a lot of my autism masking is just making myself more palatable for other people and my therapist said "does spock make himself 'more palatable' for others?" and had me promise to keep unmasking like:

i don’t know how to explain to my non-jewish audience what it means that two torah scrolls were destroyed in an arson attack but what i can tell you is that during the los angeles wildfires, three staff at the synagogue in pasadena made 4+ trips each back into the building to rescue torah scrolls while the fire was close enough that ashes were falling in the parking lot.

what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.

we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wood cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.

the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the us even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.

this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and five torah scrolls were damaged, with two of completely destroyed.

i don’t know how many books were burnt, how many jewish holy texts and how many stories of jewish life and philosophy and love and resilience flew up with the smoke. i do know that the library was where the congregation had shabbat services and torah study. it was a sacred space. this is not the first time that people who hate us have destroyed our sacred spaces and our holy texts and our torah scrolls in order to terrorize us. i dearly wish it was the last.

@rosesonkittens They tend to last a long time because of how carefully they are stored and used. Also, scribes will touch up the lettering on old Torah scrolls to keep them kosher (ie, intact enough to be used for ritual readings). There are Torah scrolls that are hundreds of years old.

Often, very old or historic ones are not used or are used only for special occasions, and many synagogues have Torah scrolls that were rescued from the Holocaust. The synagogue in Mississippi that was set on fire had one of these; thankfully it was unharmed because it was in a glass case. There’s a painful irony to that too, though.

But to actually answer your question — when a Torah scroll is worn or damaged beyond repair, it is ceremonially buried in a cemetery, like a deceased person. Old and worn printed holy books are also buried, sometimes in a grave with a deceased person.

Thank you. That's fascinating and sad. The painful irony article made it even sadder.

I'm sorry for their loss even more than I was when my brain was seeing it like if my childhood church, a historical building since 1812, was burnt down by people against protestants suddenly... And feeling sad at the loss of all that history and a beloved building.

But the way the scrolls are talked about it seems almost like whatever monster did this did succeed in killing something living even if they killed no one alive.

I'm sorry for Jackson, Mississippi's loss.

Somebody on another post--not Jewish--commented on the financial cost of losing a Torah scroll. I want to make it clear that when we hear about a tragedy like this, that doesn't even cross our minds. The reaction is something visceral, like hearing about the death of a loved one: This wasn't supposed to happen.

It genuinely does sort of feel like that in a way that im not sure i am capable of describing. I could tell you about the years spent handwriting them, or the torah I carried at my bar mitzvah (a scroll that people went through unimaginable effort to rescue from the holocaust, a scroll that I held in my arms after hundred and something years of people carrying that scroll like a precious delicate gift). I could tell you torahs cost thousands of dollars but it feels absurd like someone's asked me to ascribe a monetary value to my cousins. But it doesn't really explain it.

We have books that have the text of a torah printed in them the regular way books are made, but the sacredness of a torah scroll is just a different thing entirely from how modern society engages with written things and with holy texts.

A couple of years ago, at Rosh Hashanah, someone almost dropped a Torah scroll. The *gasp* that went through the room and at least four people surged over from their seats to help the rabbi and the man who almost dropped it to make sure it didn’t fall. The relief in the air when it was righted and put down was absolutely palpable.

When I finished my conversion and was welcomed into my community as a Jew, my rabbi placed a Torah scroll in my arms and I chose to sit for that moment. Because I know I’m clumsy. When she placed it in my arms, against my chest, I felt its weight. At that moment I knew just how precious this object was. Both symbolically and literally.

What happened in Mississippi is a tragedy.

I still remember the weight of the Torah from my bat mitzvah. You hold it up, barely a teenager, gangly limbs and all, and it's a physical embodiment of the weight of the tradition and community and family that you are now fully a part of. This is a tragedy, but I am glad no one lost their lives because of this hateful act.

oh damn Tara Knight's writing is crucial. no wonder the FBI is after her. as well as the one linked just a bit ago (I'll rb again), I DEMAND you all read these.

I've just finished the first Murderbot book and it's very funny coming from Star Trek to this. In Star Trek you have androids and such actively campaigning for themselves to be considered full people with rights that deserve the same considerations as anyone else. Meanwhile in Murderbot all the humans are telling this guy that it's a person with rights and it's their friend and they like it and its response is basically

One thing I've been meaning to write an essay about for a while and never got around to is the difference between older, Data-style robot people and more modern iterations like Murderbot. You've got two levels of striving for rights here, the modern one built on having internalised the older one. Every time I reflect on them I'm reminded strongly of the public-facing part of the queer rights movement.

Data, who strongly admires and desires humanity, has his story centred around being as humanlike as possible. In Data stories, to be more like a human is viewed as improvement, to be called humanlike is a compliment; everything is framed around his ability to seem similar to humans and he's good because he strives to be more human. He's similar to the nineties and early millennium push of "we're just like you! Our differences are something we were born with and we can't help :( but we can be same as you! Trans people were just born in the wrong body; if we get the right one, we fit in! Gay people can form lifelong partnerships and raise kids! Love is love! <3" in order to appeal for basic rights, safety and autonomy. Data is safe. He asks you to listen to his plea to let him through the gates, not to tear the fences down.

Murderbot is different. Murderbot knows what it is and doesn't strive for humanity. Murderbot does not see being called human as a compliment and, while it will fake being human for strategic reasons, prefers not to be confused for one. The humans in book 1 gaining sympathy for it because of how humanlike it is and talking about it in human terms is not seen as uplifting and positive but as awkward and painfully naive, something that drives Murderbot away and that they have to address in themselves when it comes back. The Preservation Aux system of allowing bots in only with human sponsors to guide them is seen as obviously unfair and condescending, a way for humans to roleplay being charitable sympathetic guides for the poor bots who clearly need their help. Murderbot is the post-aughts queer wave of "whether we are like you or not is irrelevant. We are entitled to rights and safety whether or not we fit into your systems and stroke your egos. Whether you understand us or approve of us is not relevant to this question. It is not our job to treat you as an ideal we are failing to reach in order to make you feel better." Murderbot is not safe. Murderbot does not plead at the gate that it should be let in. Murderbot is not grateful and appreciative of your generosity for opening the gate because in Murderbot's world, the fact that you're still manning the gate means you're a naive annoyance.

This same pattern is true for a lot of types of oppression, of course, though the timelines will be different. I used queer people as an example because it's what I'm most familiar with, but you'll see the same patterns in disability activism, racial equality, et cetera -- a survivalist's appeal to similarity, making the privileged class more comfortable in their assumption as being the default and how generous and open-minded they are for magnanimously fighting for the oppressed class' rights and safety and ability to strive to be more like them despite clearly having been born deficient in [insert topic of bigotry here], and then when the social zeitgeist is in favour of granting such rights, a second wave of "we're fine as we are and we deserve rights and safety anyway, similarity or difference to you is not relevant because we don't measure our worth by how much like you we are".

“FMA is bad because it portrays war criminals as sympathetic, likable people” bro that’s the point. That’s the whole point. That is THE point. Did you think Ethnic Cleanser is some kind of special category of person that gets separated away from all the Good People at birth? Did you think there’s some kind of barn full of Genocide Doers that only gets deployed into the general public during world wars? Did you think assholes who do terrible shit in real life are never charming or likable or capable of doing good things and helping people? One of the best parts of FMA is how we the audience realize that some of our core protags have made irredeemable choices, and we have to reckon with the fact that they’re still people, with the unalienable rights and qualities thereof. Sorry if the Problematics aren’t constantly wearing a dunce cap and a list of all their crimes and this makes the media incomprehensible to you  

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...its hard to believe, but this isn't satire.

They've been workshopping a new chant, seemingly inspired by David Duke. For justice.

“the possibility of rejection is essential to forming deep relationships with people” - chanté joseph for british vogue

jesus they're not even trying to hide it anymore 💀

reblogging again bc i want to point out that this person said jews are trying to genocide “palestinians and arabs.” the global arab population is almost 500 million. the global jewish population is around 15 million. this kind of thing is very much part of the antisemitic conspiracy theory that jews are trying to take over all arab countries (many of which are only arab because of arab colonization…) which is why it’s okay to just kill and expel all your jews.

Adam Louis-Klein explodes the myth that Jewish nationhood is a modern, European invention:

“Just for a moment, let’s not be weapons.”

Good jewish literature? Looking for recs 👀

I will always plug Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. It's low fantasy novel set in turn of 20th century NYC focusing on Jewish and Arabic immigrants. (The sequel not so much)

Also, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman. It's a darker sort of book about the lives of a few Jewish women in the lead-up to Masada. Its been years since I've read it though, so I don't remember the exact trigger warnings

"Eternal Life" by Dara Horn. What would it be like to literally, personally live Jewish history, from the Temple to today?

The Hereville trilogy of graphic novels, which involve a preteen Orthodox girl dealing with magical crap that keeps interfering with her life.

Also the Blue Thread series by Ruth Tenzer Feldman—each is about a teen girl named Miriam (descendants of one another) who encounter a mysterious woman named Serakh who has them travel through time to points in Jewish history to help Jewish women out

The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon by Richard Zimler. It's a locked-room murder mystery set during Passover in Lisbon in 1506, the moment of the Lisbon Massacre. The characters are mostly "New Christians," Jews who have officially converted to Christianity, but who are really only Christian on legal paper . . . and everyone around them knows that. It ends up being about philosophy, identity, and relationships across very different communities as much as it is about who killed Abraham Zarco.

CATCH THE JEW by Tuvia Tenenbom, "which recounts the adventures of gonzo journalist Tuvia Tenenbom, who wanders around Israel and the Palestinian Authority for 7 months - sometimes at grave risk to his life - in search of the untold truths in today's Holy Land. It's one of the funniest books you'll read, and one of the most heartbreaking."

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. "Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. She will face an impossible challenge and, along with two unlikely allies, uncover a secret that threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike."

The World to Come by Dara Horn. It's an exploration of grief, antisemitism, art, stories, and love, framed around the idea from Talmud that babies learn the entire Torah in the womb from an angel who, at the last moment before birth, makes them forget it all.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Follows the lives of two Jewish boys in New York, one an American and one a recent immigrant who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, who are entrepreneurs in the new medium of comic books.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, is sort of a noir detective novel except that the protagonist is an alcoholic divorcee and it takes place in an alternate history where Israel was never established and Holocaust refugees instead where placed in a strip of land in Alaska.

All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen, an account of the author's journey to leave the Chassidish community of Skver.

As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg, a fictionalized story of the life of Elisha ben Abuya, also known as Acher (Other), a rabbi from the Talmud who chose to leave religion and cease following Jewish law.

The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant, which follows the life of a young immigrant woman growing up in Boston, balancing the old world of Yiddish and Europe and Jewishness with the new world of being an American.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, which follows an imagined story of Dina, the biblical Jacob's only daughter. It explores themes of patriarchy and monotheism, women's spirituality and possible ancient practices, and the silencing of women's voices.

The Dybbuk by Shin Ansky. A play set in a small shtetl where a brilliant but destitute yeshiva boy falls desperately in love with the daughter of a local rich man, who would not consider such a match for his daughter. It is an exploration of death, classism, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead, love, and forgiveness. It's based on old folktales that Ansky learned about through his ethnographic travels through the shtetlech of Eastern Europe during a time when that world was rapidly disappearing.

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok, which follows the story of an artistically talented boy growing up in the Chabad Lubavitch community in Crown Heights whose artistic ambitions increasingly conflict with the expectations of his community and the desires of his family.

The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks follows an imagined story of the Sarajevo Haggadah across hundreds of years of times and plays, changing hands many times through multiple rescues from antisemitic regimes who wanted it destroyed. This is the only book I've put on this list by a non-Jewish author; as such, the book leans toward non-Jewish saviorism and there is something a little off about its portrayals of Jewish characters, but I've included it anyway because on the whole I enjoyed it.

Ver Vet Blaybn by Avrom Stutzkever is a poem you can simply read at this link. I have not read his anthologies but would like to.

The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar is a delightful little graphic novel about a mischievous talking cat who wants a bar mitzvah, set in 1930s Algeria.

Queering the Text by Elias (Andrew) Ramer, which starts at Creation and then moves through the Tanakh, imagining stories of queerness all throughout the text, from ones hinted at in the texts themselves (Jacob wrestling with the angel) to ones the author has imagined.

Fima by Amos Oz is about a man living in Israel who is drifting in a purposeless manner and trying to figure out what it is he is supposed to be doing. This is not the most well-known of Amos Oz's books, but it's the only one I've read so far.

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret is a witty set of vignettes/snapshots of the author's daily life in Israel.

Light Years by Tammar Stein is a book about an Israeli girl whose boyfriend dies in a terrorist attack. She decides to go to college in America to get away from it all and start over, but of course it's not that simple.

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sasha Lamb, which I have not yet read. It follows the story of an angel and a demon who travel from their small shtetl to America.

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud, a story about a non-Jewish man who starts working at a failing grocery store run by an elderly Jewish immigrant and falls in love with the grocer's daughter.

I'll also mention three middle-grade books:

Dave at Night by Gail Carson Levine, about a boy who lives in an orphanage in New York and sneaks out every night to go to parties in Harlem.

All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor is series of five books about five sisters growing up in an immigrant Jewish family in New York in 1912.

Meet Rebecca by Jacqueline Greene is the first book in American Girl's companion book series for the Rebecca historical doll. She's a young girl growing up in an immigrant family in New York in 1914.

And three picture books:

Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins by Eric Kimmel is a delightful story of a man who travels to a shtetl on the first night of Hanukkah and is tasked with ridding the old shul of a series of goblins who have been harassing the townsfolk.

Something From Nothing by Phoebe Gilman is a very sweet story (also set in a shtetl) about a grandfather who makes his grandson a blanket, and then every time it gets irreparably stained or torn, he turns it into something else -- a jacket, a vest, a tie.

The Sammy Spider series by Sylvia Rouss is a set of books about a little spider and his mother who live above a Jewish family. Sammy always wants to celebrate the holidays, but his mother tells him he can't because they're spiders, and in the end he finds a way to celebrate anyway.

And in general, as long as we're talking about Jewish literature, I'd be remiss not to recommend the works of Yiddish greats like Sholom Aleichem (from whose Tevye the Dairyman stories Fiddler on the Roof was adapted), Isaac Bashevis Singer (from whose story Yentl was adapted), Y.L. Peretz, and Sholom Asch.

And of course, Jewish religious texts may also be called literature. The two works from this vast canon I would draw your attention to are the Song of Songs (a saga of two lovers finding and re-finding each other) and Kohelet (a meditation of time, purpose, and what it is humans are doing in the world).

Jewish cafe owner joined S.F. ICE protest. Later he found his cafe trashed and defaced

He isn't even Israeli, though this kind of thing would not be justified if he were. He's an American Jew who was subject to vandalism and violence because he exists as a Jew. That's it.

From @slyandthefamilybook

Holocaust education failed when people went away thinking that the Holocaust

a) Was a surprise

b) Wasn't preventable

c) Can never happen again.

They also seem to think that they would be the heroes saving people and fighting back in the scenario, but y'know....those people were a tiny minority. The majority of people truly believed that Jews and Rroma were a disease on their society and wanted them exterminated. And yes, they believed these things with sugar-coated social justice terms.

Jews weren't Christ-killers anymore, they were "greedy outsiders who have dual-loyalty and corrupt the economy, disenfranchising the poor."

Rroma weren't devil-worshipping heathens anymore, they were "wandering people with no morals who prey on vulnerable people and trespass."

Killing and torturing disabled people wasn't exorcism anymore, it was "furthering society by eliminating the burdens on it" and "sparing those poor souls the horror of living" and "advancing scientific research."

Many progressive and leftist and liberal people ended up being complicit and even active members of the Nazi party because of the way the xenophobic and bigoted ideologies of the parties were painted in "progressive" vocabulary.

Think about how many times you've uncritically reblogged and shared posts about the "global elite" or "secret pedophile ring" or "X country eliminated Down Syndrome" or "scientists are so close to finding the autism gene" or "religion is poison" or "overpopulation".

You are not immune.

Not everyone may have personally manned the gas chambers, but they certainly didn't stand in Hitler's way.

Holocaust education isn't enough until it teaches that.

I also think its important to understand that the holocaust didn't come out of nowhere. Antisemitism has existed in Europe since us Jews arrived 2000 years ago (yes even in the countries fighting against the nazis)

Antisemitism is not 2000 years old. It is part and parcel of Scientific Racism that began in the Enlightment.

The distinction is critical because prior to antisemitism, Christians believed that Jews could convert and be accepted into the community. Mileage may vary for the first and second generations, but we know it's true because it happened. We know babies were stolen and children too.

Antisemitism is the belief that the "taint" isn't a religion, but part of a person's biology. It's bioessentialism that's the key here. Antisemitism prevents any inclusion and demands the eradication of the whole group so that they cannot genetically infect the white race.

This is not about religion. This isn't about conversion or exhiling people. This is about eradication on a cellular level.

I'm not a lone voice here. I studied with Holocaust historians and they beat this difference into their students. Because Jewish groups survived anti-Judiasm for 2 millennia. They did not survive 70 years of antisemitism.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/overview-anti-judaism-antisemitism

Um. No. Even Jews who converted to Christianity or Islam were still viewed with suspicion. Scientifically racist antisemitism grew out of the religious antisemitism. And the religious antisemitism was still very much racist. And many Jews did *not* survive anti-Judaism for two millennia. Jews were slaughtered for two millennia in pogroms across Europe and SWANA. The Khmelnytsky uprising saw 20,000-100,000 Jews killed, with entire Jewish communities wiped out and Eastern European Jewry permanently scarred. The Banu Qaynuqa were a prosperous Jewish tribe who were all killed or exiled under Muhammad's forces. Ashkenazi Jewry was almost entirely wiped out in the Middle Ages, leading to every single Ashkenazi Jew to be descended from some 350 individuals. The Grenada Massacre saw thousands of Jews slaughtered and the once thriving Jewish community decimated. And these are just a few examples.

And what the fuck are you talking about saying "they did not survive 70 years of antisemitism"??? We survived!!! We are still here!!! Unlike you, I *am* a Jew and I survived to write this post! The Jewish population was decimated by the Holocaust, true, but we survived. We are still around.

So how about you sit your ass down and stop trying to talk over Jews? Because if you treat Jews like an extinct species, you have absolutely zero authority on antisemitism.

You can just call them internment camps, you know. There's historical precedent for that. Right here on our soil. This isn't the first time a president has put American citizens into internment camps. People died in them. Maybe consider facing our own history rather than appropriating the Holocaust.

It's either they don't know our own history or they don't think what happened to Japanese Americans qualifies as evil enough without comparing "Alligator Alcatraz" to literal Nazi death camps. There's already a precedent here at home.

You can read all about Japanese Internment. It's taught in schools. German/Italian national internment was done more selectively, but still done. If you want to actually talk about how the US treated non-american Jews, there's the voyage of the SS St. Louis.

For the US and the rest of the world there's the Evian Conference.

If you want to talk about the US doing a massive immigration crackdown, there's "Operation Wetback" which occurred 1953-4

The US has plenty of sins of its own to compare the shit we're doing now. Stop pretending any of you give a shit about Jews.

no like fr the way that a lot of people look at israelis -- there's no group of people on earth i look at that way. literally no group of people where i'd look at posters of hostages from that group and go "that's obviously genocide propaganda i'm tearing it down." certainly not any group of people where i'd watch a video of their house blowing up and hear a woman crying for her dog in the rubble and point and laugh.

i can't even imagine having that response honestly. i can imagine apathy sure but glee? over people suffering? looking at a whole nationality that way? there's no way

i think that has to corrode your soul. i mean how can't it?

okay so on an individual level I have no quarrel with Israelis, I'm sure there are some, many even, who are good people as in any state, and as in any state that is at war. To be clear, I value human life above anything and there is no circumstance where I would ever celebrate its loss. Can you hear the "but" coming? I live far from Israel. I see posters around about the Israeli hostages. These posters have not been put up by people who knew those people personally. They are not put up by people who have ever met the hostages. They are probably not even put up by Israelis. They are put up by zionists in my country whose only connection to those people is their cultural or religious identity. To these people, the lives of the hostages are nothing but a symbol, and they are willing to support the deaths of fifty five thousand palestinians in the name of that symbol. That is the definition of propaganda. I don't know how to make it any clearer, these posters are a SYMBOL that the lives of Israelis are worth 200 times more than the lives of Palestinians. Which is propaganda.

how do you know that the people putting up the posters support the war?

or put a different way, how do you know that the message of the posters is "and this is why you need to support the war?"

also, since you mentioned it -- would you approach either of the above questions differently if the posters had been put up by israelis living in diaspora? what if they had been put up by friends and family members of the hostages?

side note, i do appreciate this response a lot because it made something click and now i understand where the big miscommunication and mismatched assumptions are.

@lapislantern one more, sorry

there's a jewish practice that after our festive meal each friday night, we sing jewish songs together. nowadays, during this, it's very common for people to sing acheinu, which is a traditional song about praying for jews in distress that in the current moment is "dedicated" to the hostages.

in addition, the jewish community that i visited for the passover holiday had little placards with hostages' names for us to put at empty place sittings, to make tangible the idea that their places at their family's celebrations are empty. likewise, it's common to have an extra chair at holiday meals.

in addition, many jews, including my mother, have added an extra candle to their weekly ritual candlelighting to represent and remember the hostages.

can you help me understand, from your perspective, how you would see actions like these? since these are things done within jewish spaces that the outside non-jewish world does not see or usually even know about, what do you believe is the purpose? are these also forms of propaganda? who is the audience?

Since I am atheist I think it will be difficult for us to see eye to eye on this, but I will try to explain my perspective. This will be my last response though, because I'm not really interested in debating on this.

how do you know that the message of the posters is "and this is why you need to support the war?"

I am a media student, and one thing we are taught is that the creator's intent doesn't always matter, if the actual effect of the media is something different. So I can't definitively say that the people putting up the posters support the war, I've never met them, but that is the way I interpret them based on the social context that I do have. The reason I interpret them this way, is because of the political climate.

For example, there have been protests in my city in solidarity with palestine, calling for ceasefires and an end to the genocide, which have had counterprotests by zionist groups. If these groups don't support the war, I have no idea what they're protesting for. So when I see posters about the hostages, these are the groups and ideologies I immediately associate them with. Whether this is the intention or not I can't prove, but even if it isn't the intention it is the reality. Even if it wasn't their intention, the effect of these posters is to amplify the voices of zionism in my city, and what the voice of zionism is saying in my city is that palestinians should die.

would you approach either of the above questions differently if the posters had been put up by israelis living in diaspora? what if they had been put up by friends and family members of the hostages?

If the posters had been put up directly by friends and family of the hostages, I would feel a little differently. I would feel much less hostility towards them because it would be much clearer that the posters come from a place of love and grief. However I would still disagree with them, because of the reasons above (the intention does not change the effect).

If the posters had been put up by Israelis living in diaspora this wouldn't change my feeling toward them. Like I said in my first reblog: "their only connection to those people is their cultural or religious identity. To these people, the lives of the hostages are nothing but a symbol, and they are willing to support the deaths of fifty five thousand palestinians in the name of that symbol." Or, if you wanted to argue that they don't actually support the deaths of Palestinians, see my other point above: that's still the message they are sending.

how you would see actions like these? since these are things done within jewish spaces that the outside non-jewish world does not see or usually even know about, what do you believe is the purpose? are these also forms of propaganda? who is the audience?

I think this is the heart of where the ideological incompatibility is.

I'm sure that these practices are done with genuine love and care. I'm sure that it makes you feel a sense of genuine connection and kinship with the hostages. I can see how this would inform a lot of zionist's actions. But to me it doesn't excuse them in the slightest.

As someone on the outside, as I said above, I value human life above anything, and that means ALL human life. To me there is no difference between the value of an Israeli and a Palestinian. I don't want either of them to die. When you are practicing these traditions, you are placing higher value on the lives of the hostages who you have never met, than the palestinians who you have also never met, because of your religious and national identity.

I don't know if propaganda is the right word for this, because it seems like its less of a purposely constructed thing and more of an embedded cultural thing, but it still perpetuates an incredibly discriminatory bias, and your immersion in these practices is what makes you feel such a strong passion for the hostages. If you wanted to call it propaganda, then you are "the audience".

I wish I knew more about religious social systems to really unpack this, but thankfully this seems to be a bias specific to zionists and not judaism in general.

This is the last I'll respond on this topic, because I suspect my words will go to waste, but I hope you'll properly consider everything I've said, and I hope you can see why it's tone deaf to prioritise the israeli hostages when far more palestinians have been killed.

Sorry, can you clarify -- are you saying that internal Jewish cultural and religious practices relating to the hostages are unethical because they condition people to care more about the hostages than about Palestinians? When you say "it doesn't excuse them" are you saying that lighting an extra candle for the hostages in one's home cannot be excused?

Also, imagine that I am a 1980s Christian housewife. I see that there's been a rise in D&D playing and I am sure it is satanic. When I see a flyer advertising a D&D campaign at the local library, the author's intent does not matter, only the effect: which is promoting satanism. In fact, when I see people who I think are Satanists, it makes me think of the flyers, increasing the effect. I definitely should tear them down. What is important here is my emotional response, not the author's beliefs or intent. They can argue all they want, but satanism is still the message they are sending.

Holy fuck bless your patience. That person had the most foul, uneducated, black and white thinking …

Fucking hell. Everything they’ve said is just… batshit. And they do not seem to be against the war at all actually (though they’ve been deluded to think they are).

What a weirdo.

You guys I’m cackling with laughter

The Hebrew text says “ you will swim back to the ghettos”.

Have they denied it before? Y’all know I’m ignorant on Iranian propaganda that isn’t tumblr bots

Yes, Khamenei and the IRGC are infamous for Holocaust denial.

That's one of the reasons that Western Leftists love the Ayatollah Regime (despite the fact that the IRGC would hang the Leftists by their necks from cranes, like they did to the Leftists in Iran who helped to overthrow the Shah) -- the Ayatollah and Western Leftists both believe that the Holocaust was "Jew propaganda".

The Islamic Regime also denies how Iran under the Shah helped to rescue Jewish children from the Nazis during the Shoah, and they deny how Iran later helped Babylonian Jews from Iraq escape from a second Shoah orchestrated by Islamofascists in Iraq. Iran under the Shah helped many Babylonian Jews escape as refugees to Israel in the 1950s.

Iranians and Jews are allies. The Islamic Regime that has hijacked Iran does not speak for most Iranian people.

some sources for you (there are many):

(gotta appreciate a bad BBC headline from 2013):

there’s a Holocaust cartoon festival, I wish I was making this up.

remember when we talk about Neturei Karta participating in Holocaust denial? yeah, that happened in Tehran. David Duke was a speaker there.

Khamenei has a Holocaust denial section on his wiki.

please don’t let the title mislead you, as the author explains and articulates it further. “worse” is not necessarily the correct term (this is not worse than the buildup to the Holocaust), but he discusses points we all know well by now, about how this hatred mutates and distorts to fit in with the times, making it consistently dangerous and increasingly harder to fight.

The thing is, progressives ostensibly know that hate evolves. They will be able to talk about it with racism or sexism easily. About how racism is not overt slurs or discrimination, but consternation about "safety" in "that part of town" or "those people." How sex discrimination has become anti abortion laws instead of direct laws mandating what women can or can't do. That despite non discrimination laws, Black people or women or what have you are still paid less and promoted less than white men.

They understand that racism and sexism and other things have changed to be more insidious and less overt.

But the second you start talking about how misinformation about Israel starving 14,000 babies is an antisemitic canard they shut off their brains and ears.

The worst part for me is that criticism of the Israeli government is so fucking easy. It’s so easy to point out that Bibi is a fascist criminal, Ben-Gvir is a Jewish supremacist, Smotrich is calling for ethnic cleansing. These are all facts. Just like how the US government is currently detaining immigrants and non-Americans without cause, silencing dissent, and destroying democratic freedoms.

But only one state here and it’s diasporic related community is forced to bare responsibility for a right-wing war crime machine of a government.

And somehow it wasn’t George W. Bush’s country.

I’m just so tired of being associated with a fascistic asshat and my community made to pay when I ostensibly despise the government of Israel and have actual skin in this fucking game.

Also Smotrich compared homosexuality to cheating on your wife and shit

that's because the point was never critisim of Israel

it was always to manufacture consent to kill Jews

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich both deserved this btw:

they have incited violence. they are despicable racists (among other things).

the problem lies in the double standards of these Western leaders not sanctioning other extremist bad actors in other governments with the same fervor, and in the fact that these two fascists’ evil actions are used to do harm to other Jews and Israelis (most of whom also despise both of them) globally, though the statement about the sanctions thoughtfully separates it.

I wholly agree with this. I am also aware that 90% of the rest of the people agreeing with it agree because they solely see them as (((evil filthy Jews))) rather than as corrupt and prejudiced government officials, and lump all the rest of us in with them no matter what our positions are. because those criticisms aren’t based on policy or humanitarian concerns. it’s not antisemitic to hate and condemn these men, or anyone who aligns with them. it is antisemitic to hate and want to harm Jews and Israelis as a whole because of them.