifted from being able to live in the world’s most expensive neighborhoods and attending fancy private schools during the Global Recession to having to ask her followers for change. According to her stories, her family has been at the center of every tragedy that happened in North Africa and Europe since the beginning of the 1900s.

This to say: Len, LGBTmazight, is a racefaker on the same level as HIVliving, a parasite who latches onto racial stereotypes and applies them to her person to give herself, as well as her followers, the right to harass, abuse, and send death threats to people who do not follow or support her narrative. It will be brought up later, but the Moroccan Amazigh person who participated in writing the post, as well as other MENA individuals, were appalled by the blatant racism, Orientalism, antiblackness, fetishization, and White Savior Syndrome displayed by Len, as well as her open disrespect for actual Moroccan traditions, people, and culture. Although this began as a light-hearted research, it soon became clear that Len’s racism, xenophobia especially against Italians and Ukrainians, antisemitism, and downright disgusting behavior are incredibly serious issues, to the point that one of the MENA individuals behind this post became physically ill from seeing what she puts online.

None of the information compiled here is a product of doxxing: it is a collection of what Len herself has put online over the years, and let it be known that we were gracious enough to not post her, her parents’, and her sister’s full and legal names and faces despite the fact that Len has shared them multiple times.

As an appetizer, here’s the face of the “racialized” brown woman who claims to be constantly abused and racially profiled because of her dark skin and North African features:

(link, archive)

Although in the past she identified as they/them or he/him, on her current Twitter her pronouns are she/her. This account will do the same.

And here is what she thinks of Black and Jewish people: they are obstacles to the attentions she should, in her opinion, receive for the made-up abuse she rants about online. Her platforms were never about defending, representing, and protecting minorities; it was always a stage for her to grab the attention of well-meaning people. About actual minorities, she couldn’t care less and considers them a nuisance:

(link, archive)

(In these tweets she is talking about xenophobia, something she has said is only ever brought up as a way to shift the conversation away from racism. How the tables have turned, Len.)

A summary of the contents of the post: Len is 25% Moroccan at most, was born and raised in Europe, never lived in the Maghreb, doesn’t speak the language, didn’t learn about Islam from her father, never suffered any racially-charged abuse, and never lived in poverty. Her father is a tenured professor and has been one since the 1990s, and her mother is also an extremely well-respected professor; they have dozens of publications between them, and her mother seems to have written the text for her field. Although we have no certainties regarding their monthly income, it is easy to say they are wealthy: both Len and her sister were sent to private schools all their lives, her family could afford to own/rent multiple residencies at the same time, drive around in expensive cars, go on vacation often, and buy Apple products immediately after release. Everything she has said since she started looking for fandom clout is a lie and she has used your desire to be good people to her advantage. Extensive proof is below the cut, and mind that this is only the tip of the iceberg: we have more and it only gets worse.

Hélène, we were initially open to dialogue, but after seeing that you’re a genocide denier who keeps inventing stories of abuse to get pity from people while you spend your time harassing actual PoC and other minorities, as well as being someone who has no problems calling Marwan Kenzari the French version of the insult “sand-ni**er”, we realized you are not redeemable in any way.

We already know she’s going to screenshot this and whine about it on Twitter, because even if she likes to portray herself as a great debater, she has never been able to hold a single online conversation without first victimizing herself and crying about being abused, then screenshotting and asking her followers to harass the people who disagreed with her. We are not doing this for her; she’s neither important nor special enough for that. We are doing this to get rid of the racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and fetishization of MENA people that she has spent a year aiding.

Asks are open with the possibility to leave anons.

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בוכה דמעות

a literal terrorist group, hezbollah: oh yeah we just fired another rocket at the jews

hezbollah after learning that it was arab children killed: nooo we didn't do it nooo believe us we would never do such a thing

people on this website, for some reason: i believe you 100% it was obviously staged by israel because everything you guys say is the compelte truth

I apologise for having a nuanced opinion on the Internet, but "The destruction of a vast network that many creators rely on to reach their audience is heartbreaking" and "Watching the multibillion-dollar impulsive purchase of an entitled man-child crash and burn within days of getting his hands on it is objectively funny" are two statements that can and should co-exist

I think one of the most important things most goyim don't understand about Judaism is that there's a process for forgiveness, but forgiveness isn't required. And even then, the process of teshuvah requires more than just a simple apology.

It requires that one recognize that they have done something wrong, it requires that one regrets those actions, it requires that one strives to do better, it requires that one changes themselves to be a better person as to not repeat the mistake, it requires one to face the person they have wronged, admit their misdeeds, and declare their intention to do better.

If the offender's apology isn't serious enough, they repeat the same offending deeds, or something else happens where it's clear the apology was not sincere or the offender hasn't taken concrete steps to become a better person, forgiveness isn't required.

And even in the case where the apology is seen as sincere enough, the minimum required amount of forgiveness is "mechilah," which simply forgives a debt (physical or metaphorical) that is owed because of the offending actions. But the crime still exists. The crime is still there.

And EVEN THEN, one is not halachically obligated to offer mechilah. They may be morally obligated to as a sign of good faith, but in no way are they required to.

This is Jewish forgiveness. It is a process that takes time, energy, and trust. Sometimes, it's not granted, but when it is, it's granted because there is faith that the offender will become a better person and not repeat the crimes of their past, at least not intentionally (although that is a whole other topic).

K.A. Applegate's letter to fans re: the ending the Animorphs series

Dear Animorphs Readers:

Quite a number of people seem to be annoyed by the final chapter in the Animorphs story. There are a lot of complaints that I let Rachel die. That I let Visser Three/One live. That Cassie and Jake broke up. That Tobias seems to have been reduced to unexpressed grief. That there was no grand, final fight-to-end-all-fights. That there was no happy celebration. And everyone is mad about the cliffhanger ending.

So I thought I’d respond.

Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don’t end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.

That’s what happens, so that’s what I wrote. Jake and Cassie were in love during the war, and end up going their seperate ways afterward. Jake, who was so brave and capable during the war is adrift during the peace. Marco and Ax, on the other hand, move easily past the war and even manage to use their experience to good effect. Rachel dies, and Tobias will never get over it. That doesn’t by any means cover everything that happens in a war, but it’s a start.

Here’s what doesn’t happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt. Life isn’t a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown. Even the people who win a war, who survive and come out the other side with the conviction that they have done something brave and necessary, don’t do a lot of celebrating. There’s very little chanting of ‘we’re number one’ among people who’ve personally experienced war.

I’m just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I’ve never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn’t going to do it at the end. I’ve spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I’ve written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To think about the right and wrong, not just the who-beat-who. And to tell you the truth I’m a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I’d wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping. Wars very often end, sad to say, just as ours did: with a nearly seamless transition to another war.

So, you don’t like the way our little fictional war came out? You don’t like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don’t like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you’ll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.

If you’re mad at me because that’s what you have to take away from Animorphs, too bad. I couldn’t have written it any other way and remained true to the respect I have always felt for Animorphs readers.

K.A. Applegate

A kid’s book series that didn’t coddle it’s readers just because they were children? How awesome is that? I think this series did an even better job than Harry Potter at showing how horrible and horrifying war is. Harry Potter still gave us that happy “everyone is married and has a family” epilogue, and we rarely (if ever) saw the characters truly dealing with nightmares or PTSD like symptoms from what they’d experienced. Animorphs showed readers how horrifying war is from the start - book 1 has Jake suffering through nightmares because of what he’d seen. Animorphs doesn’t give readers the easy “all of x group are evil” way out. The series starts off allowing readers to think Andalites = good and Yeerks = bad, but then goes on to fully pull the rug out from underneath us when we learn how Andalites treat disabled members of their society, and how horrible it is for Yeerks when they don’t have a host. Nothing about the war is comfortable for either the readers or the main characters.

This series ran from 1996-2001, and the characters are 13 when the war starts, and 16 when it ends. Each book is between 150 and 200 pages long, and even though there are a butt ton of books, I think everyone who enjoys YA/childrens lit should give them a shot. Though if you do, beware extreme 90s-ness. Many plot lines and jokes are extremely reliant on the time in which the books take place, so the sooner you get “if they’d had a cell phone, this wouldn’t even be a thing” out of your head, the better. Like, one of the books’ plot is that the CEO of the AOL equivalent is being targeted, and that would allow the alien invading force to control the entire internet. So yea, it’s very of it’s era. But still excellent!