Conversation between me, and another high educated Jewish women whose opinions I respect
Her: What’s missing here are the facts. If we stuck to the facts there wouldn’t be so much intensity surrounding this issue. Me: But you and I are both highly educated Jewish women, and we can’t even agree on the facts regarding the history of Palestine as a place name, ethnic identifier, and nation. If we can’t even agree on those facts, how on earth can facts help anyone move forward?
There’s the question. Not just for Jews, but for everyone involved in, or concerned with this conflict. How do we move forward if multiple sides of the room dispute the veracity of such basic statements as:
-Jews are a globally oppressed minority ethnic group, the hatred of which is deeply embedded in Western thought and rhetoric.
-The Naqba was a period of ethnic cleansing in which the government and military of the new State of Israel expelled Palestinian Arabs from their homes and property; a dispossession and a series of events which continue to traumatize and negatively impact the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians.
-The Holocaust was a traumatic event in the history of the Jewish people, the legacy of which is embedded in the psyches, world views, and collective trauma of the Jewish people, and invariably impacts how this group views global issues.
-Palestinian Arabs had a full developed sense of identity and statehood before the British Empire fucked off, and made their discomfort with increasing Jewish emigration clear to the British before the outbreak of the Second World War.
-Jews had nowhere to go before, during, or really, after the Holocaust; and the governments of many Arab States ethnically cleaned their own ancient Jewish communities in retribution for the creation of the State of Israel.
-The State of Israel does not exist because the Holocaust happened, or as an “apology” for said event.
THIS POST COMPRISES A SERIES OF RHETORICAL QUESTIONS MEANT TO MAKE US APPRECIATE THE DEPTHS OF THE DISCURSIVE PROBLEMS HERE; NOT A POST FOR “DISCOURSE” AND HATEFUL, AGGRESSIVE SHIT.
If you feel you have to do that, copy & paste into your own separate post.
itsybitsylemonsqueezy: #yep even these statements are frustrating for some #and even if you accept all of them #you immediately see the conflicts and discrepancies in different perspectives #how disagreements can so easily arise #add to that investment and you quickly have an extra impass #I know the popular take right now is that this is easy #I don’t think it is #this is painful and complicated and horrific #and the answer isn’t do nothing #but it probably isn’t shout out people trying to help and trying to understand
VERY FUCKING WELL SAID.
it’s very literally one of, if not the most, complex geopolitical situations of all time.
Like, I’m racking my brains trying to think of one of equal complexity, but I’m coming up blank. Though some of the geo-political situations in parts of the Caucasus and Central Africa are extremely challenging, but then, I haven’t spent more than a decade studying parts of those histories.
*points* this is why I’m being pretty quiet right now, because this situation is quite fucked up enough without trying to stick my dick in it, too.
I make one exception, which is to flip off the British–because the mess surrounding the Balfour Declaration, in which within three fucking years the British promised the region to both Arab-nationalist groups within Palestine and to Jews and also, secretly, declared its own control over the area while partitioning up the Ottoman Empire with France. At no point did it actually tell any of these parties what they were doing or communicate directly about any of the others. Essentially, what it did was lie to Arab nationalist groups about its intentions to hand the region over to them in exchange for WWI support, secretly claim to a peer and ally that it intended to retain control over the region, and then seize on the area as a great place to stick all those inconvenient Jews without having to, like, keep or aid any of them itself.
I cannot emphasize enough how incredibly at fault the British Empire is for huge swathes of this mess as it relates directly to Palestine. (I also cannot emphasize enough how much the British Empire lying to other groups in similar ways when it was convenient to themselves outright created helpful little imbroglios like the Rwandan genocide later on. And that was in a region where there weren’t hugely long-standing conflicts or massive bad feelings between various parties before the British Empire swanned on in.)
It’s not so much that that fixes things now, you understand. It’s not as if England the UK has exactly covered itself in geopolitical glory in the subsequent century or anything. But while we’re arguing about who is colonializing whom and why, I do think it is incredibly important to understand and recognize that there is in fact a single group who took this incredible powderkeg of a situation and made it unspeakably worse as a direct function of their colonialist interests and project, and I think we should also be keeping that in mind. Decolonialization doesn’t mean that we all just immediately forget about previous colonial occupation and let the literal colonial powers get off without comment.
(Also to the influence of American Dominionist conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists making absolutely everything worse in perpetuity, because it suits their apocalyptic vision of heavenly rapture to see Jews entangled in perpetual war in the Middle East. I am not joking about this, and this group has also been directly inflaming tensions in the region for decades.)
You know how they say, in a chaotic, tense situation, look for the helpers to understand what to do? Well, I think it is fair to insist that anyone who wants to declare the obvious answer to Israel/Palestine relations also look for the harm sources closer to home and start interrogating what we intend to do about those, too. If the solution to Israel and Palestine is so easy and clear, surely resolving Dominionist theology and its direct impacts at home should be equally clear and obvious. Right? Right?
The Invisible Pressure: Asexuality, Relationships, and Consent
There is an insidious, quiet violence that asexual people, particularly sex-repulsed aces, are subjected to in relationships. It’s not loud. It doesn’t always look like abuse. Sometimes, it’s dressed up in the language of “compromise”. Sometimes, it’s even endorsed by therapists and relationship “experts.”
But at the root of it is this one idea: That sex is the cornerstone of every valid relationship. That if you don’t want sex, something is wrong with you. That your partner is entitled to sex. That you, as an asexual person, owe it to them because that’s “just how relationships work.”
Asexual people are constantly navigating a world that tells us our love is incomplete unless it includes sex. That our boundaries are just hurdles to be negotiated. And that if we’re not careful, we’ll be the one accused of being selfish or withholding.
And the truth is, this pressure doesn’t only happen in unhealthy relationships. It can exist even in good ones. Even in the ones where your partner is kind and respectful and never once demands anything of you. Even when your partner is loving, patient, supportive—the ideal partner. The pressure doesn’t just vanish because the person next to you is good. Because the pressure isn’t coming from them: it’s coming from the world around you.
So even in the safest relationships, we still carry that fear. That if we say no too often, too permanently, we’ll eventually be left behind—not because our partner is cruel, but because we were never what society told them to want. And that’s what makes the pressure so hard to name, so hard to fight. So easy to internalize.
Then, even the most well-meaning conversations about consent often fail us. Why? Because while people are taught to respect a “no” in the moment, there’s still the underlying assumption that “no” is temporary. That eventually, we’ll change our minds. That if someone is patient, kind, persistent enough—we’ll come around. But some of us don’t. Some of us never want sex. Not now. Not later. Not eventually. And the idea that permanent or indefinite boundaries are abnormal is what pushes so many asexual people into violating their own comfort to meet someone else’s expectations.
It’s a form of slow coercion, cloaked in the language of compromise.
And when asexual people bring this into therapy—when we try to advocate for ourselves—we’re often met with therapists who have internalized the same cultural script. A script that says “sex is a need and part of a healthy relationship”. We’re encouraged to meet halfway.
But “halfway” always seems to mean giving up your boundaries to preserve the relationship.
Where is the room for our needs? For the idea that sex is not an automatic default but a choice, one that should never be coerced—whether overtly or through guilt, shame, or the threat of abandonment?
Too often, asexual people are pressured into saying yes to things we don’t want. Not because we’re comfortable with it. Not because our desires have changed. But because we’re terrified of being left. Because we’ve been taught that we’re the broken one. That we’re the reason the relationship is “failing.”
We are not broken. We are not selfish. And sex is not the sole measure of love, intimacy, or commitment. A relationship without sex is still a real relationship.
Consent only means something when it includes the possibility of permanent, indefinite boundaries. If “no” isn’t allowed to be forever, it was never truly respected to begin with.
a trend ive noticed a lot ever since the boom in antizionism’s popularity is that if anything ever happens to align with israeli interests, it’s immediately part of a conspiracy in which the israelis manipulated X into doing their dirty work for them. i’ve seen this a lot in how american and british antizionists blame israel for america invading iraq after 9/11, despite sharon advising bush against it, because bibi happened to be in favor of it. trump cracking down on student protestors who are non-citizens was also treated like israel’s doing despite this being something trump planned on doing from the get go. now ppl are blaming israel for civil unrest and protests in iran because israel is also against iran’s current leadership so surely this must be their fault!!!
Only Israel has agency; everyone else is incapable of making decisions or having ideas.
Anyone who dares to speak out against islamofaschist dictatorships?
100% certified mossad agent.
Or a cyborg reptilian bee, according to detective Crusty Owens’ nightly inception-investigation.
Like Goldie Ghamari said: “I’m mossad, you are mossad, we all are mossad…”
So don’t listen to Iranian women who have been risking their life to speak out against Khomeini for years, no no no…
Listen to Cucker Qatarson, Chunky Yoghurt and Dhimmi Kasparian, they know so much better than the actual people of Iran…
i just want to say something to non-jewish allies. yes. it is shocking and terrifying to see this rise in antisemitism in real time, to finally understand how people turned on jews. i really appreciate that you understand that now.
however, i want you to think about it in this sort of perspective: i grew up hearing about how my great grandparents had to escape the pogroms as refugees. i grew up knowing what the shoah was. and i truly thought, yes, here in modern day america, i would be safe and people wouldn’t abandon me for being a jew. but still. in the back of my head i knew.
in high school, all my friends knew i was jewish. my bullies also knew i was jewish. i graduated a few months before the october 7th attack. i remember that day very well. it was so fucking shocking and i couldnt stop looking. i had grown up knowing people did these things to us, and yet. it fundamentally changed me as a person. it felt like i had seen this before. it felt like i was seeing exactly what my great grandfather saw before he hid away in a wagon and escaped to america. i felt like i was reliving my ancestors memories. because it was so fucking familiar. it was traumatic for me, even here in america. (i do not say this to take away from people who actually experienced the attack.)
and then there was the silence. the fact that nobody even reached out to my family to see if we were okay. the fact that not one of my friends from high school even CONSIDERED asking me if i was okay. the fact i was expected to go on with my life. and i did. i took a gap year, worked a minimum wage retail job, read books and thought a lot about life. but i still think about it every day. i think about the fact that not even 12 hours after the attack began, there were people in my home state organizing protests in support of the group who just murdered 1200 of my people.
how are you supposed to go on like that? knowing that people CELEBRATE when your family members are slaughtered and kidnapped?
the violence was expected. the support of it was not. it was jarring and terrible. and yet it felt so familiar to me. ive been here before. ive seen this before. these memories are embedded in me.
i want you to think about what its like to read through over a thousand names to make sure none of them are people you know. and i want you to know, i felt zero relief knowing none of my family was killed. because it felt like every one of those names was my family. these people were my family. my tribe. my people. some of them were the friends or parents or cousins of people i grew up with, of extended family. but it doesnt matter. we feel these things as a community.
the pure loneliness and helplessness i felt was crushing. not just because people were celebrating the deaths of my people. not just because they were murdering and assaulting jews all over the world. but because i knew that this was not new. i have been here before. we have been here before. it was not just hatred and isolation and fear. this was my very real life-long fears, my parents’ very real life-long fears, their parents’, and then their parents’ parents’ lived experiences.
this was getting to experience the thing i feared. i knew they would turn on me and they did. i cry about it a lot.
we want to feel safe in this world, and yet, we don’t. we’re told to go back to where we came from, but when we do, we’re told to leave, to go back to poland, where they killed 90% of their jews. we’re told that we deserve to be massacred because we want safety. because we want to finally be free from oppressive and horrific treatment in nearly every place we go. we are villainized for wanting to be seen as real people rather than poor, helpless little political tokens. they universalize our tragedies and then say we are overreacting about said tragedies. our pain is not real to them. it is simply a metaphor. they excuse all the horrific, violent, humiliating, isolating, treatment towards us. they always find a reason to say we deserve it. they say we should learn a lesson from it.
and god forbid we tell them that we’re sick of it.
so to the start of this post. non-jewish allies, i really, truly appreciate you and the fact you are willing to stand with us, despite us being a tiny minority. you are brave to put yourself out there. to even associate with us. but we are so tired, so, so tired. this is what we experience every single generation. these are things we are hypervigilant about. we tell people what’s happening when we start to see the signs. i want more people to listen.
please, check in on the jewish people in your life when terrible things are happening. work to root out antisemitism in your community. educate people in your life who spread misinformation. we cannot stop this hatred alone.
sorry if this is lame and incoherent i hope it makes sense. im just. so exhausted.
There is no point of disability where everyone takes you seriously. There is no right way to be disabled. You will always be accused of “not being disabled enough”, “not really being disabled”, or “being so disabled you can’t expect to count as a person”. Kill the idea that if only you were disabled like that instead of like this, you wouldn’t be facing ableism. None of us actually have it easy.
