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allbark-no-bite · 1 year

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This is Real Life || Rafe Cameron x reader

summary: the kook princess comes home from college with a new boyfriend and Rafe isn’t happy about it. unfortunately, he isn’t in the position to tell her what to do

warnings: 18+ smut, foul language, unprotected sex, slight mention of underage sex

word count: 3.8k

author’s note: this contains NO SPOILERS for season 3! y’all i have had this in the drafts for a year and couldn’t finish it. i was quickly motivated by the release of season three. i actually have some more OBX stuff on wattpad that i hope to transfer over if this gets some attention :)

It was feral really, their relationship. What else was to be expected of Ward Cameron's only son and the kook princess? But for the record, she preferred the term bastard. Born the illegitimate child of the second wealthiest man in the Outer Banks, she could go by whatever she wanted and people would still be besotted—albeit wary—by the name.

She was exactly the type of drug Rafe Cameron couldn't resist time and time again. Better than anything Barry could ever try to sell him. One taste and now he gets an itch for her worse than cocaine. Midsummers made this temptation all the more unbearable. Liable to her father's heavy name, she'd be inclined for the occasion to put on some kind of obscenely form fitting dress that left little to the imagination and Rafe intoxicated by the sight all night.

It's a toxic green color, and by toxic he means the dark teal accents her sun kissed skin and dark hair perfectly. She'd dyed it black two summers ago before leaving for college, and it had yet to return to its natural fair brown. He's sure she did it just to spite him. Rafe had always preferred blondes. But damn did it look good on her. Shamelessly, his eyes drink her in as she flashes a pearly smile at the bartender taking her order.

Unfortunately, he also then catches sight of the guy standing next to her. He's a tall, brute of a man with large shoulders, a perfect nose, and sickening puppy dog like eyes. From the looks of him, he's undoubtedly one too many years her senior. Despite that, it's obvious that he's not the one in charge. Rafe watches as the older man hovers around her. He's confident in the way he carries himself, but Rafe can see how he moves around her with an air of caution, like he knows she's going to bite him if he gets too close. This observation leads him to his next point; the guy is not her type and Rafe knows it.

She met Armand nearly a year ago through a friend of a friend. He had returned to university from Europe to continue his studies with the leisure that his comfortable home life in a wealthy, two parent household provided him. While the six year age gap certainly raised eyebrows —specifically those of friends of her father's— it's not the reason she was uninterested in him.

Armand was the product of fine European breeding and the maturity that came with age. He spoke astutely and with confidence. He also had an unlimited amount of patience. And while it was nice to be indulged by his attentiveness every so often, it became quite boring if she was being honest. Armand was the type of guy one would bring home to meet their family, a quality that she had very little interest in.

Her eyes catch Rafe's from across the country club bar, and she immediately looks away. Instead she sweetly asks Armie, as she calls him, to get her another glass of champagne — her current one had gone warm. She pretends that she doesn't see him sidling up to her until he's standing right behind her.

Rafe has to hide his smile, licking his lips to wet them. After all these years, he's quite used to the games she plays. She makes him wait a few more seconds before she turns around, her exposed back pressing against the bar as she faces him. Her eyes first travel slowly down his body, coming about as close as one can to undressing a person without actually touching them, and only then returning to his face.

"What are you doing here, Cameron?"

They both know what she means is 'what are you doing in my face' and not 'what are you doing at Midsummers'.

Catching the message that she's not in the mood for any sort of shit answer he could give her about his required attendance at Midsummers, Rafe shrugs casually, rolling his expensive suit clad shoulders. His thumb drags across the smooth plane of his jawline, moving downwards and catching along his bottom lip.

"Heard you looked good in a sundress," he suggests, still trying to maintain an air of nonchalant indifference. He wants to know if her golden skin still tastes how he remembers it.

She rolls her eyes as a lazy, taunting smirk appears on his face. Before she can reply, Rafe saunters closer, practically eliminating the distance between them and blocking her against the bar. His face is close enough to her cheek that she can feel his hot breath as he wets his lips.

"Heard you looked good undressed."

Her expression remains unchanged, not bothered by his forwardness. "Would you let my brother hear those words come out your mouth?" She eyes him knowingly, feigning concern. "Wouldn't want to mess up your pretty face again."

The word 'brother' is synonymous to a warning to Rafe and immediately he glances sideways. Around them, residents of Figure Eight chatter and happily sip champagne. No one is paying the pair at the bar any mind. It is likely that no one has noticed them yet. Usually just the sight of the pair together is enough to draw a couple of stares.

When Malcolm Coors doesn't materialize from the crowd, Rafe's sharp blue eyes settle back on her. “Real funny," he sneers.

She has no shame in admitting she gets a little kick out of Rafe's fear of her brother. The two boys had graduated together a year before her, and she still remembers the pair of them being intentionally separated despite alphabetical order as they walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. Malcolm had been sporting a broken nose at the time and Rafe his own nasty looking black eye.

She smiles, enjoying his irritation. While she would like to bask in the fact that it looks like he's still licking his wounds after the past couple years, they need to get to the point before Malcolm does find them.

Rafe nods his chin over towards the unsuspecting back of her European rendezvous as he chatters amiably with the bartender. Rafe wants to swing a golf club through his perfect teeth. "How do you know this guy?"

She shrugs, playing at indifference. "Your inconsistency introduced us."

They haven't talked since before she blocked his number, which was over a year ago. The interaction wasn't exactly civil either. He specifically remembers screaming through the phone at some ungodly hour of the night and ending the call when she finally hung up on him by hurling his phone against the wall. Thankfully his parents had overheard the conversation and already assumed what all the noise was.

Biting back the urge to argue that he's not the one playing the hot and cold game, he persists "A bit old for you, don't you think?"

Her eyes don't follow Rafe's, which she knows are staring daggers at Armand. "You missed me," she points out.

Rafe sucks his tongue across the front of his teeth as an act of stalling, his expression becoming fed up and annoyed. Getting answers out of her has always been like pulling teeth. She doesn't want to play nice? Fine.

"Daddy doesn't have some billionaire's trust fund baby lined up for you?"

Her black lined eyes narrow. He levels his cool gaze with her. Oh he went there.

"Unlike you, my father has no say in my personal life." She's never referred to the man who sired her as anything other than her 'father'. It's the socially acceptable way of saying 'he's a bastard and I hate him'. "Besides, old money doesn't entice me, Cameron."

"Yeah?" he scoffs. Rafe leans in, murmuring softly into her ear. "That's not what you said what I was inside of you."

Her face flashes hot, and it's the first chip in her armor he has seen all night.

"I was seventeen. A minor, Rafe. You could go to jail for that," she snaps.

He smiles, cocking his head in a manner that says he isn't all that worried about his chances of going to jail. "You always act like I took advantage of you. Sweetheart, even if you hadn't begged me to screw you, we both know there's nothing you could have done to stop me."

It's her turn to scoff. "Am I suppose to thank you? You don't get an award for not being a fucking predator." She spits out the last part, and it causes a few heads to turn in their direction.

Among those heads, Rafe notices the blonde one of Malcolm; aka his sign that he needs to excuse himself. "Bitch," he mutters as he shoves past her.

She catches his arm before he can get too far. "Bathroom. Ten minutes.”

It is actually a grand total of twenty minutes before she finds Rafe in the small guest bathroom. Armie had remained glue to her side for another fifteen minutes and even after she managed to escape him, she was stopped by multiple friends of her father’s, asking how college was going and whatnot.

Nevertheless, Rafe waits for her. Each minute after ten, he promised himself he wouldn’t wait another, but the truth is he would have waited all night.

“Fuck. I’ve been thinking about this dress all damn night,” Rafe groans, grabbing a handful of her green velvet covered ass. His other hand is around her chin, guiding her mouth so that he can kiss her against the wall. Their mouths collide so bruisingly that for a moment he considers if he’s just broken his nose. Rafe doesn’t dwell on the possibility for too long because he’s been achingly hard for over twenty minute now and he won’t make it one more without coming in his pants. There’s only one place he’s coming tonight and it’s inside of her.

“I knew you were always a perv, Cameron,” she huffs out as he pulls away from the kiss to unbuckle his slacks and pull down his boxers. The length of him springs out against his stomach. Just looking at the size of him makes her legs shake. Much to her disappointment, he’s forcing her around, hips pressed against the counter before she can ogle at the sight of him for long.

Rafe slips into her as though it were a well practiced move and not something he hasn’t done in over a year. He still knows his way around her body.

She nearly yelps in surprise at the sudden intrusion. “Jesus—”

“Shut up,” he snaps, breathing hard. Just the feeling of her around him is enough to make him spill right now and he’s trying to hold on a while longer. Stomach burning with the effort of not coming, he bucks, just once to satiate himself, into her. The feeling is overwhelming.

Not pleased with his sudden lack of performance, she consciously clenches around him. “Are you going to fuck me or what because I’m sure Armie—”

Rafe cuts her off by drilling his hips back into her once more, this time much more forcefully, and her pelvis hits the counter. That is going to bruise. Rafe grabs a fist full of her dark hair. “I’m going to fuck you so good you forget his goddamn name. I don’t want to hear it again. You hear me?”

Eyes locked with his in the mirror, she nods quickly, desperate to let him have his way with her. “Fuck. Yeah, Rafe. Please just fuck me.”

Without wasting anymore time adjusting to the feel of her, Rafe begins thrusting his hips rhythmically at a ridiculous pace. The hot heat of her seems to suck him back in each time and he wonders if she’s like this for him. Armand. By the way she’s panting, moaning against the counter, he would say no.

As weird of a thing that it is to say, there are people who are good at sex, and then there are people who are great at sex. Rafe is one of those people. She’s never been with another guy who fucks her like Rafe does. It’s raw and filthy and animalistic.

Just when she think he’s as deep as he can be, he shuffles a bit, readjusting himself to get a better angle and hit a spot inside of her that tears a cry from her throat.

“Oh fuck— Please, Rafe. That’s it. That’s enough. I can’t—” When she starts begging for him to stop is when he knows she’s close. She’s always been too prideful to tell him when she’s close and it pisses him off to no end. He slows his pounding to get in a few more drawn out thrusts. The head of him catches inside of her and she cries at the sensation.

“There you go, there you go,” he groans, finding the breath to encourage her to finish as he struggles to control himself. “Feel me? Atta girl, you’re right there. Right there, baby.”

Crying out a moan, her head falls back as she orgasms, her walls fluttering in protest around him. The shock last for several long seconds throughout her entire body, and she contemplates if she’s ever going to be satisfied by another orgasm ever again. Even after, the electric buzzing sensation remains, and she remembers that Rafe is still throbbing inside of her.

Without warning, he thrusts into her a couple more times before finding his own orgasm. With his nose pressed into her hair, mouth right next to her ear, Rafe moans as he releases inside of her, and he hears her breath hitch at the sound. As if he needed proof of the fiery ball that had been pent up in his stomach all evening, he spills and spills and spill inside of her. It leaves him trembling by the time he’s done.

“Fuck,” he groans.

“Fuck,” she repeats, humoring him. He almost laughs but he doesn’t think he had the energy left for it.

Slowly moving again, the noise that his dick makes fucking into her, his cum dripping out is obscene, but he wants to savor the hot mess of her around him for as long as he can.

Smugly, he catches her gaze in the mirror, watching himself move in and out of her. The mascara under her eyes is smudged, making her searing gaze all that much darker. Rafe thinks she always looks perfect no matter what. He does have a bias towards ‘freshly fucked’ though.

As much as he would like to remain pressed against her —and in her— he knows she’ll only tolerate him for so long. So with a final sigh, he presses a prolonged and affectionate kiss to her hair and pulls out of her. As she fixes her dress, he tucks his still-leaking dick back into his boxers, pulls up his pants and watches her walk out the bathroom without a word. Rafe waits a respectful few minutes after her to make his exit.

Feeling truly fucked out, no pun intended, he heads over to the bar, where he spots her with her boyfriend, his arm wrapped low around her waist as he kisses her cheek. He needs a fucking drink, he thinks. And then, probably something stronger.

—

There are very few things that can rouse her from the dead sleep that she gets in her childhood bedroom. Coming home to the plush baby blue comforter that covers her perfectly made bed is like downing a handful of melatonin gummies after sleeping on a crummy twin mattress for nine months. Despite this usually holding true, Armie is the only one dead asleep beside her.

'I’m going to fuck you so good you forget his goddamn name.' The memory keeps replaying in her head. The perfect infliction of his voice down to the scent of him as he leaned in is marred into her memory. He still wears the same cologne.

Without warning, her phone on the bedside table blares to life, ringing loudly, and the bright screen illuminates the mostly dark bedroom. Scrambling to shut it off before the commotion wakes Armie up, her immediate response is to swipe the answer button.

"Hello?" she asks, her voice hushed, into the phone.

"I need you, (y/n)."

Rafe's voice transfers crystal clear through the receiver, like he's not even trying to be quiet.

"Rafe?" Cupping her hand over the speaker and pressing the device closer to her ear, her eyebrows furrow as she hurriedly swings her legs over the side of the bed and quickly tiptoes out into the hall."Rafe?" she asks, this time louder now that Armie can't hear her. "Are you fucking cra—"

"I—I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I— fuck, (y/n). I just—" He's rambling, his smooth as honey voice much thicker than usual and notably less precise. He sniffs, loudly.

She sighs as he tries to collect himself over the line, mumbling and stuttering. "Why do you only call me when you're high, Cameron? I mean, seriously?" This is not the first time he's phoned her in the middle of the night, high out of his mind.

Rubbing her hand over her eyes, she checks the clock on the wall. It's well past 3 am. There's a slim chance she will even get any sleep at this point.

"Listen, (y/n). I–I just—"

"No, you listen," she snaps, cutting him off. "You'd better be at your house when I get there or else. Got it?"

She can hear him swallow over the phone and something crashes to the floor. "Yeah— I— yeah, I will. I will."

"Okay, bye."

"Bye."

It helps that the Cameron's live only a few houses down. In reality, no one lives very far from anyone in the Outer Banks. Figure Eight is only a bike ride away from the Cut.

With the majority of the Cameron household likely asleep, and not caring to wake up Ward, she walks in without knocking. She'd never knocked before and wasn't about to make a habit of it now. Creeping slowly through the entryway, her sneakers echo loudly on the pristine tile floor. She knows this house like the back of her hand and therefore has no difficulty in navigating it in the dark. Around her, the house is still.

"Ra—" A hand clamps around her mouth from behind, effectively cutting of her startled shriek. Shoving his heavy body off of her, she whirls around to face him. "What are you doing?" she whispers loudly, shoving his hands away.

"I didn't want to scare you," Rafe defends, his blue eyes shining even in the darkness.

Shoving him once more in the chest, hard for good measure, she moves past him into the kitchen and flips the light on. Now that she can actually see, she steps back to take him in.

His pupils are blown, leaving very little of the blue of his eyes distinguishable. The suit jacket from earlier in the evening is gone, but everything else, from his dress shoes to the the white button up shirt underneath remain. Half of the top buttons of his shirt are open, revealing the golden skin of his chest. Nervously, he rubs at the back of his neck, where the short crop of his buzz cut fades.

"(y/n), I—," Rafe begins, stepping towards her.

"Shut up, Rafe."

His head fogged with the determination to get her to just listen to him, he ignores her instruction. "C'mon, baby. I just—"

"Shut up, Rafe," she repeats, sterner this time. She knows his head is not in the right place at the moment, and he needs to get it together if they're going to have this conversation.

"I need—"

"I said shut up!"

Finally something must reach the inside of that thick skull of his and Rafe immediately clamps his jaw shut. Now silent other than his heavy breathing, his big doe eyes watch her attentively.

She stares at him for a moment, using the quiet to gather her thoughts. Seeing him like this tears her up a little inside and it’s hard to find the right words to say to him. Sure, she treats him like shit most of the time, but that’s because it’s like second nature to the two of them. Fucking is the only thing they’re both good at.

She knows somewhere behind his drug induced haze, he’s really just a scared little kid. Most people take one look at Rafe and assume he’s just another screw up, destined to end up mooching off the Cameron family inheritance for the rest of his life. But she knows deep down that he has it in him to be better.

“You gotta stop, Rafe.” That’s the most honest and genuine sentence she’s spoken to him in a year. “This is not some prodigal son fairytale where you just get to walk away from it all when you decide to get your shit together. This is real life.” Her voice has risen towards the end and his already glossy eyes look wet.

Rafe can count on one hand the number of times he’s cried in his life, especially in front of someone else. His emotions tend to teeter from slightly cocksure to overwhelming rage without much of a grey area. But right now his throat feels tight and his eyes burn and he’s coming pretty damn close. And maybe it’s from the coke he snorted earlier but even that’s starting to wear off. He knows because his head isn’t swimming anymore and his eyeballs don’t feel like they’re rolling around in their sockets.

Fighting the swell of emotion that is threatening to erupt out of his chest, he looks up, tongue pressed into the inside of his cheek, suddenly not wanting to look in her eyes. Rafe finally nods, sniffing hard while he gathers himself. “I know,” he whispers, the noise barley even audible.

Still nodding to himself, he settles his gaze back on her. “And I know you think that this is the cocaine talking, but I promise you it’s not. I mean it when I say I need you.” Timidly, he paces towards her from across the kitchen. “I—I need your help. I need you. I—”

While he continues to ramble, she hushes him as he rests his chin in the crook of her neck. One hand cups the back of his head while the other rubs his shoulder through the soft cotton of his shirt. “Okay. You’re okay,” she murmurs into his ear, still holding onto him as he sinks to his knees on the kitchen floor. He’s tall enough that his head meets the middle of her stomach even on the floor.

Rafe can’t recall the last time anyone has held him so carefully before. But he does know that it feels wildly more intimate than any sort of sex they’ve ever had. Drowsy with relief and crashing from his high, he almost asks her if she loves him. It would be so easy to breathe the words, but instead he closes his eyes and lets her hold him a while longer.

#rafe x y/n #rafe cameron #rafe x reader #rafe outer banks #rafe cameron x reader #rafe imagine #rafe cameron smut #rafe smut #outer banks #obx smut #obx3 #obx imagine #obx x reader

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goldentemplariumcrow · 9 months

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As a stationery and fountain pen affictionada...

This. Still. Makes. Me. Laugh.

Let me explain why:

Look at how Tim is holding the pen. Stylistic choice or not, that grip means he's putting pressure on the pen. That he's heavy handing his writing.

Now look at the pen. That's a fountain pen. Fountain pens work through combined capillary and gravity action that makes the ink flow down to the nib naturally when the pen is in writing position and in contact with a writing surface; which is, depending on the model, between 45° and 60° angle in the vast majority of the cases.

Most fountain pens aren't made to sustain heavy hand writers. In fact, a great number of them is used to correct the grip, angle, muscle memory and heaviness of a person's handwriting style, since the simple act of touching the nib on paper easily makes the ink come out.

Now, look at Damian's implied facial expression and body language. Yes, we can all shrug it's just his rivalry with Tim that makes him react like that, it's a perfectly reasonable way to explain it all. However, for a fountain pen affictionado, for someone who loves fine writing instruments, that right there is a sentence of death.

Damian isn't just seeing Tim use his pen. He's seeing Tim, a person who couldn't care less for the writing tools he's using, obliterate the tines by placing way too much force on them. He's horrified of his favorite writing instrument being damaged by Tim's disregard with it, which is the most common reaction ever when any fountain pen lover sees their favorite pen being held and used by another person without their authorization.

Damian isn't overreacting at all.

The fountain pen community can confirm it.

[EDIT]

I know it's no ones concern, but as a lover of fountain pens, I kind of had to give a huge zoom-in in a version of this that isn't as pixelated and... guys, I think I know which fountain pen is this!

I may be wrong, but I think that's a Lamy Safari Black Charcoal model!

In the comic we can't see the window or the triangular grip very well (I can kind of see a shadow of the triangular shape, but I'm not calling it without being certain) and it looks a bit chonkier, but look at that cap! That minimalist cap with the sturdy yet simple, black clip and small gap on the top of the cap! That's a cap for a Lamy Safari model if I ever saw one!

Yes, maybe it can be some other fancier and more expensive brand, most Lamy's I've seen are between 30-60USD with special collections being a little closer to the 80USD mark on really expensive shops online, but let me make an argument for it.

A Lamy Safari fountain is considered a popular workhorse among affictionados and artists alike. Not only it's reliable, with a simple yet stylish body and construct that serves to pretty much every occasion, its construct is simple in terms of maintainance and handling. Want to go travel on a plane? No problem, take the cartridges with you! Prefer bottle ink? Not a problem at all, here's the converter for all your bottled ink needs! Oh, the standard medium nib isn't to your liking? Let's find one that you enjoy, there's European extra fine (0.38) to broad, stub, italic and even for writing musical score! Still not enough? Hey, there are many manufacturers that make their own customized nibs for a fair price, maybe give them a try? And the best part? The nibs aren't so expensive that you're breaking the bank with them, so if you break one you can get another with relative ease.

This sweet pen is a monster at work 24/7. No wonder it's a popular model among beginners and long term users and lover of fountain pens. They're just that good.

#damian wayne #damian al ghul #tim drake #robin #red robin #fountain pen #stationery

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opencommunion · 8 months

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Palestinians from several of the displaced communities described the same pattern to +972: Israeli settlers arrive with their herds and prevent them from grazing on land where Palestinians have grazed for decades; then armed settlers would proceed to harass them day and night, even entering houses, without the army or police intervening. Everyone described the same, overwhelming feelings of fear and distress under the shadow of these settler invasions. “It’s like 1948,” said Mohammed Hussein, a resident of Ein Samia — invoking the year of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland during Israel’s establishment. According to the Palestinian residents, the situation grew worse following the establishment and growth of several grazing settler outposts in the area in recent years; settler violence and further expansion also noticeably escalated since the current Israeli government, led by extremist far-right parties, was sworn in last December. ... The Israeli authorities, along with the settlers, have played a central role in the displacement. For years, the occupation apparatus has banned the Palestinian communities from construction; demolished their homes; denied them connection to water and electricity; stopped them from paving roads; issued demolition orders for schools built with funds from the European Union; established and recognized Jewish settlements; and, of course, stood by during settler violence. ... “We have always been under occupation, in a prison with checkpoints, but now we live in a prison van,” said Ali Abu al-Kabash, 60, sitting in a tent he had set up in an open area across the Allon Road. Abu al-Kabash, who is originally from a-Samu, near Hebron, moved to the Ramallah area in the 1980s, and to the area near Ras a-Tin in 1995. “Before the [last] election, the settlers would run away if there were a few of us [facing them]. Today, they attack because the government is with them. The police, the army, and the Shin Bet are all with them,” he added. “For 25 years we lived a normal life,” Abu al-Kabash continued. “In recent years, the settlers came and established two outposts [Micah’s Farm and Malachei HaShalom]. They blocked the road between us and Ein al-Rashash, and the one that goes down toward Fasayil. We would herd in the area, but they came to us in the name of the government and the Civil Administration and said that the land belongs to the settlers. They brought sheep to eat the food we grew for our sheep … They enter houses, sometimes with many soldiers, taking photos, even when there are girls, women, and old men present.” According to Abu al-Kabash, the violence increased after the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr in May. “They park at the entrance of the homes. Some of them are under 12 years old, under the age of criminal responsibility. They go in, look in the refrigerator, or at our phones. What can we do? They want Area C for Israel, to take control of the land through the settlers, but without war. But where will we go? The occupation is everywhere.” Ras a-Tin, which neighbors al-Qabun, was subjected to similar harassment and severe violence by settlers. On the day its residents fled, in July 2022, Ahmad Kaabna, the mukhtar of Ras a-Tin — who died suddenly in early August at age 60 — told a group of activists: “The settlers frightened the women, the children — everyone. They came to the homes at night in groups of 10-15 people … the army with them. If you talk to them and say ‘get away, get out of here,’ they call the army or the police, who come and arrest the young [Palestinians].”

#palestine #colonialism

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probablyasocialecologist · 7 months

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The concept of the new antisemitism was popularized in The New Anti-Semitism, which was published by the Anti-Defamation League in 1974, was given some modest intellectual heft by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis in his 1986 book Semites and Anti-Semites, and has since been mainstreamed in some “working definitions” of antisemitism, from that deployed by the European Union Military Committee to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s highly controversial definition. The thrust of the new antisemitism thesis is that Israeli military aggression was really self-defense and that solidarity toward Palestinians was really antisemitism. Thus the French essayist Alain Finkielkraut could describe 2002, when many people protested against Israel’s ravaging of the West Bank during Operation Defensive Shield, as a “Kristallyear”; four years later, Lewis compared the atmosphere resulting from Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006 to that of 1938. Those statements are functionally antisemitic. Most definitions of antisemitism, “working” or otherwise, agree that it is antisemitic to fail to distinguish between the state of Israel and Jews. It follows as surely as night follows day, that it is antisemitic to fail to distinguish between opposition to the state of Israel on internationalist, anti-colonial, and anti-racist grounds and hostility to the Jews as such. But Israel apologia depends precisely on obliterating the distinction between itself and Jews. Israel must represent itself, no matter how many Jewish people reject its embrace or protest against it, as “the state of the Jews,” the “Jew of nations,” the national self-defense of a people who could only exist elsewhere as a “foreign” element. That is what conservative politicians around the world are doing when they criminalize Palestine solidarity on the spurious basis of opposing antisemitism; that is what Britiain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is doing when he talks as if all Jews support Israel; that is what authorities in Berlin and France are doing when they ban Palestine protests. They may not be desecrating cemeteries or synagogues, but their logic is the same as that of some of those who do.

#israel #palestine #zionism #antisemitism

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hero-israel · 7 months

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What they said.

And I could have put another 4-6 similar messages in here, I can tell what is weighing on peoples' minds. Though we are outnumbered, it is not hard to see through the lies of our enemies. We just need people who will listen to us.

"Every accusation is a confession" was never more true than in claiming JEWS want to kill off ARABS. The briefest review of regional demographics - WHO has actually wiped out WHOM - makes that instantly clear. Mahmoud Abbas said his family fled their home in Safed in 1948 because they were sure the Jews would try to get revenge for Arab massacres in 1929. In 1967 when Israel took the West Bank, Arabs in Hebron were so afraid of reprisals for 1929 that they flew white bedsheets from their windows and piled their weapons outside their front doors.

There is no such thing as a "genocide" that is true for Palestinians but false for white people. And while most of the time, posting about hypocrisy and double standards isn't going to make a real-life change, this is one time where I'd really like people to point it out, to demand answers from those who correctly identify the Alt-Right as lying. We should also request clarification on whether all warfare involving urban bombing is automatically considered genocide (spoiler: it isn't, but this time Jews are involved, aha!).

Desmond Tutu was notorious for insisting Jews forgive the genocide that had actually been committed against them and also that they be constantly condemned and judged for the potential genocide they were always just about to commit. It is not even meant as a statement of fact - just a way to put us in our place. As David Schraub put it:

For thousands of years, for much of the world, part of the cultural patrimony enjoyed by all non-Jews -- spiritual and secular, Church and Mosque, enlightenment and romantic, European and Middle Eastern -- was the unquestionable right to stand superior over Jews. It was that right which the Holocaust took away, or at least called into question; the unthinking faith of knowing you were the more enlightened one, the spiritually purer one, the more rational one, the dispenser of morality rather than the object of it. To be sure, some people were better positioned to enjoy this right than others. And some people arrived onto the scene late in the game, only to discover that part of the bounty they were promised may no longer be on the table. Of course they're aggrieved! The European immigrant who never owned a slave but was at least promised racial superiority is quite resentful when the wages of Whiteness stop being what they once were. Similarly, persons who lived far from the centers of Christian or Muslim power where Jewish subordination was forged are nonetheless well aware of what was supposed to be included in modernity's gift basket. They recognize what they've "lost" as acutely as anyone else.

Every definition of "genocide" rests on intent; you cannot accidentally do it. That's what both the U.N., Genocide Watch, and basic common sense say. The militia going door-to-door to torture and massacre all the children and elderly is genocidal intent. "The missile launcher built into your house just fired at us, we will now destroy it, you have 5 minutes to evacuate" is not.

I have no idea what is coming next in Gaza, how long it will last or how bad it will get. Godforbid, if the death toll gets another zero at the end, it may become impossible to get people to see it as non-genocidal, regardless of what is empirically, definitionally true. But if people are going to cite sources and moral authorities, let them stick with the boundaries they have introduced.

#Genocide #Israel #Palestine #Palestinians #Gaza #jumblr #Arab antisemitism #leftist antisemitism

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eretzyisrael · 17 days

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by Bassam Tawil

[T]he Iran-backed Hamas terror group is again trying to dupe gullible Westerners, including the Biden administration and the European Union, into believing that it has accepted the "two-state solution."

The Hamas official would not have dared to utter similar nonsense to an Arab media outlet. He knows that here his lies are directed at English-speaking audiences, who tend to swallow whole the baloney spouted by Israel's enemies.

The Hamas official wants everyone to believe that his group is ready to stop killing Jews for a period of five years "or more" if it gets the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. He just forgot to mention that there was an official truce between Israel and Hamas until October 7, when the terror group Hamas initiated the current war.

The Hamas official also forgot to mention that Hamas has repeatedly violated several truces and ceasefire agreements reached with Israel over the past 17 years. The truces and ceasefires were always used by Hamas to regroup and rearm in preparation for the next round of attacking Israel.

Hamas will never abandon its weapons or dismantle its armed group, especially after the establishment of a Palestinian state

The mere talk about a Palestinian state these days is regarded as a reward for Hamas's genocidal assault on Israel. It sends the message to Hamas that after you murdered so many Jews, the international community will reward you by giving you a state. It reaffirms that terrorism works. Where do we sign up?

The secret that the AP and the US administration do not want you to know is that Hamas does not actually want the Gaza Strip or the West Bank or east Jerusalem. Hamas wants to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Iran-backed Islamist terror state.

If Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are given a state next to Israel, they will absolutely continue to pursue their goal of killing Jews and obliterating Israel. Hamas official Ghazi Hamad has clearly said that the terror group will repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated.

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has repeatedly clarified that his group's acceptance of a Palestinian state does not mean that it will abandon its goal of destroying Israel.

"The lines below are for the next person who comes to me with 'Hamas agreed to two state solution.' It DID NOT! Hamas outlines this scenario fully in its Charter as amended in 2017.... Hamas will likely then stock as much rockets and drones possible for the next round of war to destroy Israel.... Prophet Muhammad is said to have entered into a 10-year truce with the infidels. He conquered them a few years into the truce. Hamas imagines a similar scenario with Israel." — Hussain Abdul-Hussain, X, April 25, 2024.

Hamas is well aware of the credulity of the international community. It knows that it can engage in all forms of propaganda and win friends in the West. It also knows that the best vehicle to advance its goal of killing Jews and destroying Israel is a "two-state solution."

#hamas #iran #gullible westerners #biden administration #european union #gaza #israel

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fayoftheforest · 8 months

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vampire kyle & historic antisemitism

DISCLAIMER: this post is not intended to incite drama or discourse, I simply want to share my thoughts on a complex topic. Just because I’m Jewish does not mean I speak for the entire community. We’re not a monolith, there is great diversity of opinion among us, discussion and debate is a beloved part of our culture, etc etc :) ok on with the post!

But wait, Fay, I hear you interject. Vampires aren’t even real! How can they be sayin’ stuff about Jews? Well, my dear friends, I have some rather grave news for you: much of pop culture is Sayin’ Stuff About The Jews. And very little of it is positive :/

I’ll quote Jewish author Deke Moulton to establish the basic links between vampires and antisemitism:

The problem is tied to the conspiracy called the blood libel. If you’re not familiar with it, the blood libel started in Medieval Europe in the 12th century and claimed that Jewish people needed the blood of Christian children to make our Passover matzoh. For context, Jewish people are prohibited from consuming blood at all – we will salt kosher meat to draw out blood. Despite being very old and very wrong, the blood libel idea still persists today (albeit usually with slightly less obvious framing).

There is also a common trope of vampires operating through a secret, worldwide council that often governs ‘vampire affairs’ but also may dabble in controlling other aspects of the world’s governments. While some people can see a similarity to the Catholic Church, often times this calls upon the antisemitic trope of the ‘cabal’—that Jews secretly run the entire world (which is another strange antisemitic trope, as Judaism doesn’t have any central religious figure like the Pope). The word ‘cabal’ itself is a bastardization of the word kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism. If you combine this with a trope of vampires hoarding large amounts of money (especially gold?), you’re using yet another antisemitic trope that says Jewish people control the world’s banks.

Even things like being adverse to the sunlight can have antisemitic implications – the early Church claimed that, because in Judaism days start at sundown and thus our time of worship happens at night, that gathering at night to worship was proof of us being evil and satanic.

So, all vampires are bad and wrong, and vampire Kyle AUs are a hatecrime, and everyone who’s ever done one should go straight to jail, right?

Well. No.

Because really, it should be noted that this extract is from an interview on Moulton’s novel “Don’t Want To Be Your Monster,” a book which not only features blood-sucking vampires, but a blood-sucking Jewish vampire. Interesting, interesting... it's almost as if this topic is nuanced or something 🤔

Many iconic vampires are based on antisemitic stereotypes. Perhaps most famous is Dracula, with curly hair and a hooked nose, is an Eastern European immigrant who has the intentions of “infecting” British society. Another example is Nosferatu, who also has an exaggerated hooked nose, is thin, pale and hunched, and is topped by a skull cap. There are modern exceptions to this trend, though! Twilight comes to mind. Edward Cullen is far more inspired by Stephanie Meyer’s Mormonism than Judaism as a whole. Explained so aptly by The Quietus, “As vampiric portrayals become more positive, they tend to also become less connected to Jewish representation.” Come on, you guys >:( Jewishness can be hot and sexy too, I swear!!

From what I’ve seen of Vamp!Kyle AUs, portrayals tend to lean more towards the mysterious and alluring Cullen-type than the bad-to-the-bone Dracula. Ultimately, I think this is what redeems our fandom’s vampire Kyle. Because crucially, whilst vampires can be antisemitic, they are not innately antisemitic. When you show Kyle brooding behind his high-collars and flashing toothy grins at his love interest, it’s not typically symbolic of the ultimate evil that we are expected to fear and ridicule. It's intended to be cute, or cool, or hot, or whatever.

My advice is thus: if you want to make something deeper or complex with the AU, just have a think about what you’re using his vampiric traits to represent. Are you drawing from unfortunate stereotypes or feeding into antisemitic fears? Are you validating or justifying the “othering” or ostracisation of Jewish people from wider society? You could consider finding a Jewish beta/sensitivity reader, if that’s accessible to you. But generally speaking, so long as you’re not presenting Kyle as an all-powerful predator to pure, innocent Christian society, I reckon you’re probably alright :)

#south park #south park meta #sp kyle #kyle broflovski #vamp!kyle #vampire kyle #i took a long break from tumblr so posting a meta here after all this time is a bit scary haha!#if you enjoyed please let me know and maybe i'll post more stuff like this or smthn :)#cw antisemitism

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solarpunkwitchcraft · 27 days

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"When the British Empire occupied Palestine and set about implementing the Balfour declaration, the fossil fuel of the day was not coal. It was oil. Promising deposits had been located in the countries bordering the Persian Gulf, and the central industrial project of the Mandate came to be the pipeline that brought crude oil all the way from Iraq, across the northern West Bank and the Galilee, to the refinery of Haifa. The Mandate as such cannot be understood outside the deepening control over the region in the pursuit of oil; and the Mandate used oil to reallocate land from Palestinians to Jews. In his forthcoming Heat: A History, a wonderfully rich history of high temperatures and fossil fuels in the Middle East, On Barak shows, among many other things, how the Yishuv wrested citrus production from Palestinians by linking up with the most modern circuits of technology: irrigating their orchards with fossil-fuelled pumps, loading their fruits on lorries, sending them over roads to ports, offloading them onto steamers to the European market – a symbiosis with the fossil empire by which the natives could be squeezed out of their iconic citriculture. The Mandate authorities systematically privileged the building of roads between colonies. Oil-based infrastructure tilted Palestine in the direction of the settlements on the coastal plains and further towards their patrons on the other side of the ocean."

#free palestine #palestine #climate change #fossil fuels #colonialism #article

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catdotjpeg · 3 months

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On February 2nd, the Associated Press analyzed satellite imagery which showed “new demolition along a 1-kilometer-wide path on the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel.” The images, which revealed the recent destruction of Palestinian farmland, warehouses and other buildings, suggested that Israel had started creating what it has called a “buffer zone” in areas of Gaza adjoining the Israeli border, a project that Israeli leaders have been trying to pursue as part of their invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s October 7th attack. Israeli officials claim that such a step is necessary to allow residents of communities in the south of Israel to return to their homes without fear of another attack. “[All along] the Gaza Strip . . . we will have a margin. And they will not be able to get in,” Avi Dichter, Israel’s agriculture minister, told reporters on October 19th. “It will be a fire zone. And no matter who you are, you will never be able to come close to the Israeli border.”

For months, United States and European officials have repeatedly voiced opposition to the idea of Israel’s permanent militarized border zone within Gaza, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying in November that there should be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza” and “no reduction in the territory of Gaza”—both outcomes that would likely result from such a zone. But the AP’s analysis, coupled with other recent events, indicate that Israel is forging ahead with creating its “fire zone” despite such objections. Indeed, on January 23rd, Israeli soldiers in Gaza were actively laying mines in and around two buildings in central Gaza close to the border with Israel, intending to destroy them, when a grenade fired by a Palestinian militant caused the explosives to go off, killing 21 soldiers. In the aftermath of the attack, three Israeli officials anonymously told the New York Times Israel was demolishing the buildings to create a “security zone,” while an Israeli military spokesperson said the soldiers who had died were operating to “create the security conditions for the return of the residents of the south to their homes.”

Israel’s work on the zone comes amid widespread speculation about the future of Gaza after the eventual end of Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault, which has already killed at least 27,000 people. American, Arab, and Israeli officials have debated what comes next for the coastal enclave, with Western governments pushing for a revitalized Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza—which Israel opposes—and far-right Israeli ministers advocating to expel Palestinians from Gaza and build renewed Israeli settlements. Yet even as these policy discussions remain unresolved, Israel is unilaterally exerting control over Gaza’s post-war reality by constructing a militarized zone inside the enclave that materially shrinks the amount of Palestinian land while leaving open room for Israeli Jewish resettlement of the Strip. The strategy recalls Israel’s modus operandi in the West Bank, where Israel has built hundreds of settlements in order to create “facts on the ground” to entrench its control before the international community can do anything about it.

Current and former military officials portray the creation of a militarized Israeli zone inside Gaza as necessary to prevent another attack on southern Israeli communities near the border. “People coming back to their homes [in Israel] don’t want to see someone [in Gaza] take out a rifle or an anti-tank missile or come to the fence, cross it, and kill them,” said Jacob Nagel, a former national security advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative think tank that advocates for US intervention in the Middle East. “We have to show them that the area there is empty. Otherwise, it would be very tough for them to come back.” But Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza, said creating a so-called buffer zone through the demolition of Palestinian homes and neighborhoods will only fuel more violence. “In the areas that were systematically razed and wiped out, you’re giving people a very strong revenge incentive,” he said. “Israel is basically creating a recruitment poster [for Palestinian militant groups].” Indeed, the creation of the zone is likely to add to the list of Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza since October 7th. According to research by Corey Scher, a PhD student at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an associate professor of geography at Oregon State University, Israel has destroyed or damaged 143,900 structures throughout Gaza since October 7th, around 1,329 of which were in the proposed zone. Human rights experts have said that the destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure may constitute war crimes. And if the Israeli zone continues to be created, more such homes will likely be demolished. “If there are no concrete, direct security grounds for why these houses have to be torn down, the destruction of civilian homes is completely illegal,” said Miriam Marmur, public advocacy director at Gisha, an Israeli human rights group focusing on Gaza. Nagel, however, is not concerned with such complaints: “There are no civilian buildings in Gaza,” he said, claiming that most buildings in the Strip are filled with weapons or contain tunnel entrances.

Keeping Palestinians out of the zone is also likely to involve further violations of international law. Some former Israeli officials have suggested laying mines in the border area, though the Israeli army has not publicly committed to this idea. Nagel predicted that the zone would be enforced by live fire. “I like to call it a ‘killing zone,’ but since ‘killing zone’ is not a nice term, we use the words ‘buffer zone,’” Nagel told Jewish Currents, clarifying that regardless of what the area is called, he thinks that “someone [who] is moving there without permission is going to be dead.” Such a policy would be illegal under international law, said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch. “No territory can ever be a free-fire zone,” he said. Shakir added that, under international law, live fire force can only be deployed during war if it is proportionate—meaning that attacks on a military site must not include harm to civilians that is excessive in comparison to the expected military advantage of an operation—and if it discriminates between civilians and combatants.

There is precedent for Israel using lethal force to limit Palestinians’ access to land near the Israeli border. Since Israel pulled soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, the army has violently barred most Gazans from coming within 300 meters of the Israeli barrier—a policy that has led to indiscriminate attacks against Palestinian civilians in that zone, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. From 2010 to 2017, Israeli soldiers opened fire 1,300 times in the 300 meter area, killing 161 Gazans there, according to Gisha. In 2018, when Palestinian protestors started the Great March of Return, congregating near the border to call for the end of Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the right of return to lands they were expelled from in 1948, Israeli snipers responded by shooting and killing 223 Palestinians. Over the years, Israeli soldiers have also cracked down on Palestinian farmers and herders working in the zone, sometimes spraying herbicide or razing farmland in order to enforce the prohibition on Palestinians coming near the Israeli barrier. Marmur said that many of these enforcement measures violated international law. “There is little reason to believe that the new buffer zone would be enforced differently, raising concern over an expansion of Israel’s illegal practices,” she said.

The militarized zone Israel is now planning to impose within Gaza would triple the size of the pre-October 7th iteration, severely impacting Palestinians in the Strip. The demolitions would worsen the housing crisis in the enclave, where nearly 70% of homes in Gaza have now been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombs. In addition to leaving potentially thousands with no home to return to, the zone would deepen food insecurity in the Strip, since a third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies in the proposed zone. Due to Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the Strip, Palestinians in Gaza already face a hunger crisis and virtually every family skips a meal every day, with 400,000 people at risk of starvation. The loss of further farmland will only compound this situation. In addition to these dire short term effects, the new Israeli zone may permanently “eat away Palestinian lands, adding to years of systemic dispossession of Palestinians,” Marmur said. Israeli officials claim that their control of this land will be “temporary,” but Nadia Hardman, a researcher in the Refugee and Migrants Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, told Jewish Currents that the scale of the destruction in the region indicates that Palestinians won’t be able to return their homes there “at any point in the foreseeable future.”

A permanent Israeli zone inside Gaza stands to significantly reshape the balance of power in any post-war scenario. In addition to allowing Israel to take over parts of Gaza’s territory—in the process creating, as per Shehada, “conditions that would push people to leave the territory”—such a zone could also pave the way for the building of new Israeli settlements. Resettling Gaza has been a long-standing demand of the Israeli right, one that has gained new momentum since October 7th. Indeed, on January 28th, a thousand Israeli settlers and their supporters—including 12 ministers from the ruling Likud party, along with national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich—joined a Jerusalem conference to promote the resettlement of Gaza. Members of Likud have also proposed legislation to repeal the ban on Israeli civilians entering Gaza, which would allow settlers a foothold in the territory. Observers say a permanent Israeli zone in Gaza is likely to accelerate this process. “We have watched this play out again and again in the West Bank and also in Gaza before 2005: Israeli settlements always start off with a security justification,” said Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It starts with a military base going up somewhere and then the area being declared a no go zone. And then slowly that security justification becomes muted—and then we start seeing settlements.”

Yet even as human rights advocates raise such alarms about the consequences of the zone, the US may be softening its opposition to the project. That opposition was never particularly forceful: “There’s been very little outrage from the US administration about the creation of the buffer zone as it’s been happening in real time,” Hassan said. As a result, Israel has proceeded by simply disregarding the US’s reservations, an approach that seems to have paid off. Last month, Blinken hinted the US may accept a temporary Israeli buffer zone inside the Gaza border, saying there may need to be “transitional arrangements” to ensure Israel’s security and “make sure that October 7th can never happen again.” But according to Hassan, “there’s not a lot of credibility regarding Israeli assertions that these things are going to be temporary.” She pointed to how Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank was originally portrayed by Israeli officials as a temporary security measure, only for it to remain standing 20 years later—with Israeli officials coming to openly describe it as a permanent border between Israel and the occupied West Bank. Israel’s temporary measures, Hassan concluded, “have a way of sticking around for a long time.”

-- "An Israeli “Buffer Zone” Could Shape Gaza’s Post-War Reality" by Alex Kane for Jewish Currents, 6 Feb 2024

#palestine #gaza strip #gaza

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nerdy-nonbinary · 1 year

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More than "Sheer Coincidence": The Antisemitism of Disney's Animated Villains

This is a paper I wrote for a Jewish studies class. It was inspired by a tumblr post, so I thought it was fitting to share here. Most will be under a "read more" link, as it is about 25 pages including the bibliography. Please feel free to ask questions, and enjoy.

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On June 19, 2022, Tumblr user fantastic-nonsense published a post about Disney’s 2010 animated film Tangled, and the film’s villain, Mother Gothel, which starts, “*sigh* the ‘Mother Gothel is an anti-semitic caricature’ discourse is going around again.” They argue that, because Mother Gothel’s appearance was based on two non-Jewish women, Gothel’s voice actress Donna Murphy and singer Cher, any claim that Mother Gothel’s large nose or dark, curly hair resemble antisemitic caricatures was simply projection. The goal of Gothel’s design was to make her as visually distinct as possible from Rapunzel, not to make her “look Jewish.” They continue with a question:

“[I]f Gothel was blonde with a ‘normal’ nose…but literally nothing else about her changed, would you be saying that she’s an anti-semitic stereotype?...All I’m saying is that Gothel (and thus Tangled) is unreasonably linked to those tropes…There is a very distinct difference between being actively anti-semitic and Tangled, which has anti-semitism being projected on it because its villain bears passing similarity to anti-semitic caricatures out of sheer coincidence.”

The user has since deleted the original post, but a reblog remains further arguing their point. In an attempt to defend the film from criticisms of antisemitism, fantastic-nonsense stumbles upon a fundamental conundrum of analyzing villainous characters such as Mother Gothel: Is it possible to create a villainous character that avoids all potential antisemitic pitfalls? And, despite fantastic-nonsense insisting it’s a “sheer coincidence,” why do so many Disney villains have stereotypically Jewish traits?

Unmasking Antisemitism: The Origins of Disney’s Jewish Villains

Jewish people have long been viewed as villainous in various gentile European cultures, a view brought to the United States through colonization. Accusations of blood libel go back to the 12th century and have been noted from eastern Europe to England. Famous authors and playwrights such as Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare indicate a centuries-long trend of villainous characters defined by their Jewishness, and infamous business magnate Henry Ford published accusations of predatory banking practices and fervent Christian hatred in his pamphlet series The International Jew in the early 1920s, before Disney was a studio. With centuries of association between Jews and villainy as a backdrop, there is little surprise that Disney turned to antisemitic tropes in the construction of one of its earliest villains.

The 1933 short Three Little Pigs is remembered as one of the most successful shorts from Disney’s Silly Symphonies series. Not only was the film the source of the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” which became an anthem to “Depression-weary audiences,” but the film was a milestone in character development, versus the characters existing only to serve gags. Walt Disney was so proud of the finished film, he said, “At last we have achieved true personality in a whole picture.” Part of developing the characters’ personalities was creating a menacing villain, an archetype Disney would come to be known for, and the Big Bad Wolf is one of its earliest successes on this front. The film follows the typical narrative of the fairy tale, with a trio of pigs each building their own house, one of straw, one of sticks, and one of brick. We see the Wolf approach them as the first two are frolicking after constructing their flimsy houses, drool pouring from his mouth filled with sharp teeth. While the Wolf is able to simply blow away the straw house, the house of sticks proves to be a bit stronger, and he resorts to trickery, pretending to give up and leave the pigs alone before returning dressed as a sheep and asking for shelter. The pigs sees through this disguise, refuse him entry, and his anger gives him the strength to blow down the house of sticks. When the pigs flee to the house of bricks, the Wolf returns with a new disguise: a Jewish peddler.

Wearing a large brown overcoat, green-tinted glasses and a skullcap, and adorned with a fake beard and long nose, the Wolf knocks on the door of the brick house with a rack of brushes around his neck, proclaiming in a Yiddish accent, “I’m the Fuller Brush man, I’m giving a free sample!” The pig from the brick house, quickly seeing through his tricks, proceeds to hit him with said free sample before pulling a welcome mat from beneath the Wolf’s feet, causing him to land on his face and his false nose to bend 90° towards the sky. The Wolf rips off the disguise in anger, and the short continues.

The association of Jews and the peddling profession arose during the 19th century, as peddling helped facilitate the mass migration of Jews across the globe during that time. Peddling was more accessible to poor immigrant Jews than owning a store, and the freedom of self-employment allowed them to maintain their own schedule and keep Shabbat, unlike factory jobs. As most peddlers did not maintain the job for more than a decade, nor pass it down to their sons, peddlers represented a lack of assimilation, perpetually tying the occupation to otherness, which facilitates the villainization of peddlers through their Jewishness.

The stock character of the “Jew peddler” quickly entered popular culture, giving all manner of creatives, from commentators to novelists, a new punching bag in their library of cultural symbols. As Hasia Diner describes the figure in her book Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way, “Sinister and shadowy, exotic or absurd, he made a good subject for mockery, with his odd accent, his clothing, his lack of a fixed abode, and his distinctive bodily features: in this milieu, a prominent hooked nose was a sure sign of Jewishness, a long beard a likely trait as well.”

Director Burt Gillett created a costume for the Disney short’s villain which ticked off every box in the “Jew peddler” playbook. A symbol of “trickery, otherness, and greed,” and pervasively believed to be dishonest, the peddler costume serves not only as a disguise for the Wolf, but to highlight those traits in his villainous hunt of the pigs. Audiences would have had a pre-existing cultural understanding of the Jewish peddler as a costume. Throughout the 19th and into the early parts of the 20th century in the United States, local newspapers reporting on masquerade parties described “Jew peddler” costumes among princesses and pirates. With his two costumes being a play on the phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and the known manipulative figure of the Jewish peddler, the characterization of the Wolf is clear: He is so manipulative, even his choice in costumes shows off his deviousness.

There is a more intelligent side to the gag of the Jewish peddler costume; not only would the Wolf seem less threatening dressed as a Jewish peddler, but the pigs would assume he kept kosher and didn’t eat pork, easing their worries. Still, the use of antisemitic stereotypes to emphasize the Wolf’s dangerous and manipulative nature has been recognized as offensive, including by the company itself. A 1948 re-release of the short edited the animation to remove the antisemitic costume. The Wolf still dresses as a peddler, but without any Jewish signifiers, maintaining the overcoat but swapping the skullcap and green-tinted glasses for a bowler hat and clear ones, and forgoing the nose and beard altogether. Initially, the original audio was maintained, as the new animation of the wolf still matches the original dialogue, but a new version of the Wolf’s audio was recorded and replaced the Yiddish accent at a later date. Instead of hawking his wares in a Yiddish accent, the Wolf puts on a low, unintelligent-sounding voice and tells the pigs, “I’m working my way through college!” This is the version of the short that is available on Disney+, where no mention is made of the short’s history or the edits that were made to it. Although the Wolf does not have the same notoriety as many of Disney’s villains from feature-length films, he didn’t fall into complete obscurity, making a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) alongside the pigs, and appearing in the 2002 direct-to-video film Mickey’s House of Villains. 90 years after his first appearance, the Wolf’s legacy resonates in the designs and characterization, which Walt so highly praised, of the villains who came after him.

Hooked-Nosed Hags and Mincing Manipulators: Jewish-coding in 20th Century Disney Films

Disney took its first leap into feature-length animation in 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Released only four years after Three Little Pigs, the film displayed a marked improvement in many areas of animation, particularly character design. While previous Disney shorts had largely starred animals, Snow White featured an entirely human or human-like cast. Unable to differentiate between hero and villain by species, designers needed other visual signifiers to indicate a character’s villainy or heroism to the audience. As former Disney character animator Andreas Deja wrote on his blog, where he frequently catalogs stories from Disney’s older films, “[Walt] Disney insisted on strong contrast between good versus evil, and that needed to be clear in the characters' design as well as their acting.”

In 1749, German philosopher and playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote in his play Die Juden (The Jews), “And is it not true, their countenance has something that prejudices one against them? It seems to me as if one could read in their eyes their maliciousness, unscrupulousness, selfishness of character, their deceit and perjury.” For centuries, antisemites have posited that Jews not only are evil, but look evil based on their natural physical appearances. This idea quickly made its way into Disney’s understanding of character design. Although Three Little Pigs’ Wolf is the only villain who takes on an explicitly Jewish appearance, Disney has designed its villains with stereotypically Jewish traits as a visual indicator since its first feature film. This notion of visual signifiers of internal traits is derived from race science, a concept the American government had latched onto with the Dillingham Commission, a Congressional committee analyzing immigration in the United States at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. In the Commission’s Statistical Review of Immigration, published in 1911, the “Hebrew” people were the third-lowest ranked group in the “Caucasian race.” As Jews were considered one of the least desirable groups of white people, common traits amongst them were quickly associated with villains, regardless of their background.

Snow White’s Queen Grimhilde does not have many stereotypically Jewish traits upon first glance. This is essential to the story, as the Queen was previously the “fairest one of all” until her title was taken by Snow White, whose beauty outshone hers even while dressed in rags. Because she is also beautiful, she could not be designed with ugly, villainous, “Jewish” traits. However, when she finds out the Huntsman failed to kill Snow White, she adopts a disguise in order to poison her without being recognized, much like the Wolf in The Three Little Pigs. Her disguise transforms her from a beautiful, regal woman into a decrepit witch, with a massive, hooked nose and deep eye bags, both common traits in antisemitic caricatures, marking her new form as Jewish. Her transformation marks her change into a more active villain role, pursuing Snow White herself instead of sending a henchman to find her. By the end of the film, the Queen’s internal ugliness, through her vanity and envy of Snow White, has physically manifested, showing that she was never really as beautiful as the kind-hearted and button-nosed Snow White.

The contrast between the Aryan features of Disney’s leading ladies and the ugly and Jewish-coded traits of their female villains continued for decades. Cinderella’s stepmother, Lady Tremaine, and her daughters are both drawn with large noses compared to Cinderella, who has a button nose similar to Snow White. Lady Tremaine is given a hooked nose and heavy-lidded eyes, just as Queen Grimhilde had in her disguise. Her less exaggerated appearance befits her more realistic villainy, portraying personal greed and child abuse rather than a magically enhanced poisoning plot. The stepsisters, on the other hand, are given bulbous noses, similarly to Snow White’s seven dwarves, largely indicating ugliness rather than Jewishness. In both cases, their designs are “more reminiscent of 101 Dalmatians male villains Horace and Jasper, rather than typical Disney female features.” All three are given features reminiscent of Disney’s male character designs, compared to Cinderella’s “proper” femininity, which, at this point in Disney’s history, was always white.

Maleficent and Aurora’s designs in Sleeping Beauty function similarly. Maleficent’s pointed nose, prominent horns, which Jews are often accused of having, and green skin make her appear inhuman compared to Aurora’s upturned nose and blonde hair. Maleficent’s appearance is also juxtaposed against the film’s good fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, who look entirely human aside from their wings. Sleeping Beauty also furthers the concept of appearance reflecting personality, giving the cruel Maleficent an unnatural skin tone, and displaying her most powerful form, a dragon, at the climax of the film. It is important to note that both Maleficent and Queen Grimhilde use magic and potions in their villainy, while their respective princesses do not use magic on their own. Judaism and witchcraft have long been associated in European Christian concepts of witches, and these films both bring that trope into a new world of storytelling.

While Disney’s early female villains were largely coded as Jewish by their designs and the juxtaposition between them and Disney’s respective female lead’s designs meeting Euro-centric standards of beauty, male villains’ coding comes at the nexus of homosexual and Jewish male stereotypes, alongside their designs. In her description of the coverage of Leopold and Loeb’s 1924 murder trial, Sarah Imhoff wrote that “the press coverage did not often explicitly cite their Jewishness because it did not need to. Journalists and commentators were able to convey Jewishness without stating it directly. Certain characteristics—intellectual, physically weak, not fit for manual labor, perverted, and prone to illness and psychiatric imbalance—painted a gendered portrait of a Jewish man even without reference to race or religion.” Many of Disney’s male villains fit such descriptors, indicating their Jewishness to the audience without the religion ever being mentioned. Additionally, these descriptors–particularly “perverted,” which at the time was a euphemism for both religious and sexual deviance-- are often applied to gay men, while homosexuality was treated as its own psychological issue. Both queer and Jewish men are seen as feminine, not meeting the white Christian ideal of a strong, straight, and stable man. With such overlap, queercoding of male characters often coincides, intentionally or not, with Jewish-coding.

The effeminate, mentally unstable villain can be found as early as the 1950s with Peter Pan’s Captain Hook, a willowy man in a plumed hat prone to comedically anxious outbursts, with black, wavy hair and a large nose. Captain Hook is voiced with a British accent, as many of Disney’s male villains do (including Jafar, Scar, and Governor Ratcliffe, whose fitting British accent stands out against John Smith’s strangely American one), which is not typical of Jewish characters in American media. However, “unlike the good characters of the film, who are endowed with physical features more generally identified with Northern European characters, the Captain Hook character would appear to be more Southern or Eastern European…he is the villain, and the writers and artists chose to give him physical characteristics that somehow reflect his villainy.” The author does not mention Jews in his analysis, but the majority of American Jews are descended from Eastern European Jews, and the comparison is bolstered by the non-visible Jewish stereotypes Hook fits as well. Again, Hook’s features are contrasted against Peter Pan and Wendy’s straight, brown hair and upturned noses, matching his implicitly Jewish characteristics with an implicitly Jewish appearance.

The Disney Renaissance, a period from 1989-1999 which saw massive success for Disney and a notable Broadway influence on the films, also saw a barrage of male villains with notable Jewish-coded traits. While Aladdin’s Princess Jasmine has a slightly larger nose compared to her white princess predecessors, Jafar still has much more prominent and hooked nose and heavy-lidded eyes, traits even more prominent in early iterations of his design. Jafar fits many of the descriptors applied to Leopold and Loeb in lieu of calling them Jewish; he is a manipulative magician with a wiry frame, contrasted by Aladdin’s larger build and ability to run and swing around Agrabah to avoid guards, and becomes mad with power after wishing to become a genie himself. Appearance-wise, in addition to the Jewish-coded traits mentioned above, Jafar’s dress-like robe and elaborate headpiece give him a feminine appearance next to Aladdin’s pants and vest, and bare muscular chest, affirming his masculinity. Imhoff notes that, because of Jews’ intelligence and lack of physical prowess, the prevailing stereotype was that “Jews tended not to commit courageous crimes, but rather chose crimes where they did not have to confront their victims directly.” She extrapolates, “Jewish men’s crimes were crimes of intellect, not passion; manipulation, not aggression; outsmarting, not overpowering.” Jafar displays these methods of criminality multiple times, tricking Aladdin into fetching the genie’s lamp from the Cave of Wonders, lying to Jasmine about Aladdin being sentenced to death, and hypnotizing the Sultan with his staff to steal an heirloom jewel. Although Aladdin uses his wits to defeat Jafar by trapping him in the magic lamp, his physical strength both make him more attractive and capable in Jasmine’s eyes than Jafar, who pursues her for political gain.

The Lion King’s Scar is a more prominent example of the juxtaposition between the strong but simple hero and the weak but wily villain. After feminizing himself, proclaiming “I shall practice my curtsy,” when his brother King Mufasa tells him that Simba, Mufasa’s son, will one day be Scar’s king, Scar says, “Well, as far as brains go, I got the lion’s share. But when it comes to brute strength, I’m afraid I’m at the shallow end of the gene pool.” While the heroic Mufasa, and later Simba, are muscular and broad, Scar is drawn almost emaciated, his hips swinging with each step in an effeminate manner. Like Jafar, Scar rarely involves himself directly in his crimes, sending his hyena henchmen to do his dirty work while he devises a plan. While animated lions lack the physical traits associated with Jews, Scar’s strangely dark mane contrasts with Mufasa and Simba’s reddish fur, and the dark circles of fur around his eyes resemble both heavy eyelids and eyeshadow, serving as both a feminizing and Jewish trait. When Scar and Simba fight at the climax of the film, Scar resorts to gaslighting, trying to convince Simba that he is responsible for his father’s death, and tricks, throwing burning ashes into Simba’s face, rather than beating him with brute strength.

Pocahontas’ Governor Ratcliffe fits oddly into the field of simultaneously feminized and Jewish-coded villains. His purple outfit, braided hair, and posh mannerisms make him by far one of Disney’s most effeminate villains, and he is one of the most explicitly money-hungry villains in Disney’s film library, singing lyrics such as “It's mine, mine, mine/For the taking/It's mine, boys/Mine me that gold!” blatantly assigning Ratcliffe the stereotype of the greedy Jew. Yet the historical setting of the film, 17th century Virginia, makes it highly unlikely that Ratcliffe could possibly be Jewish. Still, his overwhelming greed and feminine mannerisms insert Jewish stereotypes into even the most unlikely settings, highlighting the pervasiveness of the stereotypes beyond direct acknowledgements of Judaism.

Although Hercules’ Hades is less feminized than his 90s predecessors, his coding is bolstered by frequent use of Yiddish words in his dialogue, describing Hercules as “the one schlemiel who can louse” up his plan, calling him “The yutz with the horse!” when directing the titans to attack him, and convincing Hercules to fall for his scheme by telling him, “We dance, we kiss, we schmooze, we carry on, we go home happy.” Portrayed as a fast-talking swindler, calling back to the fear of peddlers Disney utilized in Three Little Pigs, Hades follows the trend of having a hooked nose and deep-set eyes, as well as being significantly weaker than Hercules, who is characterized throughout the film by his immense strength and lack of forethought. While Hades nearly succeeds in getting Hercules to kill himself by diving into the River Styx to save Megara, once Hercules achieves godhood and becomes immortal, all it takes is a single punch to knock Hades himself into the river and defeat him.

Both Hades and Jafar also play upon fears of not just homosexuality but sexually deviant heterosexuality in their respective films. While Jewish men were characterized as feminine due to circumcision in the late 19th century, “Jews were not thought to endanger society by their supposed homosexuality but rather by their evil heterosexual drives. […] But while family life was intact among the Jews themselves, it was, so racists asserted, directed against the family life of others.’” While neither Jafar nor Hades express genuine attraction toward their female leads, each interferes with their predestined heterosexual relationship with the male lead. When Jafar fails to retrieve the lamp from Aladdin before he uses it, foiling his plan to become Sultan, his parrot henchman Iago suggests that Jafar marry Jasmine as a means of becoming Sultan instead. Jafar proceeds to brainwash the Sultan into pronouncing him Jasmine’s fiance while she builds a relationship with Aladdin, and nearly succeeds in forcing her to marry him, before Aladdin interrupts his plan. Hades gained leverage over Megara after she made a deal with him for a man who left her, and has her woo Hercules only to sacrifice her, using Hercules’ emotions to manipulate him into nearly killing himself trying to save Megara. In both cases, genuine heterosexuality triumphs over “evil heterosexual drives.” Even with Aladdin’s Arabian-inspired setting and multiple mentions of Allah by the Sultan, conceptions of pure heterosexual love shaped by Christian values save the heroines from deviant, and implicitly Jewish, heterosexuality.

Across decades, genders, and settings, Disney has not only continued to rely on antisemitic stereotypes to communicate villainy through character design, but has developed its villains to incorporate increasingly specific stereotypes that have been applied to Jews for decades, if not centuries.

(Not Her) Mother Knows Best: Mother Gothel and the Blood Libel of Tangled

The 2000s was a time of experimentation for Disney Animation. As the success of the Renaissance began to fade, Disney turned to genres and technologies it hadn’t worked with before. The early 2000s saw an onslaught of films with unprecedented science fiction elements, such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Lilo and Stitch and Meet the Robinsons. Beginning with Dinosaur in 2000, Disney slowly made its way into the field of CGI animation, developing its technology at a rapid pace across films like Chicken Little, Bolt, and the aforementioned Meet the Robinsons. After this decade of experimentation, Disney released a film which combined the musical and princess elements of the Renaissance with the CGI it had been developing, releasing its first CGI princess film: Tangled. A reimagining of the fairytale of Rapunzel, the film has been a topic of discussion since its release for both its villain, Mother Gothel, who embodies a wide variety of traits, both in her design and characterization, that have been negatively associated with Jews; and its story, which bears striking similarity to a long-standing antisemitic canard: blood libel.

Beginning with accusations of using blood in religious rituals in the 12th century, in the 13th century, an additional accusation further vilify Jews: “Jews killed Christian children to obtain their blood, turning ‘ritual murder’ into ‘blood libel’ or ‘ritual cannibalism.’” Jews were not only accused of killing Christian children, but using their bodies for personal gain. Although Tangled forgoes any child killing, its prologue tells a chillingly familiar tale of the kidnapping and exploitation of a beautiful, blonde infant by a dark and curly-haired, crooked-nosed woman, adapting the blood libel narrative for a new audience, just as blood libel narratives have adapted to fit “changing cultural and political climates.”

In developing a story fit for a feature-length movie, Tangled adds magical elements to its narrative absent from the original fairy tale. In the film, a drop of sunlight fell to earth in the form of a flower with incredible healing capabilities. This flower is discovered by Mother Gothel, whom the audience meets as an old woman, who discovers a song which, when sung to the flower, makes her young. Her young appearance incorporates many of the antisemitic archetypes present in previous villains including long, black, curly hair, dark, hooded eyes, and a pointed nose with a bump. Gothel hides the flower to hoard its powers for herself, immediately establishing her as greedy, another common antisemitic trope. When the pregnant queen falls ill, the search party is sent for the mythical flower, hoping it will heal her. It is found, and after drinking a medicine made from it, the queen recovers and gives birth to a healthy girl, Rapunzel, with hair that is inexplicably bright blonde, as both the queen and king have brown hair. Aging and growing desperate, Gothel sneaks into the castle and cuts a lock of Rapunzel’s hair, only to discover that the hair, which has gained the flower’s magic, loses that magic when cut. She decides to kidnap Rapunzel, hiding her away and raising her as her own to continue utilizing the hair’s magic properties.

Many Disney films have utilized the contrast between villains’ and heroes’ character designs to indicate to the audience which role they play, with villains getting Jewish-coded features and heroes largely getting Western European ones. In nearly every way, Rapunzel and Gothel’s designs are completely opposites. Gothel’s frizzy dark hair could never be related to Rapunzel’s blonde, straight, silky mane. Gothel’s eyes are dark and hooded where Rapunzel’s are green and wide. Gothel’s nose is bumpy and hooked where Rapunzel’s is small and turns up. Gothel is curvaceous where Rapunzel is petite. In every way that Rapunzel fits the Aryan ideal, Gothel sits firmly in the category of other, even if both are white. Gothel’s foreign appearance was very intentional by the film’s director. In an interview, co-director Byron Howard said, “So, Gothel is very tall and curvy, she’s very voluptuous, she’s got this very exotic look to her. Even down to that curly hair, we’re trying to say visually that this is not this girl’s mother.” This goal in character design was repeated by him and co-director Nathan Greno in various interviews.

More than simply creating visual difference between Rapunzel and Mother Gothel, Gothel’s “voluptuous,” “exotic look” plays into the classic trope of the “Beautiful Jewess,” an orientalized beauty who tricks others with her alluring appearance, “‘her beauty conceal[ing] her powers of destruction.’” Gothel gaslights Rapunzel to keep her in her tower, convincing her that her naivete makes the outside world too dangerous for her to live in, and the contrast between Gothel’s curvy and sexualized body and Rapunzel’s petite frame only serves to bolster her claims. It is notable that early iterations of Gothel’s design show her without many of the visually “Jewish” traits she has in her final designs, with straighter hair tied back in a low bun, rather than the large curly hair seen in the film. Several designs have long, but not hooked, noses, and higher collars, avoiding the “Jewish seductress” aspect of her design. Yet these designs were rejected in favor of one influenced by two famous women: Donna Murphy, who voiced Mother Gothel, and Cher. Cher in particular was looked to for being “very exotic and Gothic looking,” playing into the orientalization of the Beautiful Jewess, where “the physical beauty and sensuality of the Jewish woman, her dark hair…were almost always described using orientalizing tropes and characteristics.” Although neither Cher nor Murphy is Jewish, both have the dark, curly hair and large noses associated with Jews, and the choice to base Gothel’s appearance off of them, particularly Cher’s “exotic” beauty, plays directly into pre-existing antisemitic tropes, whether intentionally or not.

Like Queen Grimhilde and Jafar before her, Gothel utilizes a disguise as part of her villainy. However, Gothel’s disguise, her false youth, is constant throughout the film, rather than temporary for one evil act. The Beautiful Jewesses’ “imaginary proximity to seduction, sexuality, theater, and dance, as well as to masquerade and costumes, certainly had just as much to do with their femininity—situated outside of bourgeois gender roles—as with their Jewishness.” Both Gothel’s Jewish features and her sexualized femininity play a role in the manipulative nature of her youthful disguise.

Not only do the narrative similarities to blood libel and the design of Mother Gothel play into antisemitic tropes, but more so than previous evil mother figures in Disney films, Gothel fits the “stereotype of the overbearing, over-involved, suffocating Jewish mother.” While Queen Grimhilde and Lady Tremaine force Snow White and Cinderella, respectively, into servanthood, Gothel pretends to care for Rapunzel, as exemplified in the song “Mother Knows Best.” In addition to warning Rapunzel of the dangers of the world outside her tower, she guilts her for wanting to leave her, singing “Me, I'm just your mother, what do I know?/I only bathed and changed and nursed you/Go ahead and leave me, I deserve it/Let me die alone here, be my guest.” Her overbearing and manipulative parenting strategies were a key part of her character, and of Rapunzel’s, according to Howard and Greno. In an interview with Den of Geek, Greno said, “If it’s a story about a girl who’s stuck in a tower, and we wanted Rapunzel to be a smart character, she’s being manipulated. So, if Mother Gothel was a mean villainess…you’d be like, Why is Rapunzel staying in the tower? You needed to buy that this girl would be there for 18 years. Mother Gothel can’t be mean. She has to be very passive-aggressive,” and Howard added, “Gothel has to be more subtle…than a one-note, domineering mother.” By playing on the loving but overbearing Jewish mother trope, Tangled establishes Gothel as a convincingly threatening and manipulative villain. The movie’s narrative tropes, character designs, and character personalities that play upon antisemitic tropes, make it difficult to deny the antisemitism present in Tangled.

The Twist Villain; Or, How Every Villain is a Little Bit Jewish

In the 13 years since Tangled’s release, many of the antisemitic tropes that had become staples of Disney’s villainous characters have been absent from its films. This coincides with a trend often referred to as the “twist villain,” where the film presents a fake villain to the audience, only to reveal that a “good” character was secretly the villain the whole time. Villains like King Candy from Wreck-It Ralph, Hans from Frozen, Robert Callahan from Big Hero 6, and Mayor Bellwether from Zootopia all fall under this trope. Because these characters are not meant to be read by the audience as evil based on their design, they lack the Jewish-coded traits like dark, curly hair, hooked noses, and deep-set eyes that have been used to mark villains as evil in the past. Other films, in lieu of a proper villain, opt for a hero’s internal conflict or a non-malicious antagonistic force to drive the story, such as Moana, Frozen II, and Encanto. These new story structures seem to eliminate the antisemitism present in other Disney films. Yet the trend of villains hiding in plain sight, lulling even the audience into a false sense of security before revealing their true colors, also plays into centuries-old antisemitic tropes.

In 19th century German criminal justice literature, “the ‘Jewish crook’ (jüdischer Gauner), a code term for a type of criminal that could apply to non-Jews as well,” was defined by “dangerous criminality masked by an assumed identity—a falsely benign exterior.” Because Disney has created an association between stereotypically Jewish traits and villainy for decades, priming audiences to read such traits as evil, by creating villains who hide their true character from both audiences and other characters, both through their actions and their non-Jewish-coded appearances, the films which use a “twist villain” both reaffirm the visual villainy of such traits and play upon another antisemitic trope.

In many ways, it seems impossible for Disney to create a villain that avoids some antisemitic trope, if avoiding stereotypically Jewish character designs only leads to affirmation of another trope. Unfortunately, it may very well be impossible. As John Appel notes in Jews in American Caricature: 1820–1914, “Jews, too, have been described as penny-pinching misers, cheats and ostentatious consumers, pushy parvenus and clannish separatists, radical unbelievers and Orthodox fanatics, ‘red’ Communists and arch-capitalists, draft evading slackers and cowardly soldiers and, more recently, bloodthirsty Israeli militarist occupiers of peaceful villages.” Whether a villain is stingy or greedy, cowardly or bloodthirsty, oddly insular or the mastermind controlling everything, they fall into a Jewish stereotype. Especially when the concept of Jews being sneaky or able to trick others comes into play, it is nearly impossible to create a villain who doesn’t hit one stereotype or another. Certainly, designs and narrative beats like the ones in Tangled make the Jewish-coding of villains far more obvious, but history’s view of Jews has permanently branded them as villainous.

That doesn’t mean that every villain is equal. Hans’ duplicity in Frozen does not raise as many alarms as the multi-layered antisemitism in Tangled. Nor does it mean that every Disney film, let alone every piece of fiction influenced by centuries of antisemitism, should be disregarded. But understanding how antisemitism has influenced Disney’s villains, and, by virtue of its films’ success and cultural dominance, impacted how the American public perceives Jews because of these portrayals, these trends can be acknowledged and criticized, instead of being willfully ignored by insisting that 90 years of cinematic history is simply a “sheer coincidence.”

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