It's that time of year again

At that grad school happy hour, where I toasted everyone "l'chaim" and that Trevor jackass smirked at me and toasted "Free Palestine," he didn't see a Jewish woman bringing warmth from her own culture into a social event. He saw a Jew saying something in Hebrew, and therefore declaring her allegiance to the state of Israel. He saw an agent of the Israel state-building project, and took it as his sacred duty to let me know that he saw through me.

When I posted something here about my research on Jewish resistance during the Holocaust and someone replied AND NOW YOU'RE DOING IT IN GAZA. They didn't see an American Jewish woman posting about her research. They saw an agent of the Israeli state-building project, deftly molding Holocaust memory into an instrument of political repression to be wielded against Levantine Arabs.

When someone posted on the substitute teachers subreddit about a student doodling a swastika on their desk, and Jewish users in the comment started talking about their family's experiences in the Holocaust, someone commented GEE I CAN'T WAIT TIL GAZANS ARE POSTING ABOUT SURVIVING THE CAMPS. I asked them a. why on earth they felt that Gaza was relevant to Jews discussing their generational trauma; and b. what they were hoping to accomplish with said comment. In return I was verbally abused by multiple commenters who clearly felt that they held the obvious moral high ground, subjected to 102-level anti-Jewish speech, downvoted, and banned. Because they didn't see Jews engaging in collective mourning and healing. They saw agents of the Zionist state-building project making up reasons to ignore and speak over Palestinian pain and suffering.

In none of those circumstances was I, were we, simply random Jews existing in the world. We were first and foremost, inherently, Zionists. Everything we do or say in English or Hebrew or any language about our family history, or the Holocaust marks us in the minds of these people as simply and completely agents of the Israeli State. Evil, hiveminded Jews, secret Elders of Zion, who will stop at nothing to forge their past into a bomb with which to terrorize Palestinian civilians.

We could never simply be individuals, each with our own unique, complex, multi-faceted understanding of those geopolitics and political appropriations of memory. No. We are Jews. Our existence is inherently political. And in the eyes of most of the world, we are--and always have been--guilty.

all of this said, i would choose the company of these assholes over Christo-Zionist MAGAts who pretend to care about anti-Semitism any day of the week.

From

ALT

In Prince's funky name, amen.