Hello friend!

Ahoy! You are now anonymous (because you asked so nicely and it's a valid question.)

G-d I wish I had a real answer for this. I think it depends on the person, but is this someone you feel like will be receptive to you approaching her with some vulnerability about how unsafe that makes you feel? Do you think she will listen to reason if you give her fact-based explanations for why that rhetoric is more antisemitic than it is helpful to the Palestinian cause? + your perspective and feelings on it? If so, it's worth a try if you are intent on maintaining a trust-based friendship.

If you don't think you'll be safe/you aren't really in a place to take the risk of vulnerability, I'd say you have a few choices:

Avoid her or at least talking about that with her for now, and talk to her later when some of the heat has died down on this issue. Admittedly, this is not optimal because it's way easier to apologize and backtrack when the stakes are low(er), but if you really work on it with her maybe you could rebuild some of that trust.

Stay friends but don't trust her with your safety (emotional or physical). Up to you about how you answer her if she notices and asks about this.

Cut ties at whatever speed you are comfortable with and don't tell her why. You can drift or just start avoiding her. That happens sometimes for non-political reasons.

Cut ties with her and tell her why you aren't interested in maintaining the relationship. That's obviously the most direct, confrontational version; if you go this route but don't want to have a fight about it, you could just say "hey - this really showed me that you do not value the lives and human rights of my people and therefore me, and so I no longer feel safe around you. I wish that was different, but it can't be fixed at this point because I can't trust you anymore." That's a tough lesson, but it's one some people need to learn.

Obviously none of that is ideal, but we're not working with ideal circumstances here unfortunately. Idk if other people have suggestions, but those are mine. I'm sorry you're in this position and hope that you have other supportive community no matter what you decide and how she responds.

“Hamas was hiding in those hospitals and schools” “Israel is only defending itself” “this issue is complicated” “Hamas started the conflict” “Israel still has a right to exist” “what about Jews and the Holocaust” “There are so many rumours going around” “Do you condemn Hamas”These are all arguments I have been given whenever I get upset over what is being done in Gaza, by my own family nonetheless. As a Jew, and especially from the perspective of a culture that has suffered this over and over, how fucking hard is it for you to understand that NONE OF THAT FUCKING MATTERS ANYMORE. NONE of these arguments matter because Israel refused to stop when it’s hostages were returned, it has used highly illegal weapons like white phosphorus bombs, it’s leaders have STATED how the Palestinians are “human animals” and how their aim is absolute destruction, the entire first world is funding this genocide, Palestine can’t even fight back, etc etc. even if any of their arguments were true, it just doesn’t matter in the face of this genocide. How can you debate the reasoning behind any of this when your response should be THEY HAVE KILLED OVER TEN THOUSAND MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN, AND THE DESTRUCTION NEEDS TO STOP. None of these issues matter. THEY ARE DESTROYING EVERYTHING. As a Jew, it disgusts me how my own family can stand by and debate while watching another people go through what they went through. IT DOES NOT MATTER. STOP TALKING. START ACTING.

THE LATEST CASUALTY FIGURE IS 10,177. THE NUMBER IS GROWING AS WE SPEAK. THERE IS NO ROOM FOR DEBATE HERE.

feel free to reblog this with resources to help Palestinians and stop the bombings in Gaza.

Behind the scenes, American officials also believe there is limited time for Israel to try to accomplish its stated objective of taking out Hamas in its current operation before uproar over the humanitarian suffering and civilian casualties – and calls for a ceasefire – reaches a tipping point. In fact, there is recognition within the administration that that moment may arrive quickly: Some of the president’s close advisers believe that there are only weeks, not months, until rebuffing the pressure on the US government to publicly call for a ceasefire becomes untenable, sources told CNN.

A lot of this pressure — the majority, I would wager — that Biden and US national leaders are getting is the result of people calling their reps, attending protests, writing to their newspapers and generally making themselves heard on this issue. People make a difference, and it's always worth reaching out to your legislators and telling them what you think.

Senators' info is pretty easy to find, since you've got two for every state (even DC and other non-state people have someone they can call!) but sometimes it's a little tricky remembering who your representative is, especially now with the district lines having changed up. So check your address here and then call their office — I've found more luck getting hold of an actual person at their local offices rather than the DC one, fwiw.

Here's the thing about Oct. 7th

Any analysis of the situation that does not acknowledge that the IOF itself is responsible for most of the casualties is incomplete and pretty close to straight up propaganda

I have no love in my heart for Hamas, I agree that it is an extreme fundamentalist religious movement founded on the most radical platform the Palestinian revolution could have had and even as the secularists have taken positions and done work to move the ideology in a less radical direction as they saw that with only Hamas in power they only had one option but to try and change the organization from the inside, that doesn't mean they don't still have extreme views or tactics and nor does it mean that they are not also mistreating the Palestinians in Gaza as any ruling government party mistreats their citizens, remember they only received 44.5% of the vote and then promptly ended free elections there after, not even to mention how many Gazans were under the voting age when that election was held. Their extreme views and tactics for liberation are quite literally why Netenyahu himself funneled money into their operation to ensure that they were the international face of Palestine to make it so that public international opinion would be against them and further destabilize Palestinian liberation attempts

But it has literally been reported by Israel's own media and journalists that the IOF are the ones who shelled Israeli homes which led to those horrific burning deaths of Israeli babies Ben Shapiro won't let the internet forget about, it was reported by the Israeli media itself that the IOF fired at their own citizens fleeing from the music festival, it was reported by Israeli media that the IOF shot and killed hostages with their hands tied behind their backs, and it has been confirmed by Israeli citizens who were taken hostage by Hamas insurgents that the insurgent's main goal seemed to be to keep them alive and relatively safe in order to be taken hostage as leverage for the Palestinian hostages Israel has locked in their prisons while the IOF soldiers and the people who gave them their marching orders were indiscriminate in who they killed, driving tanks through residential areas, shooting citizens, and bombing houses with families, the elderly, and infants inside

This is not to say that Hamas didn't kill anyone, I'm sure they did, but from Israel's own media and their own citizen's reports who were taken hostage we have been told the number of casualties were so high on Oct. 7th because the IOF had absolutely no qualms killing their own people

And nor is this to say that Hamas is some kind of humanitarian freedom fighting militia that will always treat Israelis nice and respectfully, the reason why they've been so nice to their hostages is because they are playing the optics game that Israel won't

They are doing the wartime optics game correctly right now while Israel has all but abandoned it, they are keeping the hostages safe and well looked after so that when held up next to the cruelty and the indiscriminate violence of the Apartheid state (which has over 10,000 Palestinians held hostage in their prisons as of now) they look better in comparison to the international eye, that is the whole point of fighting an asymmetrical war, you have to use asymmetrical tactics, especially in an age where public opinion can mean the difference between life or death

Ultimately, my point here is that the idea that Hamas are the ones who are soley responsible for the massacre of over a thousand Israeli citizens is just false, and that is confirmed by the Israeli media itself. It was the IOF response to the attack that killed so many, Hamas does not have the technology available to them to be able to shell someone's house, the people who crossed the Gazan border were only armed with the guns they could carry in their hands, that doesn't lead to the kind of damage done in these Israeli neighborhoods that we have seen reported on (just check NPR's ig page it's full of videos of the Israeli neighborhoods destroyed after Oct. 7th) but a tank driven by an IOF soldier who has been given the greenlight by his superiors to kill as many Israelis as he deems necessary in the hopes of killing any single Hamas insurgent they can get, definitely will

Innocents died on Oct. 7th, I will never deny that, but most of them didn't meet their end by a Hamas insurgent. They met their end by an Israeli soldier who was supposed to be sent there to protect them and if you don't acknowledge that fact, if you simply say that it was the attack by Hamas that killed so many people then you have not done any research into what actually happened that day and you don't get to use it as some kind of gotcha against the people who support Palestine

only going "rape and torture are bad" when people defend Palestinians is pretty fucking scummy, speaking as someone who knows more than the average person on this site does about torture, and hates it real bad and knows a lot of people repeat torture apologia because it's deeply pervasive in modern culture

there are a lot of goyim esp from other Marginalised backgrounds that are taking the wrong lessons away from the fact that it turns out that a group of primarily socialist/communist people from an extremely oppressed cultural group with deep ties to an area are in fact more than capable of founding a regional settler colonial ethnostate in that area, a state that was capable of the mass dislocation and then intergenerational imprisonment of hundreds of thousands and then millions of people, and that while many non Jews feel morally pure and free of this ideology, the reality of the situation should terrify everyone

justice is meaningless without care, if the thing that drives you to action is hate towards the oppressors rather than care for the oppressed you will not get very far

person a: i hate zionists, they're so evil, they can die for all i care about.

person b: OH SO YOU HATE JEWS? YOU WANT TO ERASE JEWS DON'T YOU?

^ are some of you mentally challenged?

will you stop using very real traumas as talking points against ashkenazi zionists. i dont need to see people on my dash trying to minimize the yemenite children affair as a result of other ignorant people using it to be antisemitic. it happened, and it was awful, and there are multiple people who can tell you about it since it wasn't that long ago. it's also really none of your business if all you want to do is prove ashkenazim = evil white jews. the issues of racism in israel are very very real, and also have nothing to do with what's currently happening in gaza. you know nothing about the intricacies of israeli society. and i'd tell you more if i wasn't afraid of your utter inability to grasp nuance. i could tell you how "privileged ashkenazi" might as well be a synonym for "leftist" in the current israeli political climate, but then you'll start villainizing mizrahim. ashkenazi socialist zionists founded israel, and they did terrible horrible things to both palestinians and mizrahi jews. their ideological successors are now in the opposition. and none of it fucking matters, because israel is carrying out a genocide as we speak. stop trying to find a type of person you're allowed to hate, and focus on advocating for the people who are currently being massacred.

I have so many posts in drafts about Palestine and I still just don't even know what to say or where to start

if a jew writes or creates something about Current Events specifically through the lens of judaism (particularly religious judaism, not simply cultural judaism) i think that's within their right even if i disagree with what they've written/created. but it makes me really uncomfortable watching it get spread around by goyim

honestly it makes me so miserable that like every single jewish person i know IRL either celebrates or at minimum attends a nuclear family christmas & talks about christmas in a positive way as a thing they do voluntarily. i realize that i am not supposed to feel this way because being in a non-christian jewish family & raised with jewish beliefs is a position of privilege & i don’t actually want to stake out some claim that it makes you less jewish or something which i think is the only way anyone who hears me say this can interpret it

but. judaism for me does include not being christian, both because i value being jewish which does necessarily to me mean not-being-christian, and because i was unavoidably marked as different by doing jewish practices and not doing or knowing about christian practices. personally, to me specifically, participating in christian things feels like a capitulation and concession of that part of my judaism. and it feels really difficult and upsetting when the omnipresent pressure to participate in intrinsically christian practices and traditions is reinforced by being [it feels like] the only jew i know who thinks it would be good to not celebrate christmas where possible.

like i have capitulated to/politely attended many many christmases in my life, because my dad’s siblings are christians & my partner’s parents are christians. it is very hard to manage to not celebrate a christmas ever or even avoid it within a single year. but i wish... i felt like people around me even actually understood why there is some harm in default-christmas or could successfully conceptualize why a judaism that included the desire to not do christian shit would actually be valuable to me

Can't wait for Christmas fever to be over it's too exhausting

"Hath not an augment eyes?" Julian asked. "Or would you prefer it as it is in the original?"

Worf looked away first. "I have never liked that play."

"I have come to find it edifying, in some ways."

you’re thinking about how easily massive numbers of the wildly antisemitic tankies would have been pulled into the actual political tenets of (esp early to mid 20th century) armed Zionism and you’re laughing?????

Everybody does the exact same stupid shit. That white nationalist anon I was getting a while ago would send me story after story of some random black guy or immigrant committing a violent crime against a white person. Well, yeah, people are violent, you're gonna find those if you go looking for them. And there's a lot of racial animosity in the world, so you'll even find racially charged ones if you go looking! No shit, Sherlock. We could play this game all day. You find me a news story of a black guy killing a white guy, I find you a news story of white guy killing a black guy. This does no one any good.

TERFs are identical. News story after news story of a trans woman raping somebody. Yeah, the world is an awful place and people rape each other. I can find you a news story of a cis woman raping a teenage boy and getting three months in jail. I can find you a news story of a cis mom killing her disabled kid cause they're too much work. But I don't want to. The world sucks shit, why gorge yourself on the tragedy?

Zionists come up with news story after news story of pro-Palestinian/BDS/whatever protestors being antisemitic. Yep. A lot of people out there hate Jews. And there has been a genuine rise in antisemitism since the Oct. 7th attack, and that's awful. There are no excuses for that. Do you know what else has happened since then? The Israeli military has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinians, including huge numbers of innocent civilians—men, women and children.

People are often terrible to each other. Welcome to Earth. If you go looking for bad actors in a big enough group, you are guaranteed to find them. How about this. What about all the black people who didn't kill a white little girl? What about the black little girls? What about their hopes and dreams? What about their chance at life? What about all the trans women who didn't rape anybody in a bathroom? What if they just want to go about their lives, without constant public scrutiny of what genitals they have (as a cis woman, can you empathize with that? Constant public scrutiny of what you're doing with your genitals?). What about the 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed, and the 70,000 who have been displaced from their homes?

Fear has made you a monster. Fear has driven you to demand slaughter and oppression of innocent people because they look like guilty people you read about on the news, and since they look the same to you, you feel fearful—how can you tell whether these are the innocent ones or the guilty ones? Best to oppress and slaughter them preemptively just to be safe. I am here to tell you that this twisted logic of self-defense does not hold. I do not care if you feel safe—I do not care if you are safe—if the cost of your safety is innocent life. The world is a risky place. I am not going to deny that. Horrible things could happen to any of us. If we go around preemptively attacking other over it, we do not make it a bit better. And, needless to say, danger comes from everywhere, from every group of human beings, and oppressing the people who make you nervous will not, in fact, deliver you from danger. It just makes you a monster.