I have another genuine question for the Jewish community (and I super appreciate all the input and reasons I was incorrect in my last post, I learned a lot about the importance of Zionism as a whole)

What can us non-Jewish people do as individuals to support the Jewish community and fight antisemitism?

I often don't know how to help marginalized groups beyond the ones I'm a part of already, but even then I'm not sure what kind of advice I'd give others beyond "speak up when people are queerphobic" or "please listen to us and don't try to talk over us" and "help de-stigmatize mental illness and trauma by hearing our stories and talking about the importance of mental health" or "please try to support programs that help the poor" etc

So besides that sort of thing, does anyone have any suggestions? I really want to show my support, I'm just not 100% sure how to do that

I super super appreciate any advice!!

Puerto Rican Jewish poet & activist Aurora Levins Morales speaks on solidarity & the history of antisemitism

From her poem "Red Sea":

...We cannot cross until we carry each other, all of us refugees, all of us prophets. No more taking turns on history's wheel, trying to collect old debts no-one can pay. The sea will not open that way.  This time that country is what we promise each other, our rage pressed cheek to cheek until tears flood the space between, until there are no enemies left, because this time no one will be left to drown and all of us must be chosen.  This time it's all of us or none.

I was deeply moved by an article on Levins Morales' website in which she examines modern-day Israel through a zoomed-out lens of millennia of antisemitism:

‘Long before that state was founded out of the ashes of genocide and at the expense of a colonized Arab people, Jews were the shock absorbers of Europe's class societies, "Middle Agents" drafted into being the local representatives of distant and definitely Christian ruling classes who alternately exploited and persecuted them while squeezing the life blood out of Europe's peasants and workers.'

People are often confused by anti-Semitism. They see many US Jews accumulating wealth, moving up, gaining positions of influence, and they say, "What oppression?"... 

The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top. Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won't make it to the nobleman's palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East…’

Levins Morales explains those “buffer” roles in detail, describes how Latin@s are often put in these roles as well, and then brings up an author who said of Israelis, “given all they’ve endured, they should know better.” She responds to this with this insight:

‘Trauma doesn't make people into better human beings. Most of the time, trauma just makes people terrified and easier to manipulate. It makes starving Irish tenants fleeing a devastating famine willing to own slaves or homestead Native American land or police the ghettos they used to live in. It makes the formerly kidnapped and enslaved willing to set up shop in Liberia and hold their African kin in contempt. It makes the survivors of Hitler's Final Solution be willing to become harsh colonial masters, agents of US oil greed and militarism, to bulldoze the villages of Palestinians to make Jewish settlements, torture and kill those who resist, and still insist they are the victims here. People who have faced destruction don't necessarily know better.’

While naming that trauma doesn’t make people “better,” just leaves them terrified and grasping at any sense of security they can, Levins Morales is also sure to note how Jews have always been “disproportionately present in movements for social justice wherever [they] have landed.” To her, fighting antisemitism means supporting Jewish integrity, the Jewish commitment to justice and compassion. 

Furthermore, solidarity with the people of Israel and Palestine alike depends on our clear stand against antisemitism in our own communities, because, she says, 

'The central justification for Israeli militarism and the subjugation of Palestinians is the belief that Jews are alone in the world, that no-one will fight for us, that the next time Jews are blamed and attacked, most of the world's people will stand by and watch.'

Only through all of us standing up to antisemitism and standing side by side with our Jewish neighbors, she says, can Jews feel secure enough to “abandon the middle agent role and get the backs of other peoples, knowing that they also have ours."

It is this vision of interdependence and mutual aid that Levins Morales brings into her poem “Red Sea," which imagines the kind of liberation when Moses parted the Red Sea happening today — but only if we support one another.

Okay can these people who don’t have a fucking clue what they are protesting about listen to this man.

This is the son of one Hamas founders and I think it’s safe to say he knows what Hamas is all about and it isn’t about helping the people of Palestine!!

Excerpt:

Less than 48 hours after HonestReporting revealed the violent and antisemitic posts written by prominent Palestinian reporter Shatha Hammad, the Thomson Reuters Foundation has stripped her of a prestigious journalism prize.

On Sunday, we revealed Hammad had a long history of making disturbing comments on her social media accounts, including repeatedly joking about Adolf Hitler, lavishing praise on Palestinian terrorists who have murdered innocent Jews, and denying that Israel has any right to exist.

We questioned why the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), the charitable arm of the global wire service, and the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) had chosen Hammad as the recipient of the 2022 Local Reporter Award, which included a $5,000 cash prize and the chance for her work to be “spotlighted through a multi-media campaign on the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s social media channels.”

...

The posts that HonestReporting uncovered included dozens of violent and antisemitic clarion calls, such as one in which she eulogized the “martyrs” who killed five “settlers” during the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue massacre where two Palestinian terrorists attacked worshipers with axes, knives and a gun.

In several posts in 2014, Hammad, who currently works for Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera, signed off her comments using the nickname “Hitler” and joked that she was “in agreement” with the Nazi leader who oversaw the mass extermination of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

In another post — originally written in Arabic but translated into English by HonestReporting — she described herself as “friends” and “one” with Hitler, adding they have the “same mentality, like, for example, the extermination of the Jews” alongside a smiley face emoji.

...

In a 2016 Facebook comment, Hammad suggested Israel is not a legitimate country and questioned whether Jews have the right to self-determination.

some good news!! the spanish state's ministry of equality has finally passed one of the most progressive trans laws on the planet, shielded free and universal access to abortion and banned conversion therapy and genital surgery for intersex babies, among a lot of other feminist policies. the minister of equality irene montero gave a speech thanking spain's lgtb and trans associations for helping her draft these legislations. couldn't be more proud!!

Signed on to Twitter today in the first time in over a month

I’m so tired.

When we say there are antisemites at these marches and we don’t feel physically safe attending them believe us instead of saying that YOURE not antisemitic. Fine. Don’t be antisemitic. Just stop people who ARE.

My fellow Jews, if you say things like "but I'm not even Israeli" when addressed with antisemitism, you are implying that if you were Israeli the antisemitism and hate towards you would be justified. You are contributing to the dehumanisation of Israelis. Good for you that you have a get out of jail free card, but I and many others don't have that privilege.

This was a reply to someone else, but I'm making this its own post because so many people are being so evil right now re: Noah Schnapp.

You can find other, longer explanations with history and all, but all the places I've seen more or less agree with this:

So you're all calling people to cancel Noah because he's in favor of a Jewish nation in what is today Israel. Which is a perfectly reasonable, decent and educated opinion to have, especially when you, to use a trendy term, "educate yourself" and find out why the state of Israel was created.

11000 dead Palestinians, half of them children

According to Hamas. Don't forget that, ever. They're the current, official government of Gaza, thus they're the ones who give numbers. This means that the real number could be 10, 1 million, anything in between. What I've read is that they probably give more of less accurate total numbers. What they fail to do, however, is distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians, and beteween civilians killed by IDF strikes, civilians killed by failed Hamas or Palestininan Islamic Jihad's rockets (which happens a lot), and Palestinians murdered by Hamas/PIJ (which also happens, a whole damn lot). They also don't specify how many civilians they have prevented or tried to prevent from evacuating or receiving aid.

11k dead people is a horrible number. Even 1 dead person is a horrible number. However, urban warfare in such a densely populated area is its own kind of hell, especially when the other side is fond of using civilians as human shields in every way possible. The fact that the number is 11k and not 50k, 100k, and so on, indicates that the IDF have indeed done a lot to minimize deaths. You don't genocide people by doing roof knocks, opening evacuation lines, dropping guided bombs, putting up an Iron Dome to deal with rockets while avoiding escalation, etc. simply because actual genocide, while a lot worse, is also cheaper, easier and faster than what they're doing. This is important because caling every act of war genocide dilutes the word, and there are actual genocides happening around the world. Also, there is a difference between striking military targets and causing civilian deaths as a side effect (what the IDF is doing) and planning and carrying out a massacre deliberately targeting civilians and inflicting as much pain and humilliation as possible on them. And there is a difference between doing so by breaking a ceasefire (which is what Hamas did), and defending your country because if you don't do that a terrorist group will anhilate you (which is what the IDF is doing).

Back to Noah. So far, these are the things that people have tried to cancel him for:

Traveling to Israel (a completely normal thing)

Having Israeli friends (another completely normal thing)

Condemning Hamas' horrible attack on October 7th (the decent thing to do)

Posting a statement saying he feels unsafe as a Jewish person in the US (which, given the rise of antisemitic acts in the world, including the US, including where he lives and where he studies, is a valid feeling to have)

Signing a letter, along with Shawn Levy, Brett Gelman, Ross Duffer and I think Cara Buono, asking Biden to press for the liberation of every hostage by Hamas. This especially shows the utter ignorance of the cancellers because, as it turns out, caring about every hostage implies a slowdown of IDF's actions (and, at the time, a delay of a ground invasion).

Supporting the existence and preservation of the state of Israel (once again, a completely normal thing). The fact that people are turning against him for these things says to me that the real reason you are all hating Noah is beacuse:

He's Jewish. Like, really really Jewish.

And the fact that this all comes from a place of antisemitism isn't hidden at all: I've seen y'all on here, on Twitter, Reddit, every other social media calling him slurs (such as "cunt"), censoring his name, pretending he's not part of the cast, asking the Duffers/Netflix to fire him, wishing him failure, doxxing him, calling on his classmates to physically assault him, etc. He doesn't need to educate himself: you guys are already teaching him a great lesson on why a Jewish state is necessary. If that's the treament he gets from his own "fans", what can he expect from the world at large?

Hi I'm a porn blog but I'm also Jewish so I'm answering your support question anonymously.

I have a few pieces of advice, and I think other people will have other advice. I may ask more than once. The first and most important thing you can and should do is, if you can, ASK YOUR JEWISH FRIENDS HOW THEY ARE DOING, and be a human being who can listen and emphasize with them. For context, after the massacre I went to a vigil at my temple, which had politicians there. The Rabbi asked everyone who had either lost family or had family in the IDF to stand up. A third of the congregation stood up. From my personal experience, most of my Jewish friends have family who are impacted; only one lost a family member. Even if you don't want to support Israel or the Israel army, understand that the country has conscription and reserves who can be called up. You do not need to take a political position to comfort people who are hurt. I'm doing a lot of emotional labor for my friends and I see a lot of Jews saying things like "I wish more of my goyim (non-Jewish) friends would check up on me." It costs you $0 to say "hi. I know a lot is going on in Israel, are you okay?"

Whenever stuff like this kicks off, anti-Semitism and islamophobia skyrocket, so you may want to check on your Muslim friends as well. You asked about Jews specifically so I'm going to focus on that.

It's not unreasonable to call your local synagogue and ask how you can help support your local Jewish community. You may or may not be welcome depending on the security situation. If you're asking about charities, I'd very strongly recommend either very accredited charities or asking a synagogue about charity drives. There's a lot of social media disinformation out there so I'd be very wary of donating money to an organization you've never heard of that claims they're helping.

This is a little more controversial, I think, because it's hard for me to be a-political here, but you should also understand what you're advocating for in what you ask for. I'm going to freely admit I have a bias here.

If you're going to engage in political advocacy, please understand what you are advocating for. Let me give you a couple of examples.

There currently is a depressing amount of debate about if the international community should call for a cease fire, or not. The argument to call for a cease fire is that the loss of Palestinian life is unacceptable. The argument against calling for a cease fire is that Israel can only realistically secure the release of hostages via military intervention or threat of military intervention.

Understand what Hamas' strategy is. Hamas wants to maximize human suffering in the Gaza strip so that the international community demands Israel stop fighting. If this happens and Hamas still has "gains" from their attack, the general consensus is that they will do this again. There can't be hostages in Hamas custody when a cease fire is declared, or Hamas will believe they have won and they should do this again. So if you want to advocate for something, I think you should keep the demand to free the hostages first in your minds.

Two more personal opinions in "know what you are advocating for." You should understand the implications of peace deals that groups are proposing and not support deals that don't align with your beliefs. I'm 1948, neither Jews nor Arabs in mandatory Palestine would ever accept a one state solution if the other party lived there. This has never changed. A Free Palestine, "from the river to the sea", means "a Palestine without Jews". There is no serious proposal on the table for a harmonious one state solution that has popular support in the region. That's not what people actually involved in the politics of the region hear when you chant that. Someone is going to argue with me about this, and it's true that Jews aren't a monolith, but the "secular democracy one state solution" plan that people would like was overwhelmingly rejected by both sides in 1948 and the relationship has gotten substantially worse since then. People are absolutely trying to bridge that gap. It hasn't happened. I'm not going to tell you what to advocate for. If you want "an Israel without Jews", I probably don't want to be your friend, but you don't know me. I don't want to exterminate the Palestinians, either, so I'm not gonna be your friend if you advocate for that. All I'm trying to say is understand what you're advocating for, and make sure you center that in your messaging.

The last thing I want to say is that you should think about why we have Israel and what it says about the world, and what we can change at home. Israel accepts Jewish refugees from pretty much anywhere. I'm a Jew in America. If America decides that they're going to get rid of the 7+ million of us who live here, the Israeli government will do everything in its power (probably not literally) to get me to Israel safely, and will let me resettle there. Compare this to basically every other fucking nation on the planet. We (America) have hundreds of thousands of people on the southern border waiting in camps and shantytowns to claim refugee status. Look at how Jordan and Lebanon treat their Palestinian refugees. Ukrainian refugees are doing better than Syrian refugees, but I don't think they're doing well, exactly. Look at how the world deals with migration, especially from people we don't like. So what I'm saying is that I think the best thing we can do for peace is make it so that every nation in the world is safe for basically anyone to live if they need to flee their home. That's something you can advocate for at home.

I hope that makes sense.

Thank you so so much for this!!! I will definitely check up on my Jewish friends literally after I'm done with these messages. My childhood best friend's family is Jewish and his grandma is like another grandparent to me and I've been meaning to see how she's been doing in general anyway. I also have given donations to the local synagogue before, so I could probably call them or even ask my friend's grandma if she knows anything I can do, and maybe I can ask them about charity drives and such I can donate to when I get paid next week. I'm always happy to donate to those who need it when I have the money

I'm also glad to hear about arguments against a one-state solution. I was considering that both sides may be unwilling to coexist with each other in a single state due to the decades of conflict with each other, but I haven't done enough research into a two-state solution to really have a fully formed opinion. I definitely have been withholding a full opinion until I have more information (which in a previous post that blew up I was writing about some conclusions I was drawing that were worded badly and incorrect regardless, and I asked to be corrected on if I was wrong, I learned a bunch of stuff from about Zionism and some Jewish history and I now think that it's good that a place like Israel exists, even if the situation with Palestine is so so complicated)

I live in the US too and I've been yelling about the detention centers at the southern border for years now, it's so appalling and genuinely terrifies me to know that human beings are being treated so poorly, even if I know historically stuff like this has happened before

You definitely made sense and I'm so so grateful for your response <3

it’s mostly very funny to me how the “stop posting and log off and do REAL ACTIVISM” crowd, when faced with the reality that leftists of the ilk they find annoying (whether for valid reasons or not) ARE doing real activism and risking getting expelled from their schools, fired from their jobs, and arrested for it, are like oh actually they’re just LARPing as activists because they want to piss off their parents. and theyre saying this in online posts, instead of logging off and doing any real activism, because i guess that advice doesn’t apply to themselves

It's important to note:

'Fighting Antisemitism' and 'Protecting Jewish Lives' has to include all Jews, even the ones that you disagree with or dislike (Yes, even that one), or you aren't doing either.

Once you start sorting Jews into "Good Jew" (worthy of humanity unless they fall out of line) and "Bad Jews" (irredeemable and not worthy of humanity) for any reason, you're not an ally, you are antisemitic.

Don't fuck with us goyium...