This is blood libel against Jews, and all are from the Commie Economist Facebook page. And this all came up, unprompted, in my feed. I hate the algorithm.
(Literally one Google search for “Israelis refusing military service over Palestine” shows that the IDF is facing a recruitment crisis, and this, in spite of the fact that refusing to serve is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. In 2024, the Knesset argued on whether to suspend the legal refusal of Ultra-Orthodox Israelis to not be subjected to the mandatory service requirement. Israelis are not bloodthirsty drones, they are people, and many of them are against this war. And again, JEWISH =/= ISRAELI; JEWISH =/= ZIONIST, JEWISH =/= SUPPORTS PALESTINIAN GENOCIDE.)
Sharing this Substack article, which was totally written by a Jew, you guys (source?), and if Jews say that all Jews don’t oppose Israel, it can’t be antisemitic OR wrong! …Clearly, neither Amanda Gelender nor Commie Economist have ever heard of Neturei Karta, Jewish Voice for Peace, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, or literally any of the anti-Zionist orgs listed here.
Now, to be clear: I have zero qualms with anyone protesting Zionism, the Israeli government (especially Nutter Yahoo and the self-proclaimed “David Duke of Israel,” Itamar Ben-Gvir (yes, he calls himself “the David Duke of Israel”; if you don’t know why that broke my brain, go look up David Duke), the IDF, or anyone’s “eh, //shrug//” response to the Palestinian genocide. All of that is fair game, and it should be criticized, and harshly. Zionism is a cancer, and it needs to be eliminated. Plus, even if I did think Israel should exist (and I do not, for reasons I will explain shortly), I would still be against the Palestinian genocide, simply because I think all genocide is evil. I don’t pick and choose which genocides I’m against; I’m anti-genocide, periodt. (INB4 anyone says it: Yes, I’m against the Congolese and Sudanese genocides happening right now, too. And I’m thoroughly pissed off that most leftists refuse to even acknowledge they’re happening, even though by all accounts, they’re just as bad, if not worse, than what’s happening in Palestine. You are either against genocide, or you’re not, and if you’re not even acknowledging any genocides besides Palestine, go jump in a volcano. I have no tolerance for people who prioritize white or white-adjacent lives over Black, Asian, or Indigenous lives.)
However. This automatic lumping-in of “all Jews” with Israel, the IDF, Nutter Yahoo and his Scabinet, and Zionism in general is dangerous. It is fascist thinking. It is the exact same mindset that led to the Palestinian genocide, the Bosnian genocide, the Holocaust, and literally every single genocide in history. No, “not all Jews” support this. No, there is no truth to the statement “there are no good Jewish orgs,” especially when there are literal, organized groups actively fighting against Zionism and pushing for Palestinian liberation and statehood. Neturei Karta is literally trying to dismantle the Israeli state and give that land back to Palestine. JVP is both organizing protests on college campuses and educating people on why Zionism is wrong. There are orgs in Israel that are trying to, at the very least, start with a two-state solution (and yes, that is where it needs to start; Palestine’s biggest problem is that it has no true governance because it is not considered an autonomous state). More Jews are against Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestinians than support it.
And yet, the most famous leftists in the world currently (ahem HASAN PIKER) are not only conflating all Jews with Israel and Zionism, they’re actively spreading blood libel against us. Like we’re the fucking Borg, instead of a group of 15 million individuals who all have very different, often diametrically oppositional, ideas of what Judaism is or should be.
No, not “all Jews” hate Palestinians. No, not “all Jews” feel that Israel is our home. No, not “all Jews” even like the idea of Israel existing. No, not “all Jews” are political Zionists, and this one needs explained, for goyim and others who don’t know much about Judaism and won’t even look it up on Wikipedia.
Zionism is a broad term, and it describes both a religious belief and a political position, and -write this down, it’s important- the religious belief exists in total opposition to the political position. And yes, it needs an explanation and a comparison.
If you are, or were, a Christian, you are aware of the Second Coming, in which Jesus Christ will return to Earth to judge everyone, alive or dead, and to establish his kingdom in this plane of existence. Every Christian believes, or at least knows about, this idea; the religion itself is founded on the Easter event, in which Christ was crucified, lay dead for three days, and then returned to life. We literally just celebrated this holiday. Belief in the Second Coming is integral to the Christian religion; you cannot be both a Christian and a non-believer in the Second Coming.
That said, the Second Coming is promised, but not prophesied. In other words, Christians cannot decide or meaningfully decipher when Christ will return, because it’s not for them to know. In true Christian doctrine and teachings, Christ decides when Christ returns. There may be signs, but there is no way to genuinely know when this will happen. Which doesn’t stop KKKristian Nationalists from believing that they can force the Second Coming by, well… Everything they’re doing now.
I grew up Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination behind the formation of Jews for Jesus (how ironic, considering this branch of Christianity is named for a Jewish feast day, Pentecost), and yes, it is an end-times, Rapture-desiring cult. It’s also, in the US, the largest, fastest-growing Christian denomination. Much of the liturgy I grew up with, from the mid-90s and very early 2000s (I stopped going shortly after 9/11, when I was thirteen), revolved around how “war in the Middle East” would bring about the Rapture. As if it was within our purview to tell a literal god that he needs to get his ass back to Earth.
Now, the Rapture is not a Biblical promise, nor is it prophesied. The Rapture is an invention of mortal men from the 1800s that was ascribed to Christianity, much like most KKKristian Nationalist “theology”. (As far as I can tell, most Evangelical/Pentecostal/Nationalist theology is woven together from the really bloody, theatrical bits of Genesis, Leviticus and Revelation, peppered with the optional interpretation of the Ten Commandments¹, and literally no other part of the Bible.) And again, the Bible tells us that only Christ can know when he will return to earth. There is no Biblical passage or prophesy that describes the Rapture, just like there’s no actual Biblical passage that describes hell (literally all of our ideas of hell originated with The Divine Comedy, specifically, the Inferno²). So for people to believe in the Rapture, or that it’s for mortal human beings to “know” when Christ will return, strikes me as just… Violence.
Zionism is the same way. The Torah does teach that G-d will return Israel to the Jews, but only when he decides it’s time. So, on the one hand, belief in the return of Israel to the Jewish people, is a part of the religion. I don’t think it’s integral to Judaism, the way the Second Coming is integral to Christianity, but it is a widely-held belief among Jews. And again, many, if not a majority, of Jews believe that, if Israel is to be returned to the Jews, it will be when and where G-d wills it. It’s not for mortal human beings to decide.
But there’s always that squeaky wheel that ruins it, isn’t there.
Enter political Zionism, an idea that, just like the Rapture, has its roots in the nineteenth century, and can be traced back to literally one man, Theodor Herzl. I hate this man almost as much as I hate Nazis, and honestly, I think there’s a solid argument to be made that if this motherfucker is yeeted off a bridge at birth, the Holocaust never happens. Want to know why I think this? Because the Nazis literally used Herzl’s essay Mauschel to justify everything they did to Jews, including enticing them to “repatriate” to their “homeland” in Palestine. Now, the Wikipedia article claims that Herzl regretted writing that particular essay, but according to the footnote, “in a fit of pique”, and the source for that is a 2012 biography of the man. Plus, while Herzl may or may not have regretted writing that one essay, he never renounced his belief in Zionism. So, no, I don’t find this conclusive proof.
Also, political Zionism is, and has been since its inception, a controversial idea within the Jewish community and diaspora. At the very beginning, the opposition came from Jews in Jerusalem (because, lest we forget, Jews have always lived in the Middle East; they are often called “Mizrahim” or Mizrahi, and they’ve been at least sidelined, if not totally forgotten, in arguments about whether Jews belong in Palestine, when in fact, they’ve lived there for thousands of years³).
ETA: And wouldn’tcha know, the biggest support for Zionism comes from KKKristian Nationalists! By the numbers, there are more Christian Zionists in the US (100 million, at a conservative (heh) estimate) than there are Jews in the entire world (15 million). And they support Zionism because -and I swear this is true; I heard this shit as a baby AoG- they believe that the Rapture will be immediately preceded by a “holy war” between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East, and that Christ will return only when all Jewish blood has been spilled. So why aren’t these “anti-Zionist” “commies” attacking Christians for their support of Israel and Zionism? Oh, right, numbers: 100 million > 15 million. Fuck these idiots.
Political Zionism gained most of its momentum and adherents after the Holocaust, and again, the reasons for it were complex: Not only was the world deeply disturbed by the Holocaust (although, not really, not until the 1960s and the Nuremberg trials), but nearly every Jewish survivor of the camps had been stripped of their citizenship. Not only that, but there were quotas regarding Jewish immigrants in the US and the UK, and in fact most of the world at the time. The survivors were, unsurprisingly, deeply traumatized, and that trauma has echoed through the four generations of Jews and Jewish-ish people born since the last camps were liberated in 1945. You cannot understand people and why they act the way they do if you refuse to acknowledge their pain and where it comes from.
I don’t think there’s enough attention paid to the actual number of Jewish lives lost during the Holocaust. Everyone knows “six million,” but I think it would be far more accurate, chilling, and effective if we said “two out of three European Jews were killed during the Holocaust.” When you put it that way, it becomes much clearer how much of the world just didn’t care about what was going on.
In the almost eighty years since the Holocaust ended, there’s been a push by Christians internationally to paint themselves as “the good guys who fought the Nazis,” when reality says “it’s nowhere near that simple.” The graphic novel Maus is an excellent example of this: Art Spiegelman does not back down from pointing a finger directly at both European and American Christians who heard the pleas of European Jews and ignored them, which is why a lot of American parents don’t want their precious Christian creampuffs to read it. But frankly, even though I don’t hold all Christians accountable for the Holocaust -I actively acknowledge and thank the ones who fought it, knowing that, just like Jews advocating for Palestinians today, there are more of them than not- I do think it’s an important to show this side of the story. There was not widespread support for the US entering the war until after Pearl Harbor, and even then, most Americans either didn’t care about the Holocaust, or thought it was a good thing, because they associated Jews with communism.
I want to point out that the Commie Economy/HasanAbi left likes to pretend that the world is generally apathetic towards Palestine today, which really says more about how terminally online they are than anything, because not only is there widespread international recognition of the Palestinian state, by both individuals and governments, but more media outlets have recognized Palestinians as the victims, rather than aggressors like in previous coverage. There’s also a massive international movement for businesses and governments to dump their financial investments in Israeli businesses, the military, and the government, aka “BDS”, or Boycott, Divest, Sanction, which has generally been extremely successful.
In other words: Commie Economist and HasanAbi leftists are wrong, they’re falling for Israeli and American propaganda, and they’re stupid and I don’t like them.
Again, I think Zionism is wrong. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Zionism is Manifest Destiny appropriating the Star of David. Israel is a failure of a country. And its presence in the world has made Jews everywhere less safe. When even supposedly pro-social justice “leftists” are blithely spreading literal anti-Jewish blood libel, calling all of us “complicit” and evil, and even obliquely implying that all of us should die as penance for the Nakba, you have to face the fact that Jews are next. I have faced that fact. There is nowhere I can run, because this is the rising sentiment all over the world. And if leftists are going to be complicit in this, where does that leave someone like me, an anti-Zionist Democratic Socialist who happens to be of Jewish extraction?
Do you know what Germans call someone who isn’t a Nazi, but lets Nazis dine at their table? A Nazi. If you are letting Nazi ideas and talking points into your group, you are siding and complicit with everything they do. And don’t think for one second that Nazis actually care about Palestinians; to them, Palestinians are a convenient political Trojan horse. Which is, I suppose, why so many Commie Economist and HasanAbi leftists are drinking up their Kool-Aid so happily; they don’t see Palestinians as real people, either.
Again: I am completely against the genocide of Palestinians. More than wanting it to end, I wish it had never started. I wish that Palestinians had been left to decide if they wanted to accept Jewish Holocaust survivors, because I honestly think they would have, freely and happily. I wish that there was more empathy and understanding of the trauma that comes with surviving a genocide, then and now. But, as my mother always says, “wish in one hand and spit in the other; which one fills up first?” So, we have to focus on ending the genocide, not deciding which group is next.
And. I’m against what will almost certainly turn out to be a new genocide against Jews. It may look like the Holocaust, or it may look like Rwanda, or anything in between. No group of people should ever have to face a genocide. I have believed that for longer than I’ve ever believed that the US wasn’t a safe place to be Jewish, or of Jewish extraction. And if it means I’m a shitlib, then so be it, because I refuse to ever be part of any group of Nazis.
¹Can I just say, I think it is so telling that almost no Evangelical/Pentecostal/KKKristian Nationalists can name even one of the Beatitudes -you know, the things Jesus actually said, according to the Bible- but they want to plaster the Ten Commandments everywhere? I’ve said to people before that, for all Evangelical Christians claim their god is loving and merciful, they only worship the wrathful god of the Old Testament. Like, is all Evangelical “Christianity” just the writing-down and codifying as “theology” CPTSD from millions of abusive childhoods in which Father’s Word Is Law, And Questioning Father Gets You The Belt? Because that’s how it comes off to me.
²I love The Divine Comedy; it’s a truly wonderful work of literary fiction. And. That’s all it is. I don’t know why so many religious people think Dante actually went to hell, purgatory, and heaven.
³For the record, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pointing out that a lot of Israel’s Jewish population are at least descended from European/Ashkenazi Jews, and that the formation of Israel is settler colonialism. But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Jews and Muslims have lived together in the Levant for thousands of years. And repeat after me: “No group is a monolith, and no group is a hive mind.”
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