Someone saying that jewish people never have dealt with immigration problems because we came from “white countries” holy shit
I’m like hi please learn more about Jewish history before you try to talk about Jewishness and it’s relationship to whiteness and race because if you don’t know something like this you definitely don’t know enough sorry!!
This is just SPECTACULARLY ignorant of the history of immigration to the US in general. But what’s most galling is that while immigration issues for certain white ethnic groups (i.e. mostly Catholic whites – Italians, Irish, Poles) shifted/improved over time, the St Louis ship FULL of 937 Jewish refugees was turned away in 1939.
At this point, I wonder if it’s a willful ignorance, and I need some ideas because I have no idea how to deal with that.
Honestly, with those people, I usually revert to the St. Louis example, and the statistics of its passengers upon returning to Europe. Occasionally I’ll invoke my rabbi’s Kol Nidre drash from a couple years back – on Syria and refugees – which began with the congregation raising hands based on periods of their families’ immigration (a tiny contingent for 1925-1990).
But at a certain point, I stop with all that, note that the KKK and other popular white supremacist groups think that (European, presumably) Jews are ‘infiltrating’ and ‘corrupting’ the white race, and remind them that blood quantum took over religious practice as the fundamental crime of Jews a long time ago. And occasionally, depending on the circumstances, I’ll remind them that my stereotypical Ashkie self was screamed at by the nephew of the local police chief in 1980-something for saying I was white.
Tag: antisemitism
Study says Polish neighbors betrayed many more Jews than previously thought
According to new research done in Poland, two thirds of the local Jews who hid there from the Nazis did not survive the war, mostly because of the actions of their non-Jewish neighbors.
The figure comes from a two-volume work of 1,600 pages that historians from the Warsaw-based Center for Research on Holocaust of Jews have compiled over the past five years. It covers nine out of Poland’s 13 regions, the Tok FM radio station reported Sunday.
Arriving amid a polarizing debate in Poland over a law that limits rhetoric on Polish complicity in the Holocaust, the study suggests Poles are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths by Jews in the Holocaust — a figure that is significantly higher than previous estimates.
The findings of the research were published earlier this year in a Polish-language book titled “The Fate of the Jews in Selected Regions of Occupied Poland.” They pertain to the fate of more than one million Jews who went underground to avoid being killed in Operation Reinhard — Nazi Germany’s campaign of annihilation of 3.3 million Jews in occupied Poland.
According to Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, no more than 2,500 Jews died at the hands of Poles during the Holocaust or immediately after it. Efraim Zuroff, Eastern Europe director for the Simon Wiesenthal has disputed Schudrich’s estimate: He believes the correct figure is “many thousands” of people, including in at least 15 towns and cities in eastern Poland, where non-Jews butchered their Jewish neighbors.
But if the new study in Poland is correct, then those estimates are just a fraction of a tally of well over half a million Jewish Holocaust victims who died as a result of the actions of non-Jewish Poles.
The issue of Polish complicity in the Holocaust is highly controversial in Poland, where the Nazis killed three million non-Jews in addition to about four million Jews. In January, the right-wing government passed a law criminalizing blaming Poland for Nazi crimes. Protests by Israel, the United States and Jewish groups over this law prompted what observers say is a wave of anti-Semitic hatred with unprecedented intensity since the fall of communism in Poland.
…Especially dangerous for Jews in hiding were small Polish towns, according to historians Barbara Engelking and Jan Grabowski, two of the nine researchers who conducted the study. They called them “death traps,” TOK FM reported.
Grabowski is professor of history at the University of Ottawa in Canada and a dean among Holocaust historians, especially on the actions of bystanders. His 2014 book, “Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland,” was the Yad Vashem International Book Prize winner for the same year. He also served as a fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The latest research entailed identifying, interviewing or reviewing interviews with as many survivors as possible to ascertain the fate of other Jews in hiding who did not survive, the report said. It also features newly discovered archives from remote areas of Poland from the Nazi occupation days and thereafter.
In one region, Miechów, more than 10 percent of the Jews in hiding were murdered directly by partisans who were members of the Polish underground, according to the study.
Study says Polish neighbors betrayed many more Jews than previously thought
Imo it is reactionary to discourage people who do not have a stake in I/P from learning about and speaking against Israeli settler colonialism and its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
At the same time, I think non-Jewish white leftists need to be mindful about *how* they speak about this when they do not have any stake in the matter.
The evil the state of Israel commits is not a free pass for you to be antisemitic.
(non-Jewish white leftist here and if I’m out of line at all, please tell me)
However, being called anti-Semitic because you’re critical of Israel’s policies in regards to Palestine is wrong, right?
One of my friends is Palestinian. She’s lived through three wars. She’s told me horror stories. She makes light of it but she’s seen some serious shit and I know it’s killing her that she can’t go home. It can’t be anti-Semitic to be against the hurting of innocents?
I only say this because I’ve heard Jewish people on the radio compare any criticism of Israel today to people supporting the Holocaust, claiming that Jews can’t be doing something bad now because something bad happened to them 70 years ago. (I also recognise that not all Jewish people will share this opinion, but it is something that has been claimed)
Listen to me when I say this is EXACTLY the kind of comment I did not want to get on this post because now you’re positioning me, a Jew, to guide you on the proper way to morally field this, when I think we both know that objectively no, it is not antisemitic to be generally critical of Israel…
But that’s literally all an affirmation you wanted and frankly that’s not a good enough critical self-examination and is a very shallow evaluative way to ask yourself whether or not you’ve been antisemitic in the way you advocate for Palestine.
Further
Invoking your Palestinian friend and saying “it can’t be antisemitic to be against the hurting of innocents” sounds like you’re both obfuscating an accusation of antisemitism to be both wildly absurd and morally repugnant, and I’m not gonna give that to you…
Further.
Stop homogenizing What Jews Think And Feel regarding I/P by a few people you heard on the radio with the caveat: “but I know not all Jews feel that way.” This is a classic example of antisemitically positioning Jews as incapable of understanding that “the hurting of innocents” is wrong. You’re trying to, implicitly at best, position all Jews as monsters for you, the benevolent white leftist, to ideologically correct with your Unique perspective that the killing of innocents is wrong. It’s not your job to morally evaluate the entirety of the Jewish people by a metric of how much they do or do not support the liberation of Palestine and the absolishment of the state of Israel.
You’re not Jewish, you’re not even Palestinian, you are white and simply an ally. Remember that you have *no* material stake in this lol.
Gonna be honest that you are the type of white leftist that probably gives me anxiety about the way you talk to Jews generally and are not interested in conversing with/seeing us as people, let alone people who can be flawed and grow and change in their perspective… and are more interested in branding every run of the mill liberal Jew you come across as a Zionist for woke points, after maybe your only engagement with said Jew is: “do you support Israel?” Or similar questions… You are not your Palestinian friend, need I remind you that you LITERALLY have no stake in this.
Further..
It’s disrespectful to refer to the Holocaust as just “something wrong,” and is indicative to me that you have no solid grasp on its devastation or the complicated ways this trauma has shaped Jewish consciousness generally because you have already morally positioned Jews in your mind as nothing more than absolute monsters that levy their own trauma to justify Israel. (Except some good ones of course!) lol
FURTHER!
Yeah I know this response seems rather over-the-top and your question was well meaning… (as are most white goyishe leftists who ask these sorts of questions). But I’m begging you not to use The Good Jews as your moral guide while already positioning the rest as Bad… this is a reaction generally speaking to the prevailing attitude I’ve seen among white non-Jewish leftists whose engagement with the matter starts and ends with the simple idea that those who support the state of Israel are my enemy because I support Palestinian liberation, and most Jews do, so most Jews are my enemy (and the enemy of all liberation!) until I ask/harass/impose the question about it to them in which I fundamentally and casually judge their humanity for a social justice cause I have absolutely no stake in.
Further…
Consider that most Jews are actually not blathering idiots about I/P (we may actually know more than you, shocking! I know) or blood hungry monsters. But all you wanted to ask me was whether or not [x] was antisemitic, and I’m just going to tell you that’s not a sufficient enough engagement with yourself regarding whether or not you are antisemitic/being antisemitic about the way you engage with Jews regarding I/P.
FRA Antisemitism Survey
Here is a fun survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights about antisemitism in Europe, for you to fill out if you are a European Jew/Jew living in Europe (within certain countries) who wants the EU to know what you think about antisemitism and how it affects you!
Anyway, I know a lot of ppl think human pet guy is just a particularly bizarre and dedicated troll, but among other things he has a history of harassing Jewish bloggers and defending holocaust denial, among all sorts of other wildly homophobic and racist behavior.
He’s also really transphobic too.
To add onto that, this is why people need to stop calling their ideological opponents nazis if they don’t actually follow nazi beliefs. It perpetuates the myth that nazism isn’t a coherent ideology, and it makes it easier for them to be like “anything gets called a nazi nowadays =(((” when someone calls them out for perpetuating nazism.
white ex-christians who had a bad experience w/ xtianity: hmm…. that sucked….. well, i guess i better go harass jewish and muslim people
‘Don’t be a Jew’: First year Anti-Semitic physics group chat exposed
Shocking anti-Semitic messages from a University of Manchester Physics group chat have tonight been exposed, where one student twice commented that “6 million Jews ain’t enough” and another called for an invasion of Poland.
The messages were sent to a “1st Year Physics” Facebook group chat, broadcasting them to over 200 fellow students, originally reported the Mancunion.
The abhorrent conversation was initiated when a student asked the group if they would rather become an engineer or a Neo-Nazi.
Another student replied “Pfft, why you asking that? Tis an easy question. Now brb while I make some lebensraum.”
Lebensraum was an ideological principle of Nazism, referring to a territorial expansion into Eastern European countries and the removal or genocide of their populations.
When another student replied “I would rather die tbh,” the student that instigated the conversation told him “Don’t be a Jew.”
Another first year Physics student then suggested an invasion of Greece, Russia, Spain, Poland, and India.
A student then made some of the most abhorrent comments, twice repeating that “6 million Jews ain’t enough,” referring to the approximately 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Another student attempted to intervene at this point, though those involved continued, telling the student that asked “could you stop with the nazism maybe now?” to “Calm the fuck down.”
The student that intervened went on to tell those “mocking others for calling you out on your literal fucking naziism, maybe you should sit down and think for a change.”
Astonishingly, it seems several first year Physics students thought it acceptable to make such comments in a conversation with over 200 fellow students.
Just last week, it was reported that several University of Exeter studentshad been expelled and suspended following a major investigation into racist comments and bullying within a law society group chat.
Alongside academic sanctions, multiple students lost jobs and placements following the scandal.
And just over two weeks ago, the University of Manchester removed the ratings section from their Facebook page, following a flood of negative reviews that dropped the University’s rating to the second lowest of any Russell Group University. Students were also blocked from commenting on any of the University’s social media posts.
Following the anti-Semitism incident at UoM, an email condemning the messages was sent to all UoM Physics students this afternoon. Similar comments were made when a University spokesperson gave the Mancunion this statement:
“The University is a welcoming environment and we will not tolerate any form of discrimination or harassment. Allegations of this nature are thoroughly investigated and if appropriate, disciplinary action will be taken.”
UoM’s Jewish Society has condemned the messages as “shameless” and “blatantly unacceptable.” The society told The Mancunion: “The Jewish Society is deeply concerned by this incidence of overt and shameless anti-Semitism in a public forum.
“At a time when attacks against Jewish students are on a nationwide uptick, it is shocking that students who have attempted to call out anti-Semitism have faced ridicule. It is blatantly unacceptable for fellow students to tell someone to ‘calm the f**k down’ after being told ‘6 million Jews ain’t enough’.
“We expect a robust and transparent investigation into this incident from the relevant faculty, who we call on to denounce this incident in the strongest possible terms. It is incumbent of all members of the student body to tackle anti-Semitism wherever it arises”.
‘Don’t be a Jew’: First year Anti-Semitic physics group chat exposed
Dear Des, this is a sort of personalish question but how did you find the strength in you to formally become Jewish in a world so full of antisemitism and hate? I’ve thought about converting for many years but I’m frightened of what could happen to me or my family. I know many people deal with this fear but I don’t know how. I just want to hide.
I will be very, very honest with you, because I feel that is the best thing for me to do:
The morning of my beit din, one of the Rabbis was a few minutes late. We were concerned he might have ended up even more late than that, but luckily, he wasn’t. The reason for his being a few minutes late was because he worked at the local JCC/Day School and the entire campus had to be evacuated that morning because another wave of bomb threats had been phoned in. I’m not sure if it was the second, or the third.
So imagine, not being me (waiting nervously in the Synagogue library), but instead being that Rabbi. His morning schedule – whatever it was he normally would have done as a Rabbi of the community – was interrupted by a death threat to him, his colleagues, anyone on the campus, and the children under their care. Coffee, Breakfast, Work, Phoned in Bomb Threat, Evacuation, and then waiting for an all clear.
…Then serving a beit din for a conversion candidate.
You may imagine that most Rabbis or even most beit dins will bring up the issue of antisemitism, and that it is a serious part of the process of educating a conversion candidate.
This rabbi was the one to bring it up on my beit din. He had, after all, spent his morning evacuating a Jewish organization’s building and talking with police, and he thought it was important to question if, given the circumstances, I was really going to throw my lot in.
He wasn’t necessarily turning me away, but he was definitely questioning my judgement, if you get what I mean. He wanted to know why, and he more or less asked something similar to what you are asking me.
My answer may not be your answer. My answer may not help you. My answer is a personal one.
I explained who I was already, and I don’t remember everything I said then to the letter, but this is more or less the essence of it: I am mixed race, I look white, but I am Mexican-American, and plenty of my family is visibly brown. If they are in danger for being Mexican, I am in danger. I was taught that the most dangerous gangs were neonazis and the KKK. I’ve worked in a Latino cultural center where we had to make the choice to be non-political in Arizona because if we put up political art, we might have rocks thrown through our windows, or worse.
A white supremacist murdered a friend of mine’s family – the culmination of an evil, slimy scumbag of a human being worming his way into a woman’s life, abusing her, and terrorizing her, her children, and baby grandchild. I went to the candlelight vigil, the triple funeral (a fourth person also died), my friend the only survivor in the house.
I pointed out then that I am not going to ever be out of the line of fire of acceptable targets for white supremacists or neonazis. My existence will never be acceptable to those kinds of people anyways, so letting them dictate my choices through fear doesn’t leave me with very many choices. I didn’t really need to find extra or newfound strength, because I am applying already learned skills to a new scenario. Minorities in America do not have the luxury of going about their existence without any sense of fear for them or their families. We just don’t.
I also don’t believe that I would have stopped interacting with the Jewish community if I hadn’t finished my conversion. It would be foolish to state I have no fear whatsoever, but also at some point, I have recognized my entire life has included navigating fear.
Anyone can be afraid. Anyone can want to hide. Hiding is a strong survival mechanism. So is fleeing. It’s a privilege to recognize you have safety, and few people are eager to forfeit their own safety. I don’t see any point in diminishing that. Your average WASP has led a life which has not prepared you for the idea that people who don’t know you might want you dead on principle of your ethnicity. Even on a smaller scale – there’s probably been almost no vandalism in your daily life that marks a place, location, or world that is not welcoming for you.
I don’t think there’s any particular answer I can give.
Perhaps it is more prudent to answer a question with a question:
Are you underestimating yourself, or are you doing what is best for you?
______
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