Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

the original one was looonng

It might be good to leave behind the thread title "Is this anti-semitism?" Asking/answering that question only occupies a small sliver of the discussion there. The broader topic deserves a thread that's less ambiguous.

yep. the de facto core thread on the subject having that title isn't great. it's funny with the guardian thread tho

I find the topic of antisemitism difficult to express my full opinions about, because it always feels like they will be used against Jews. I don't want to police the way other people experience things, but there is something very frustrating to watch about people who are relatively safe and privileged in life get overly worked up about what actually may be a large threat in their life. E.g. I think the issues of campus antisemitism and left antisemitism are simultaneously real and exaggerated. The idea that Jews are somehow no longer safe on college campuses is ridiculous, and yet there are also very real aggressions happening against Jews on college campuses of the type that would probably be made an issue of if they happened to any other minority group.

I think discomfort is often confused for lack of safety, but there are also real threats to safety, and I know that these reactions come from generational trauma, and that violence can rear its head any time. There have been real synagogue shootings in recent memory. Someone really did paint a Jewish star on a Jewish bakery in my town a few days ago, and then a Jewish star was painted on a home a couple of days after, along with a pentagram and what looked like "9/11" although I'm not sure. Maybe just a mentally unstable individual. Maybe that person is harmless or maybe they are violent.

I am always hesitant to minimize antisemitism, because it is real, and because it has been taken to worse heights in living memory, and because it can become exacerbated. And at the same time I don't feel comfortable with devoting too much attention to antisemitism that doesn't disrupt most of our lives while people are being killed in airstrikes.

The discourse around Palestine is also very challenging to navigate. The place where it bleeds into antisemitism is slippery, hard to pinpoint, just like with use of the "Z-word." "Free" is hard to argue with, "From the River to the Sea" is open to different interpretations, and I think different people mean different things by it, but it has definitely historically been used at times to mean "expel the Jews from all of Palestine," and I'm sure some people at rallies mean that today. Maybe some would argue that even this meaning isn't "antisemitic" because the Jews in Israel/Palestine are all just "colonizers." I feel like antisemitism in the Muslim world is a third rail that is difficult to talk about, but it is a significant phenomenon (and I will fully admit that racism in Israel and islamophobia in Israel are serious problems). It wasn't that long ago that Protocols of the Elders of Zion was made into a tv miniseries in Egypt. The book used to be a bestseller in many Muslim countries. I don't know if that's still the case. I don't really know what to do with this information exactly - it's not as though I assume most Muslims are antisemitic or anything like that, I just think the dynamic of prejudices is a bit more complex and multilayered than it is made out to be. Certain European antisemities also seem to be almost glad to have Israel as a vessel for their antisemitism.

At the same time, I can even kind of understand why Palestinians in the territories might hate Jews, if the primary face of Jews for them is settlers and the IDF.

Jews are a very small minority in the world. We are a minority that have kind of "punched above our weight" in success and privilege, and some of us get to be white in America, and we are also a minority with a long history of persecution and relatively short modern history of persecution being at much lower levels, but still have collective memory of that long history of persecution. I don't think that contemporary discourse on race and class has really figured out how Jews fit in to the whole thing.

*overly worked up about what may not actually be a large threat in their life.

great post man alive.

I think this has been discussed already on the threads at some point but one of the things that is most challenging for me is that the conflating of Israel and Jews happens across the political spectrum and with all sorts of valences, not only among those who use it as an antisemitic brush to tar Jews. I know A LOT of Jews who cry antisemitism at any Israel criticism because they really believe it for themselves - support for Israel is foundational to *their* Jewish identities, and they struggle to imagine any sort of meaningful Jewish identity that doesn't share that pillar (or if they can conceive of it, they denigrate it). Just today I got a group text from a friend about how "antisemitic messages" were being chalked around town. He sent a picture of one: it said "Free Palestine." In this climate it is just maddening to establish any solid ground to have these discussions from, about an uptick of actual bigotry against Jews - is there one, how big is it, how concerned should I be about it.

My wife's cousins just visited over the weekend. They're pretty conventionally liberal but take Judaism seriously, or at least one of them does. I brought up the "river to the sea" chant and made the devil's advocate argument that not everyone saying it is anti-Semitic, and they bristled, likening its defense to the bad faith defense of phrases like "all lives matter." It's not inherently offensive, or even literally offensive, but when you see an "all lives matter" sticker or sign you know what it means and generally who embraces it.

Of course, Jews have been primed to detect (and ignore) anti-Semitism to varying degrees for decades, because it's always around, unprompted, sometimes more virulent than other times but never totally absent, and definitely amplified (or minimized) by the context. For example, the Yiddish cultural center in the Bronx that was tagged with "Free Palestine:"

The Sholem-Aleichem Cultural Center in the Bronx was vandalized with "Free Palestine" graffiti. A Yiddish language cultural center, it's not a Zionist-related institution by a longshot. pic.twitter.com/jTI4ZWMD4E

— portnoy (@eddyportnoy) November 2, 2023

"Free Palestine" is not itself offensive, but tagging it on a Yiddish cultural center is an example of how it can be perceived that way. Or how, reportedly, the Philly Palestine Coalition circulated a list of 15,000 restaurants to boycott because they are "owned by Zionists." Which is to say, purportedly owned by or associated with Jews.

The conflation of Judaism with Israel is always a challenge. The relationship demands nuance, and nuance is the antithesis of angry protest. As I probably posted before, ignorance of Judaism is pretty widespread in the best of circumstances, imo, and can easily be exploited or otherwise be taken advantage of in the race to raise voices.

I heard a good interview with two local Reform rabbis yesterday, about how to support a grieving congregation when everyone is hurting but no two people may be hurting the same way, or for the same reason. But both rabbis noted that something in the air feels different this time, a release of generational trauma that's affecting everyone from kids to grandparents. I think a lot of that came from the simultaneous revelation of the specific horrors of Oct. 7 with the ramping up of anti-Israel protest, even before Israel's retaliation. It was like Jews had no time to mourn or process before they were immediately, inevitably put on the defensive again. It's emotionally exhausting, and while that's not the same thing as feeling physically threatened, Jews, like a lot of minorities, understand it doesn't take much to tip things in that direction. 

Similarly:
https://x.com/ElliotKaufman6/status/1721893935247966487?s=20

(across from an Orthodox synagogue)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F-VlZ9saAAA0zOe?format=jpg&name=900x900

Are you saying that’s antisemitic? It’s not totally coherent but I’m not sure about antisemitic.

aiui, brooklyn has a very large jewish population and that's been the case for a long time. it also is experiencing gentrification. if anything, the 'settlers' in brooklyn would be hipster goyim. so maybe the point of that slogan was striving to raise issues of intersectionality. hard to say.

re: Brooklyn, they could be talking about Europeans buying the land that would become Brooklyn from the Canarsie Indians, but being that half of NYC's Jewish population lives in Brooklyn, that may be the anti-Semitic angle?

I talked to my brother the other day, he's active at his Brooklyn synagogue, which is apparently very lefty/activist. He's part of an anti-Zionist group there and they had been planning out a big potluck. Unfortunately, the scheduled date was Oct 8 and they stirred up a lot of controversy for going ahead with it right after the Hamas attack. According to him, the synagogue has both pro- and anti-Zionists groups, and even some pro-Hamas people! Sounds like it is a very hectic and stressful time for him and everyone there. I don't have much of a point with this other than the kinds of situations he described are way outside of my own personal experience living in suburban Texas.

xp
I guess this is my "as a Canadian" day on ilx. Settler has a very clear and unmistakable meaning in the context of Canadian leftism (= everyone who isn't Indigenous, while remembering the history of the slave trade) and wouldn't normally be antisemitic. But I agree that as a statement with no author or context it's pretty stupid, and it's unhelpful as a comment on an ongoing genocide. Plus as stated, posting near a synagogue absolutely opens the door to it being perceived as antisemitic.

even some pro-Hamas people

...

I was a bit shocked and incredulous about this, but I guess he meant people who are pro-armed struggle, don't know if that really makes it any better

The sticker is in Philly, not Brooklyn. ILXors understood the reference to large numbers of Jewish immigrants living in Brooklyn.

It's associating this with a "problem."

Real brain-dead, lizard brain stuff.

xp

good post man alive. especially identify with this part

I am always hesitant to minimize antisemitism, because it is real, and because it has been taken to worse heights in living memory, and because it can become exacerbated. And at the same time I don't feel comfortable with devoting too much attention to antisemitism that doesn't disrupt most of our lives while people are being killed in airstrikes.

never want to minimize anti-semitism, but i do want jewish people (at least the privileged people in my community) to get some perspective.

I asked my brother if any of these I/P slogans or demonstrations are happening at my nephew's junior high school. My brother says he is a lot more worried about my nephew growing up African-American with a potential Trump presidency.

I don't think any of these manifestations of Jewish hatred should be accepted. And yet it's also possible to keep them in perspective.

I totally get that. But imagine the response to any other marginalized group's discomfort being "get some perspective."

xp ah sorry I didn’t click through to the tweet. It being in Philly makes it unambiguous

Yesterday my wife and 6 yr old were walking by the catholic school which was letting out on the corner near our house when a bigger kid, but still elementary aged kid, came up to them, held up a cell phone with a picture of Hitler on it and said "what do you think about him?" or something.

My wife just pushed on by but contacted the school and they quickly saw the kid on security cameras and talked to him and his parents. Surprised it got that kind of response.

Can't even imagine what the kid was going on about or thinking. It's easy to just think "dumb, confused, asshole kid, no big deal" but also probably good to stop that kind of thing at the root.

I totally get that. But imagine the response to any other marginalized group's discomfort being "get some perspective."

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 7, 2023 10:56 AM bookmarkflaglink

Oh totally. I should have said that was my brother's perspective. Not that I have any claim to impose any chosen perspective on others.

Xp

A 6 year old? That's grim.

You have to wonder what led a kid to that point.

Kids can be so dumb and not really understand half the things they do or the impact/repercussions of their actions when it comes to stuff like this. In fourth or fifth grade, I gave my yearbook to a boy to sign. He passed it around to the others and they all drew swastikas and stuff implying that my dad was a naxi in it and all ove it because my dad is from Germany. I was upset. I think my mom had a meeting with the teacher. In the end though, I think those kids knew that was something bad but not really how bad. Maybe I'm being naive and they did. Kids can be idiots though and I think it's absolutely good to squash that. Sorry that happened though.

aiui, brooklyn has a very large jewish population and that's been the case for a long time. it also is experiencing gentrification. if anything, the 'settlers' in brooklyn would be hipster goyim. so maybe the point of that slogan was striving to raise issues of intersectionality. hard to say.

I'm imagining a kid who doesn't understand anything. Just knows something's supposed to be shocking or taboo and likes to fuck around. Just a kind of bullying. I don't imagine he's thinking "oh this kid is definitely half jewish" or even thinking much of anything? I don't know. I think my wife just told my daughter it was something he shouldn't be doing and she didn't ask more. I've had a lot of thoughts about how to talk about what's going on or if to talk about what's going on in general and haven't really. My wife told her a little bit, just explained there's some terrible stuff going on and it's making people very upset.

I can't imagine having to have or even think about having those conversations with a child. I am also inclined to think that the kid in question knows the guy is bad and gets a reaction from people so a kind of shock value thing but it's still terrible.

I feel like there was always one kid in school (in the 80's) who was obsessed with Nazis/Hitler/WWII. In high school, one of them was in my german class, and he called me a fag on a daily basis. He was actually Persian and I had to inform him that Hitler would have had him killed. I finally ratted him out to the teacher because his notebook was covered in swastikas.

I started reading the Gary Gulman memoir (he's a really funny comedian). A lot of it is about growing up poor, and Jewish, in Boston. Here's an excerpt of his discovery, in 2nd grade, so around age 6 or 7, of anti-Semitism, by way of his soon to be ex-best friend, Wally Mitler:

“But it was his Holocaust miniseries recap back when I was in Rand’s class that caused me the most pain. It had a permanent effect on our friendship and my self-image.

He had told me about the miniseries the day after it started airing in April 1978. We were playing catch on the side of my house. Wally was not good at baseball, but, like every other boy, he had a glove and played Little League. Playing Little League was basically compulsory in 1970s Massachusetts. He threw wrong and seldom caught the ball. He claimed he needed a new glove. No, he needed new hands.

I had been sent out of the family room and its door was shut when Holocaust premiered on NBC the night before. It was the talk of the town, especially among the town’s Jews. Our "Roots.”

I am not sure if I had even heard the word “Holocaust” before the series began to air, and I definitely knew none of the particulars. I had a fear of Hitler identical to my fear of the devil, but I’m not sure of its origin. If it was discussed around me, it was done quietly; my mother forbade the discussion of anything solemn or emotionally challenging in her presence. Wally, now an expert after having seen the program, filled me in on what happened to Jews during the Holocaust, sharing with me the unspeakable specifics. He said that Jews were burned alive in ovens and starved in camps. My people were also gassed with poison. I was horrified, hoping he would stop talking about it. But much like with his devil voice, I think he enjoyed unnerving me.

When his précis ended, I asked the unanswerable question. Why? Why did they do that to the Jews? What could we have done to deserve this? I was asking out of genuine curiosity, the same way when I was five, I had asked him what G-d looked like. But I also asked him because I knew that whatever he said would let me know what he thought about Jews. I understood, as early as kindergarten, that my people were the object of pervasive hatred.

“Why?” I asked.

Without any hesitation Wally gave me his analysis.

“The Jews were rich snobs … walking around with their noses in the air.”

He said this with certainty, like it was an indisputable fact and, what’s more disturbing, a valid explanation for Hitler’s atrocities.

There is no way Wally generated this explanation on his own. This was an idea an adult in his life must have expressed. Until that moment I’d never thought about how close Mitler is to Hitler. They’re one letter apart.
I’d bet that after watching the show he’d had the same question I just asked him. Instead of giving a historically accurate attempt at an answer, someone in his orbit must have said to him, “Well, kid, these kikes got too big for their britches and Uncle Adie had to put them in their place. Also, the numbers are exaggerated.”

Wally’s next move, and this was particularly sadistic, had been to let his favorite Hēb in on the exigency of the final solution.

No matter the provenance of his despicable “snobs” theory, once again my gut told me how I should respond and hammered me for resisting.

It was my fault. I had appeased Mitler. I should have fought him when he gave my dad the finger that time when we honked at him. And now, he’d gone too far.

I had let my dad down. Phil Gulman would fight you just for saying the word “Jew” in a less than reverent tone; surely, he would have torn the throat out of some Nazi spawn announcing that the Jews were to blame for the Holocaust.

“They were snobs.”

A good reason to dislike someone? Maybe. A defensible reason to torture and murder them? J-sus Chr-st.
I had to keep this to myself. If I shared this with anyone, they’d ask why I didn’t violently attack him. I did have an answer for that: I’m a coward. As evidenced by the fact that I couldn’t even defend the honor of my people. I said nothing and instantly hated myself. And I stayed friends with him. Like a schmuck.”

Ok so maybe some kids know a lot more by way of asshole parents but I still think that doesn't necessarily they grasp the impact of the words/actions.

Schmuck is SUCH a good word.

There are some people for whom no other word will do.

Also, having lived on the edge of Brookline for years, I wonder where in Boston he grew up and will check him out.

It looks like Peabody, I think?

I totally get that. But imagine the response to any other marginalized group's discomfort being "get some perspective."

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 7, 2023 1:56 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

look, i'm a jewish person, and i understand being nervous about the potential increase of anti-semitism in society. but i got a concerned message from my friend about a pro-palestinian march in brooklyn worried about me because he heard that they were "hunting jews." that just plain is not happening.

A relative of mine goes to the private girls’ school in London where some kid painted a swastika and “kill Jews” on the wall recently. On the one hand, you know it’s just some idiot kid, maybe’s not even a serious risk, maybe just a kid confusing righteous rebellion tor something stupider. On the other hand… who knows?

xpost Yeah, I wouldn't lose any sleep over that, either. That's like that day of global jihad, or whatever bullshit was foretold a few weeks ago. Though again, it's a fine line between "hunting Jews" and "targeted for being Jewish." Let's just say I wouldn't show up to that march waving an Israeli flag, or even holding a sign with a star of David on it. Unless it was, you know, depicted being tossed in the trash, that seems to be OK. (joke, sort of)

jewish voice for peace has the star of david in its logo.

i also wouldn't wave an israeli flag at a free palestine rally, idk why that would be so controversial.

Xposts ah ok - think that's north shore maybe near Salem

xpost Yeah, it would be pretty obnoxious. I think my point was that the protest itself should not strike fear into the hearts of Jews, let alone fear of being "hunted." But that it wouldn't take much provocation to invite negative attention.

Hey, good timing, Isaac:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/where-does-antisemitism-come-from

Lemme know if anyone needs it copy and pasted.

You heard about Paul Kessler then? That happened in what is considered a normal suburban enclave in LA.

I don't think anyone should be assaulted for counter protesting.

i also wouldn't wave an israeli flag at a free palestine rally, idk why that would be so controversial.

― is he disgruntled adrian? (voodoo chili), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 11:46 AM (one minute ago)

Just read this story of an 65 year old counter-prostestor waving an Israeli flag at a Free Palestine demonstration in suburban LA who was involved in a physical altercation and has died as result of a fall (witness details are mixed whether he was struck, or tripped and fell to the ground on his own). The other person (a 50 year old man) involved in the altercation is cooperating with authorities but there is a burst of social media claming this incident was anti-semitic/terrorist (source: my pro-Israel friends IG shared stories).

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-06/man-dies-after-fight-at-protest-westlake-village-israel-hamas-war

his discovery, in 2nd grade, so around age 6 or 7, of anti-Semitism, by way of his soon to be ex-best friend, Wally Mitler

Woah, Wally Mitler?

But imagine the response to any other marginalized group's discomfort being "get some perspective."

xp to steve shasta, to be clear, i don't think the guy had it coming, obviously that's a terrible thing to happen. of course it's now going to be used as evidence that none of the hundreds of other worldwide protests were peaceful at all.

gyac, I really appreciate that.

Re: taking pain seriously, I agree that it's rarely as much as is warranted or needed, and regardless, it's not like sympathy can be quantified. But here's another story involving one of my kids that I can offer (I've probably told it before). A few years back some knucklehead scribbled racist and anti-Semitic stuff on a bathroom stall at the high school. There was the expected outrage, protests, eventually an assembly, but none of it ever addressed the specifically anti-Semitic aspect of the incident. My daughter came home that afternoon and basically asked, "what about us?" She's a strong kid, and the school responses have improved some since then, but I know she still carries that hurt with her. It's probably curdled into cynicism, which helps no one.

Re "settlers" -- there were a lot of arguments going around right after October 7 that the people who were killed were not civilians because they were "settlers." (This is not true by any international law standards btw, as they were living within the 1948 borders, not to mention that I would guess few of them were first generation in Israel). In that context, putting up a sign about "settlers" being "the problem" across from a synagogue seems like pretty clear intent to me.

of course it's now going to be used as evidence that none of the hundreds of other worldwide protests were peaceful at all.

― is he disgruntled adrian? (voodoo chili), Tuesday, November 7, 2023 12:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

I think there is a difficulty in engaging with this kind of claim if there appears to be a willful blind spot or what looks like an oblivious/disingenuous denial that some symbols of hatred are mixed with legitimate political protest. Kind of a mixed-motive situation.

Notice I didn't restrict this to pro Israel or pro Palestine.

Has this happened with other peaceful protests?

Sorry but there’s zero chance someone who targeted a public event and happened to shoot two people outside it was privy to that kind of info, this was so clearly opportunistic I can’t believe these fucking arguments. It’s the definition of a soft target!

gyac otm

TBC I am not making that "argument" with any seriousness, I think it was a random attack.

I’m not addressing it to you, I’m addressing it to everyone who decided to show up and make a disgrace of themselves itt. To be extremely clear, that’s President Keyes in my example but there are others!

Jesus leave me alone you weirdo

There are always a bunch of claims made in the wake of violent events that are walked back later. People claiming to know what this guy knew are working from various parts of the asses.

yeah, we need to wait for more info before wild speculation, I acknowledge that... the dude flew with a gun from Chicago to DC for some reason, perhaps we'll find out soon

he flew? with a gun? good job TSA!

it was checked in his luggage

My point is that he went to DC rather than finding some random synagogue in Chicago... we shall see

There are always a bunch of claims made in the wake of violent events that are walked back later. People claiming to know what this guy knew are working from various parts of the asses.

Yes, waiting for investigation details is the hallmark of the conspiracy theorist.

lol

Ms. Milgrim, who grew up in Prairie Village, Kan., had met Mr. Lischinsky shortly after joining the Israeli Embassy a year and a half ago to organize missions and visits by delegations. Mr. Lischinsky, a researcher at the embassy, had met her parents several times.

The unspoken thing here is that some are grasping at hope that this killing was justifiable

I hope it wasn't me that gave that impression. My point was more the media response - that it was a pure act of antisemitism rather than an act of political terror against the state of Israel. Both horrible horrible motivations, I was zeroing in more on how the US media was interpreting

The unspoken thing here is that some are grasping at hope that this killing was justifiable

― I am the stranger, killing the Boer (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, May 22, 2025 7:45 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM

It isn’t justifiable in any way, but it does show one thing imho (and the opinions of many others I have read today): Israel does not make Jewish people safer. Zionism’s conflation of Jewishness with a fascist ethnostate does not make Jews safer.

shut the fuck up and get out of the thread

I’d go further and say that terms of justification vs not-justification are moot. Why would anyone expect me to care about two dead Americans murdered in protest of the murder of 55,000 non-Americans? To be clear I condemn all forms of violence, but let’s fucking be real here

Yaron Lischinsky was not American, he was a German-Israeli Christian Zionist

It doesn’t matter, it’s an awful tragedy as a result of a greater more salient and preventable tragedy.

Agreed

I’d go further and say that terms of justification vs not-justification are moot. Why would anyone expect me to care about two dead Americans murdered in protest of the murder of 55,000 non-Americans? To be clear I condemn all forms of violence, but let’s fucking be real here

― calm potatoes (flamboyant goon tie included), Thursday, May 22, 2025 10:54 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

No one asked you anything

When people go out of there way to come into a thread to dance on someone's graves I question whether they really care about any of the deaths or are just vain

tbh i don't even understand what you're trying to say here, fgti? you don't care? so why post in the thread, seriously?

TBC, I don't think anyone is obligated to have any feelings about any death, I just don't understand the urge to go out of your way to brag about not caring

This is not just a double murder (though it is also that). In fgti's defense, they called it an awful tragedy. You can care about the dead as individuals, and also be exhausted at 2 taking up mass sympathy while the pile of 55,000 grows. Whether it's helpful to express that right now is a different question

The answer to the latter is probably no. I'm sorry for the dead, their families, and for the effect this event is going to have on all parties involved. No good comes from this

I don't really see evidence that Gaza isn't getting a lot of attention, so I don't understand the comparison. Gaza is covered in major media every day.

I mean, this is how humans work. If someone is murdered in your own community or a place you have a connection to, it means more than people who don't. Do the 55,000 dead in Gaza not matter because of hundreds of thousands of dead in Sudan or Syria? Would a single murder in your neighborhood affect you differently than a mass shooting halfway across the country?

Again, what is the impulse to come into this particular thread and wag fingers at Jews?

What kind of attention? Attention from those in power? Legislative attention? sympathetic attention? effective attention? Rodriguez will be sentenced for his crimes. Netanyahu, the individual zionist settler, the individual IDF soldier, will not. Justice for one party, injustice for the other. Justice is good, I want it for one party and I don't think it should be taken away because the other party is not receiving it (with an extreme difference in proportionality). But I think it is fair to express exhaustion at how the scales of justice are weighed for one ethnic group versus another. And I don't think that in and of itself is finger wagging at Jews. I am open to know why I might be wrong.

*Justice is good, I want it for both parties and I don't think it should be taken away from one because the other is not receiving it

You're comparing the US criminal justice system to foreign policy. The Chicago landlord who stabbed the Palestinian child was also sentenced for his crimes. The man who shot the students in Vermont likely will be too. How are the scales of justice "weighted" for Jews?

I'm sorry, I understand your closeness to this place and these events man alive. I'm not asking you to explain or defend anything. I should have thought about that before posting. I'm sorry that this event has happened and for how it has effected the safety and peace of your community.

the finger-wagging statement was more aimed at stuff like this:

It isn’t justifiable in any way, but it does show one thing imho (and the opinions of many others I have read today): Israel does not make Jewish people safer. Zionism’s conflation of Jewishness with a fascist ethnostate does not make Jews safer.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, May 22, 2025 10:17 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Maybe because I grew up knowing that my dad, who was a leader of the same synagogue, received death threats just for being a visible jewish community figure, I don't appreciate this lecture. Or maybe because my wife's entire family would literally have gone to the gas chambers if they hadn't escaped to what became Israel. I don't know if in 2025 Israel makes Jews safer, but I also don't buy that Israel never having existed would have made Jews safer. It would have meant the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews at a minimum.

can you elaborate on that last point? clearly zionism before and during the holocaust saved Jewish lives, but how has the state of Israel's existence saved hundreds of thousands?

If we're talking historically, presumably Jewish people that lived in Iraq, Syria, Soviet Union, Yemen, probably Egypt were safer in Israel than where they were previously? Though if the counterfactual is staying put or whether its moving to Australia or Belgium might change that equation.

This seems a different question to whether the current iteration is making diaspora safer or not

In the case of Middle Eastern Jews, literally driven from neighbouring nations with no place to go but Israel, I don’t see how this is relevant, minimizing the atrocities that removed/eliminated the Jewish population for certain of the countries you listed (and others you didn’t), postulating about whether going to Belgium (or staying in Yemen) would possibly have been “safer”, this is not something I think is useful.

I hate that it sounds like finger-wagging to you, man alive, because everyone posting in this thread seems to be on the same page, or at least pages adjacent to each other: a cessation of violence in Gaza and the West Bank, and the safety of Jews and Arabs worldwide. I mean this in good faith! Between the insane antisemitism that is colouring certain online forums and the insane genocide-apologism that is colouring others, I’m grateful for this oasis of sanity.

My consternation regarding the double murder in DC is less about “oh no! Two dead people in DC!” and more about “oh no! This double murder can be twisted and utilized to justify the extermination of 10s of thousands more Gazans!”

My anger at Elias’s actions is boundless but for a dual reason, the tragedy that has occurred and the (ongoing) tragedy that threatens to come to pass.

My consternation regarding the double murder in DC is less about “oh no! Two dead people in DC!” and more about “oh no! This double murder can be twisted and utilized to justify the extermination of 10s of thousands more Gazans!”

The way this was first reported - "Israeli embassy staffers" - reminded me of the two aides to the Mexican president who were shot dead last week, and it felt like a symptom of a kind of rising sense of lawlessness where anyone with a beef just picks up a gun and commits murder. Seemingly connected specifically to their official roles so I didn't think there was an antisemitism angle - it thought it was just another horrific event in an asymmetric war. So I'm as guilty as anybody for jumping to conclusions and I feel pretty stupid for not looking at the detail.

xp, thanks Gyac.

I have a lot of difficult feelings and thoughts about this, as I have had since October 7. I think it's probably oversimplifying things both to call this merely "antisemitism" and also to call it a political act against Israel.

The term "zionism," as I have complained before, has become very simplistic and flattening. I'm probably one person trying to stop a train in this regard, but I have always thought it was dangerous, and the murders of these two people is an example of why, even if it looks very small next to the number of Palestinian dead. Because yes, it seems like these two people would consider themselves zionists. They were staffers at the Israeli embassy. I'm p sure I saw the guy actually referred to himself as a zionist in the past. They were also people who at least ostensibly wanted to reach a just resolution with Palestinians and who had devoted parts of their work and education to that.

I don't think Elias Rodrigues knew any of this, in any case. The fact that he drove all the way from Chicago to Washington, DC to murder people at this event suggests to me that maybe, possibly he had some idea that it was in some way an Israel-related event, which it sort of was. It isn't clear from his manifesto, but I don't think he just drove a few hundred miles from a city with a significant Jewish population to find some Jews to kill, I'm sure that, in his mind, he was genuinely incensed by Gaza and wanted to express his outrage by killing two people who, in his mind, were complicit. And yet in his manifesto he uses the example of an attempt on the life of Robert McNamara, one of the main architects of mass slaughter in the vietnam war. These two people were not the architects of anything, as gyac points out. For all we know, they were pro-cease fire. The event they attended apparently included speakers from NGOs about how to get aid into Gaza. I don't think he knew who these particular people were, I think he knew they attended an event that was something something Israel, and people who attend such things are zionists, and zionists are the nazis of today, as we all know, and therefore deserve to die, or at best we should remind everyone that we don't care if they die.

ftr, Lischinsky was a fervent public supporter of Israel and Netanyahu. He mocked deaths of Palestinians in his twitter feed.

Again, I don’t believe that justifies what happened to him, but his beliefs were abhorrent.

I know we butt heads a lot, man alive, but I really am not trying to argue that this was some excellent thing that happened— anyone saying so has lost their way afaic.

i desperately hope that we as a society can move past seeing each other through the lens of things said on twitter.

ftr, Lischinsky was a fervent public supporter of Israel and Netanyahu. He mocked deaths of Palestinians in his twitter feed.

Again, I don’t believe that justifies what happened to him, but his beliefs were abhorrent.

I brought it up because man alive posted something regarding the two victims as possible supporters of a ceasefire. From Lischinsky's record, it is pretty easy to surmise that he was not.

As for your point, crüt, I don't even have a twitter account— but if someone posts abhorrent stuff, available for public consumption, on social media, then I tend to think that's fair game in assessing their beliefs.

Better hope nobody ever links your ilx account to your real name if something bad ever happens to you, then, because fuck knows you’ve made enough objectionable posts for the terminally callous to use as a reason why it was good, actually.

one could say the same for you

bookmark removed fwiw.

Yeah we’ve heard that one before…and I’m not the one arguing that people deserve less sympathy for tragedy if they’ve made some terrible posts online, so not really sure you stuck that landing. Well done.

Which the shooter almost certainly wasn't aware of anyway, again it seems highly unlikely that this guy was anything more than an opportunistic target.

Some of the Palestinians killed had antisemitic tweets too. So what.