I/p Conflict - Tumblr Posts
the same side. pro palestinians do certainly think some kids shouldn't grow up.
Is there anything I can do to help Palestinians besides call my representatives and beg them to stop killing people?
This is a great question. There are a few things you can do—just off the top of my head:
BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) https://bdsmovement.net/
Direct Action https://www.palestineaction.org/
Urge your University/School/Organization to put out a statement denouncing Israel
Organize a Protest/Participate in a local one
You might already be doing this but while calling your reps, tell them that as a voter, you're unwilling to support them in the upcoming election unless they urge the White House to take a stand against Israel and stop funding them
Share art/writing/films around Palestinian culture
If you're part of a union, ask them what they're doing to urge their industry leaders to take a stand against Israel + pressure the White House OR urge them to start a strike/walkout/etc if they're not doing anything already
Talk with your friends IRL about Palestine, whether in an activist capacity or watching a movie or literally anything
Reach out to a mosque to see if you can help them with anything
See if your city/state council has put out a statement in support of Gazans. If not, try to push them to do so.
Donate to Palestine Legal or Direct Action if you have some money to spare
KEEP TALKING ON SOCIAL MEDIA!!!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!
I know some of these don't feel like they have as big of an impact on helping Palestinians, but we do need to make an effort not to forget their humanity in the face of continued erasure and the media's sensationalist rhetoric.
Talking on social media and posting—while not seeming like a lot—does SO much. I know in USAmerica, it's like yelling into a void, but political analysts are saying that most of the "Global South" has completely lost any amount of goodwill it may have had the past few years. Hopefully, countries will start to put sanctions and embargoes en masse on the US and Israel soon.
Our goals here are BOTH short-term and long-term. We hope for the life and liberation of the Palestinian people, so anything that you can think of might help at some point in the future is encouraged to at least try.
If anyone else has any more ideas, feel free to reblog and add on. Thank you for asking, and here is to a liberated Palestine where Palestinians can live and thrive without fear.
So I found this thing on Xitter, and I tried doing my research to see if any kind of facts came up about it on whether it was true or not. I got a mixed bag, half sources saying yes, and they other saying no, the Samson Option is not a real thing. (Most of the “articles” saying the Samson Option were true were written with many, many antisemitic dog-whistles). As a last resort, I was wondering if you knew anything about this and whether it is true or not, or it is just another “Jews control the whole world” conspiracy theory.
so the ‘samson option’ refers to a deterrence strategy that has never (and is unlikely to) be put into effect. essentially it’s ‘retaliation with nuclear weapons if israel is truly on the brink of extinction’—like samson, the enemy would go down with it.
israel has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons—this is a strategy known as ‘nuclear opacity’, a form of strategic ambiguity. but it’s also an open secret that they have nuclear warheads.
laughably untrue that israel alone is opaque about their nuclear arsenal. do these people know anything about nuclear deterrence or history or weapons production or the iran nuclear deal or— (no, no, no, and no).
i can find no evidence corroborating the claim that israel has stockpiles of sarin gas, which assad used in syria and iraq used against iranian forces in 1988. that doesn’t mean israel doesn’t have chemical weapons, but this claim in particular is unsubstantiated.
that last tweet is conspiracy nonsense. international pressure has worked on israel before (do you remember when israel had control of the entire sinai peninsula?) and the world is still very much here.
“the world is essentially being held hostage by them” will blow back on all jews, absolutely, even if that is not the intent.
... Ukraine itself stands with Israel, so I guess it's time to taste a little bit of the zionist poison.
I stand with Palestine 🇵🇸
and once again: it drives me absolutely fucking insane that the posts with the most notes and the most engagement aka the voices being most listened to do not come from jewish people, or palestinian people, or israeli people, or anyone actually remotely personally affected by this, it's just by some fucking american tankie wasps getting high off the clout and popularity of telling people how to be a politics understander. where the fuck is your 'listen to marginalized voices' now, tumblr. fuck you.
i think a lot of people are clinging on to very antisemitic ideas about the global Jewish elite being behind the current us military policy in Israel because they’re antisemitic
i also think a lot of them are doing it because it provides targets that are easier to deal with mentally and simpler to fight than…: the entire us military industrial complex. Like so many of these isssues are in fact *worse* than you think they are. The us doesn’t give Israeli civilians or the Israeli economy direct cash. It hasnt been brainwashed into loving Israeli civilians through some secret (((hasbara))). The “aid” is a blank check of money that’s already been set aside for military purposes that is then used to buy weapons directly from American companies - think of it like a red lobster gift card from your uncle, who owns a red lobster. As such the money goes straight back to American arms dealers. Closed loop. They have so much reason for this continue forever and for war to continue forever. This isn’t a justification for any of the horrific things being done right now but it’s like…: so much more complicated than American Jews learning to sing hatikvah and I think there’s a massive misdirection on some of the interests involved, because those misdirects make an easier situation to swallow. After all Judaism as a whole, American Judaism, is so much less powerful than the collective interests of the military industrial complex - it’s an easier entity for people to call a war on
I'm going to try to turn my anger and frustration into action. I've abstained from making a post like this for a long time because I really don't enjoy this topic, but, we've reached a moment of such intense anti-Semitism that I think it's my duty, as a Holocaust historian, to say something. I'm going to use bullet points.
- Jewish people in leftist and pro-Palestine spaces who inform others that their speech has anti-Semitic undertones aren't trying to silence you; they're asking you to please not make the space actively unsafe for them because they WANT to stay and do this work. Anti-Semitism is part of the intellectual heritage of the West, and all the places the West has colonized. It is part of the language, the speech, the literature, in ways it's hard for non-Jews to grasp. When Jews hear it and see it, they're trying to educate you so these spaces can stay safe and accessibly to them; please listen.
- The "Zionists" aren't getting celebrities who speak out against the IDF's war crimes in Gaza fired from projects because "they" control Hollywood and the media. Those celebrities were spewing anti-Semitism veiled as criticism of Israel, and it's absolutely just that they face consequences. I wish all public figures faced consequences like these. Susan Sarandon, for example, said the following at a rally in New York: “There are a lot of people afraid of being Jewish at this time, and are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.” This isn't courageous pro-Palestinian speech. This is very very blatant anti-Semitic rhetoric, in which Jews are viewed as an internal enemy; a hive-mind inherently more loyal to each other than the state; and who must suffer collectively for any act perpetrated by any Jew. Hitler talked like this. Henry Ford talked like this. The White Russians talked like this. Just because Susan Sarandon is too willfully ignorant to understand why what she said was deeply violent and anti-Semitic, doesn't mean that it wasn't anti-Semitic. To the contrary, these words not simply condone violence against Jews, but incite it. That doesn't help Palestinians. To the contrary, it creates situations where Jews may feel that they have no other option but to....flee to Israel. As happened to much of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Jewry during the second half of the twentieth century.
- Jews talking about the Holocaust, their historical experiences, and their intergenerational trauma is not political speech. It is not about Palestine, or Israel, until someone else decides to make it about Palestine, or Israel. Further, the realness of that trauma does not exist in counter towards the trauma experience by Palestinians. It does not cancel out the traumatic experiences of Palestinians, and vice versa. Both traumatic experiences simply exist. The Jew who barely survived Auschwitz and the death marches and made their way--sobbing and broken, with no living family to turn to and no home to return to--to the Promised Land when they had nowhere else to go; and the Palestinian Arab, who spent centuries living on and cultivating that land, only to be violently expelled from their property and forced to live as a landless refugee within a State built on their ancestral land, but not created for them, who now exist in silently damning photographs of Palestinian elders holding keys to properties which no longer exist...they are both real. These experiences exist, and not in contradiction to each other. As educated, informed people, our place is not to fight over which trauma mattered more or was worse, or happened in the first place, G-d forbid, but simply to accept that both experiences happened and were real. Are real. Very few things in this Conflict are easy or simple, and the only option is to learn to hold those contradictions in your head.
- All Israelis are as much a Netanyahu-loving Arab-hating group of nationals, as all US Americans are a Trump-loving POC-hating group of nationals. A lot of Israelis are DEEPLY unhappy with the war, Netanyahu, and his handling of Palestinians, and have been for a VERY long time. Netanyahu has been engaging openly in criminal acts, and working to undermine Israel's democracy for YEARS now. Further, Israel has a HUGE number of active political parties; at least 13 active right now, for a country with the population of ~9,813,920. It is a Parliamentary system, meaning that the party in charge is not the party which wins the majority of votes, but which wins the largest PROPORTION of votes. A majority of Israelis don't need to have voted for Netanyahu's party (Likud) for his party to have won the majority of seats in the Knesset. Moreover, if all Israelis WERE just like that first line of this bullet point's first sentence, why should American Jews have to be punished for that? Why is this belief in Jews as a collective hive-mind still so prevalent?
- "None of this matters all Jews should know better based on their historical experiences and any Jew who supports Israel is basically a Nazi." Yeah. A lot to unpack. First of all, no one is born having been educated and and encouraged to engage in critical thought about their past(s). That's a choice. Jews are before anything else, people, and they, like all people, must choose to grow, learn, and change. They, like you, can choose to learn from the past, or just sprint forward without critical thought. Like you. Like anyone. Now, for the next part....non-Jews really like using Hitler/Third Reich/Holocaust comparisons in relation to Israel and Palestine. Let's break this down to what it actually is. Israel and Nazi Germany are both examples of the nation-state. They are also VERY FAR from the only examples of a nation-state. Indonesia in a nation-state. China is/wants to be a nation state. Poland, Norway, Croatia, Bhutan, Myanmar, Rwanda, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey; Thailand, Mongolia; these are ALL nation-states. A nation-state--a type of polity which exists for a singular ethno-national group based on the understanding that that ethno-national group has long term historical roots in that particular geographic area--are an inherently exclusive type of political organization, and a product of modernity. Because they are inherently exclusive in their conception of statehood and citizenship, all nation-states will contain minority populations which exist as an existential threat to the State's ideological roots and agreed upon mythology. Under the best of circumstances, the majority will handle this minority with condescending interest and concern; under the worst, shit will go to ethnic cleaning and/or genocide places very fucking fast. This is not something exclusive to the Third Reich, or Myanmar, or Turkey, or Indonesia, or Bhutan, or China etc; this is a problem at the very heart of the construct of the nation-state. The fact that a certain portion of critics of Israel choose specifically Nazi Germany and the Holocaust as comparisons for Israeli policy towards Palestine again and again and again says, to me, that this is a person who is 1) sick of "whiny Jews;" 2) sick of having to pretend to care about the Holocaust; 3) is thrilled that "The Jews" (not Israel, the Jews) are "just as bad" as Hitler so now they can stop pretending to care about the Holocaust; and 4) knows that invoking that comparison will deeply disturb all Jews around, and will use their distress as "proof" that "all Jews" are Zionists who hate Palestine and use Holocaust memory as a tool of ideological violence. It's transparent, ignorant, and offensive.
If you are angry or defensive or wanting to unfollow me or respond with righteous indignation after reading this, it may be because you are an anti-Semite, and are suffering from cognitive dissonance based on the fact that you believe that you are a good person with no bigoted beliefs. The good news, is that you can use your negative emotions to learn, and grow a more complex understanding of all the truths and lies and parallel, contradictory truths at the heart of all this. This blog is a space I hope is open and welcome for everyone, Jewish, Palestinian, and otherwise, because deserves access to history, and an understanding of how history works. This is not a space, however, which will ever strive to make anti-Semites feel good about themselves.
Written by a Gazan author:
A post by @bambahalva on the subject of Oct 7 denials and demands for "proof" (that is already readily available) made me think of something related, but in the interest of not flooding her (very good) post I'll make a new one -
Does it make anyone else's skin crawl the way so many people outside of Israel and Palestine seem to face this war (and all the others before them, and the continued issues between wars) in a way that feels almost voyeuristic? The willingness of people outside Israel and Palestine to post graphic photos of dead children at the slightest provocation, the eagerness to breathlessly share the lurid details of real and alleged crimes, the insistence that it's somehow a moral duty to spend hours scrolling through photos of horrific scenes of pure human tragedy... It's. I mean. It's fucking grotesque.
I've complained on this blog before about true crime girlies (poorly) "analyzing" photos of the Oct. 7 aftermath and tbh, many of the reactions to the I/P conflict broadly remind me a lot of the worst aspects of true crime "fandom," where rather than being motivated by a real desire for justice or even a fascination with a complex real life mystery, people seek out and indeed demand the sordid details of the worst day of someone's life, treating a family's ongoing waking nightmare as entertainment to which they are entitled.
I don't know. I'm just thinking of how many times I've seen photos of horrific scenes of human suffering, bodies in Gaza and bodies from the kibbutzim, and dead Syrian children shared on Twitter by a self-proclaimed "activist" from Michigan in the name of Palestinian liberation, who doesn't know enough to know that these children died in a different country ten years ago, but by G-d, they're doing truly good work showing their corpses to strangers for...
What purpose, exactly?
I'm thinking of strangers with no influence and no power and no connection to this war save an emoji they just added to their username demanding to see graphic photos of rapes and mutilations, as if they're entitled to it, as if it's their right as an onlooker to gawk at human misery - And again I say, for what?
I’m sorry if I’m taking over your post op but it kills me how this post pointing out Hamas’s cruelty gets like what 80 notes, while posts with blood libel and conspiracy theories around Jewish people and stanning Hamas get thousands upon thousands of notes, all agreeing with that sentiment. It is really is clear that the people on here don’t give two shits about the lives being lost in this conflict and are more interested in pushing their ideology and bigotry.
who the Fuck still supports Hamas?!
yesterday they taunted everyone with showing three of the hostages and letting the world know that today they would tell everyone about their fate. Today they informed that two of those three are dead, they killed them.
Can you even imagine what kind of torture that had been not only for those three, but for their families and friends? To show you someone you love, someone you pray to return to you, only to tell you that in 24 hours you will know if they killed them or not? How it is to find out that they are gone forever? How could you believe that any good person could do that to another person? How could it be okay for a "freedom fighter" to do that?
Or are you going with the "it's not true, it is israeli propaganda" shit again like you did with the hostages? Only to not say anything when it is proven - trough exchanging the hostages for actual criminals - that they in fact did have the hostages the whole time?! How can you believe every shit lie they tell, but when the same people over the same channels inform you over their sensless hate and horrific brutal actions you suddenly claim it to be a lie?!
How can you still defend Hamas after all these things? After you were proven again and again that they care about no ones freedom, that they are not just and over all not good?! How can you still claim to be for human rights? Against discrimination and hate and violence?! How dare you still claim that you are anything but a raging antisemite?!
You yell "shame on you" at family members of the hostages and random jews you see on the street. But they are not the ones that should be ashamed. You are.
You do not, under any circumstances, have to hand it to the DPRK
sometimes u do gotta hand it to dprk
Dear Free Palestine fans,
If you want to combat the inherent antisemitism in your ranks, don't say shit like "Israel wants jews to feel hated/unsafe". Israel didn't make you chant "Gas the jews" at Sydney hours after a bloody massacre of innocent civilians. Israel didn't make you celebrate and then deny the gruesome murders and mass rapes of men, women and children. Israel didn't make you carry Isis flags, or wear Hamas symbology and call Hamas freedom fighters. Israel didn't make you chant to globalize the intifada, to push 7 million jews and 2 million arabs into the sea, or one solution (how that last one did *not* remind you of Hitler's final solution I have no idea). Israel didn't make you excuse the slaughter and say that Hamas shouldn't be destroyed. Israel didn't make you rewrite Jewish history. Israel didn't make you attack and harass diaspora jews and bar them from using Cafe bathrooms (segregation much?). Israel didn't make you attack Jewish businesses. Israel didn't make you deny our right for self determination instead of advocating that both sides have a right to a state. Israel didn't make you call for a ceasefire WITHOUT the stipulation that Hamas stop shooting as well and release ALL the hostages, among which there is a 10 month old BABY and toddlers as young as 3 years old.
I could go on. Point is, Israel didn't make you do any of that. You did that. On your own. Take some fucking accountability and clean up your movement.
For a friend who wanted links to some posts I made about antisemitism, allyship, and how to support Palestine without being antisemitic—which is both possible and easy to do!
How do you know if you’re antisemitic?
How to be a good ally for Jewish people. I responded to a wonderful ask from @faggotry-enjoyer about how to be a better ally and to discuss Israel/Palestine with people who are inclined to distrust Jews due to unexamined antisemitism.
Important post about the dangers faced by Jews as an extreme minority. There are good examples in the reblogs and replies and tags—both of great ways for non-Jews to provide support as well as if antisemites denying their own antisemitism. Therese even one example of ways Jews can and do disagree with each other while remaining respectful without delving into antisemitism OR Islamophobia OR denying the rights and dignity of Palestinians. Jews can do this and so can non-Jews. But that can’t happen if people hate us too much to listen to anything we have to say.
The emotional toll of antisemitism on Jewish people.
Example of the death threats we get that are designed to make us look like bad guys.
If Jews can learn about the Holocaust in detail before we even reach the age of ten, you can and should too.
Don’t trust people who rely on bad sources. People do make genuine mistakes. Here’s an example of bad faith link sharing. Especially when Reblogging things. Even I don’t have time to always check every source in a post. Also, it’s possible that a link seemed legitimate when it was originally posted but the source is either no longer trustworthy or the OP got better at assessing sources. If an error in their original sourcing is pointed out, they should correct it publicly. If they are sharing a link as an OP they should always take time to be as responsible as possible.
There are plenty more posts under my #leftist antisemitism tag to look into about a variety of ways that antisemitism manifests in left wing circles.
Allies, please reblog with any posts you think relevant for a someone new to dismantling their antisemitism.
sorry if this is a dumb question and i understand if you don't want to answer but do you have links to posts explaining why israel isn't an apartheid state? i swear i read posts like that on your blog before but i don't know how to refind them
Israeli Arabs have legal equality with Jews. Same restaurants, same pools, same seats on the bus, same voting rights. I would favorably compare the treatment of Israeli Arabs with that of any minority group in any country on Earth.
The West Bank has a military occupation, with (pretty fast) checkpoints and no right to vote about the government running that military. Military occupations are bad and some of us have been against this particular one for decades. The anti-occupation movement hasn't gotten anywhere, they've just been stuck. Being stuck in a military occupation for X more years doesn't make it apartheid, just like being stuck in a bad marriage for X more years doesn't make you divorced. Meanwhile, the 2020 Abraham Accords showed that multiple Arab states were willing to accept this unchanging status quo and deal with Israel as it is. Those two factors - the stagnant, unchanging nature of the occupation, and the clear loss of interest in the Palestinian cause - combined to have the latest crop of awareness-raising college interns at some shifty NGOs try to force change by abracadabra'ing together a new concept of "apartheid" that exists solely for Israel. And it is working, just like "Christ-killer" and "stabbed Germany in the back" worked.
In 2010, Human Rights Watch published an extremely critical report on Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Dragged them up one wall and down the other. Yet there was no accusation of "apartheid" there. In the report, page 33, they cited a lawsuit by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that had said it was apartheid for the West Bank military occupation authorities to ban Palestinians from driving on Highway 443 after repeated firebombings / shootings against Israelis. The Israeli High Court ruled that it was inappropriate to ban Palestinians from the road, and it re-established their equal driving access - they have had it ever since. The court also said that the accusation of apartheid behind that now-ended ban was dishonest, because the security concerns were not based on race; there were and are no "Jewish-only" roads anywhere, even when WB Palestinians were denied road access, Israeli Arabs could and did drive there. The HRW 2010 report included a long summary of that finding, without challenge. As bad as they saw Israel, they agreed it wasn't apartheid.
Then in 2020 came the Abraham Accords, so while nothing at all had changed in the administration of the West Bank, in 2021 HRW said it actually was apartheid. It really is that simple. The most famous legal convention banning apartheid specifies that it is race-based. HRW instead went with a different legal convention on apartheid, one that says it could be based on national origin if it involves discrimination among citizens of the same country.... and then they up and added their own twist to that, saying they will consider it apartheid if there is discrimination based on national origin AMONG PEOPLE WHO AREN'T CITIZENS OF THE SAME COUNTRY. In a very real sense, HRW declared Mexico is an apartheid state because Americans can't vote in its elections.
In 2022, Amnesty International followed with their own report, saying that not only was the military occupation now "apartheid," but that Israel itself had been an apartheid state ever since it was established in 1948. This moral perversion had the effect of saying Israel literally INVENTED apartheid since in May 1948 it didn't even exist in South Africa yet. It also said that Amnesty International - founded 1961 - had been looking at an apartheid the whole time but never recognized it. To make things even more dishonest, Amnesty said they "are not claiming Israeli conditions are analogous to South Africa," meaning anything that shows how Israel is different from South Africa doesn't count. They're using the South African word for the South African policy but it's actually not like South Africa at all so be quiet, neener neener no backsies.
I shouldn't have to take that seriously. Neither should anyone. Palestinians and their advocates should be ashamed to have to lean on such an obvious bad-faith lie.
Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013, never once accused Israel of apartheid, and instead repeatedly said he supported Zionism and a 2-state solution. Mandela's lawyer, still alive, says the accusation is a lie. Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Islamist party that joined Israel's governing coalition in 2021, says the accusation is a lie. And if people want to bandy around NGO business cards, here is the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2017:
“The Red Cross was very familiar with the regime that prevailed in South Africa during the apartheid period, and we are responding to all those who raise their claim of apartheid against Israel: No, there is no apartheid here, no regime of superiority of race, of denial of basic human rights to a group of people because of their alleged racial inferiority. There is a bloody national conflict, whose most prominent and tragic characteristic is its continuation over the years, decades-long, and there is a state of occupation. Not apartheid.”
There's a lot more you can see about the shifty terminology, unreliable sourcing, and longstanding culture of antisemitism and racism within Amnesty International. People who can cite chapter and verse of why the Salvation Army, Autism Speaks, Chik-Fil-A and Harry Potter are problematic should not be shocked.
Jew here with a friendly reminder that:
Criticizing Isreal ≠ antisemetic
Supporting Palestine ≠ antisemitic
Believing in the Free Palestine cause ≠ antisemitic
BUT ALSO
A random ass Jew just living their life oceans away has nothing to do with the Isreal-Palestine conflict
Palestinian Jews exist
Jews that support Palestine exist (I am one of them)
Calling out ACTUAL antisemitism ≠ supporting Isreal
They start war, we win war, they complain, we get human rights allegations, repeat.
“Israel should be charged with war crimes!!”
But not Palestine? Not Hamas - the elected government of Gaza?
How about Russia? They bombed maternity wards and orphanages. Why aren’t the leftists demanding their war crime trial? The double standards are getting old.
Everything you complain about with Israel (if true) is exactly what Hamas and the Palestinians have been doing to them as well.
“Israel has wiped out entire families!” So did Hamas.
“Israel is bombing Gaza!” Palestine is bombing Israel (and, ironically, Gaza as well).
“An IDF soldier raped someone!” Hamas employed mass rape as a weapon of war against Israeli women.
“Israel is trying to wipe out Palestinians!” Hamas is trying to wipe out Jews.
We can keep going on this. The list goes on. Not only that, but multiple other countries have employed such tactics against their own people and other countries. Not a single cry for war crime trials.
A brief History of Mizrahi Jews in Arabic countries and Their expulsion
A\N: While I am an Ashkenazi Jew, I have done A LOT of research, and have both Iraqi friends and relatives to corroborate this with. Also, I'm petty - an Iraqi user who comments regularly on my posts seems to forget about his own country's Jewish history... Well, I hope he forgot instead of the more likely reality: It seems like Arabic people nowadays aren't aware of Jewish history in their countries since they either killed to expelled them all. Thus is born the constant argument that all Jews originated in Europe and are merely settlers in the Middle East.
I realized that what may be obvious to me won't be obvious to others since I'm a history nerd who grew up in Israel with plenty of rich archeological evidence and resources surrounding me. I'm happy to make these posts in hopes of educating others and contributing my part to ending antisemitism and prejudice. ___________________
You might have seen the following picture in one of my previous posts:
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, in this case, it concludes hundreds of years of discrimination, violence, and exile for Mizrahi Jews. * It is important to note that numbers are slightly varied between sources, but the meaning is clear.
In a nutshell- all throughout history, the fate of Jewish people in countries where they weren't the religious majority was the same:
Discriminatory laws, blood libels, being blamed for disasters > violence & murder > Pogroms * > and eventually- exile or mass murder AKA ethnic cleansing \ genocide.
Pogrom- the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries.
Every Jewish community has its own Pogrom. While my side of the family might immediately think of the Kristallnacht or persecution & pogroms in Hungary, it is different for Jews from different backgrounds. You can read about a few cases of forced conversion to Islam here.
A brief History of the land of Israel
The land of Israel has always been considered a strategic passageway, and so many empires throughout history have conquered it:
* I simply cannot accurately write 3000+ years of Jewish history in the land of Israel. I found that this video summarizes it perfectly.
Exile from the land of Israel
Jews were exiled from the land of Israel numerous times since the Assyrian empire conquered Israel in 732 BCE, to what we call "the diaspora" גולה. It was not by choice and we were persecuted everywhere we went.
Jews were not allowed to legally return to Israel until 1948 when the British mandate over the land of Israel ended and Israel was formed. Yes, even during the Holocaust.
The Jewish answer to exile - Aliyah עליה There have been 5 waves of illegal immigration from all over the world to the land of Israel before 1948, recorded in modern times.
Chart taken from Wikipedia (their chart was the best I could find in English)
Forced Conversion
Whether in conquered Israel or in exile, Jews were often forced to convert to either Christianity or Islam. The choice was between conversion or death.
*You can read more about some of the forced conversion of Jews during history here and here.
First Case study- The last jew of Peki'in, Margalit Zinati
Peki'in is an ancient village in the upper Galilee, Northern Israel. Nowadays, its population is mostly Druze.
Peki'in has had a Jewish presence since the Second Temple period, until Arab riots in the 1930s*. Meet the remaining member of the Zinatis, the only family who returned. (aish.com)
*Read more on the Arab riots of the 1930s here and here. Margalit is currently the last Jew living in the village of Peki'in . She is the last direct descendent of the Zinati Cohen family. The Zinati family's origins are dated back to the Second Temple era. The former Jewish community of Peki'in maintained a presence there since the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). That is when the polytheistic Persian Empire conquered the land of Israel. For reference- that was approximately 500 years before Jesus was even born! "During which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and ended with the First Jewish–Roman War and the Roman siege of Jerusalem." (Wikipedia)
As an adult, Margalit chose to not marry so she could stay in Peki'in and continue her family's Jewish legacy in Peki'in. She later became in charge of the ancient synagogue in the village and turned her basement into a visiting center \ museum of Jewish history in Peki'in- "House of Zinati". in 2018, she lit up a torch as part of Israel's 70th Independence Day Torch lighting ceremony (which is considered an honor given to influential and trailblazing people).
-Margalit Zinati pictured in the Peki'in Synagogue yard, 2016 Picture taken from Wikipedia, uploaded by Deror Avi.
Second Case study - Iraqi Jews (Babylonian Jews \ יְהוּדִים בָּבְלִים)
Iraqi Jews are one of the oldest documented Jewish communities living in the Middle East. It is estimated that they originated around 600 BC.ת
The Farhud الفرهود הפרהוד
Unfortunately, Iraqi Jewish history ended in the same pattern I've described earlier. The Farhud was the violent mass dispossession against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq between 1-2 June 1941. was the pogrom or the "violent dispossession" that was carried out against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on 1–2 June 1941, It immediately followed the British victory in the Anglo-Iraqi War.
Background for the Farhud:
WW2- At the time, many Arabic countries in the Middle East agreed with Nazi ideology.
History of violence towards Jews.
The Anglo-Iraqi War (2–31 May 1941) - caused rising tension, and as usual, it was turned on the Jews.
personal family ties to the Farhud My relative was born in 1939 in Iraq, to a big upper-class Jewish family. Unfortunately, the mass exile of Jews in the 1950s didn't skip her family: she was stripped of her belongings and exiled to Israel along with her family. In the 1950s there were approximately 140,000 Iraqi Jews. As of 2021, there are only 4 left.
----------------- Please feel free to add anything I missed in the notes. And as usual - remember I am a human being. If you cuss or harass me, I will block and report you.
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Online Sources: * https://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/865383 - Hebrew article, Title means "Sad ending to a magnificent history: Only 4 Jews left in Iraq".
What was the Farhud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farhud
History of the Jewish community in Baghdad https://cojs.org/the_jewish_community_in_baghdad_in_the_eighteenth_century-_zvi_yehuda-_nehardea-_babylonian_jewry_heritage_center-_2003/
What are Pogroms?https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms?gclid=Cj0KCQiAkeSsBhDUARIsAK3tiedM7DuwIaSQX-kRxvXTgCDxN6-zqeo_DNNFgyanSYGyGOhwu_0vfrkaAg6REALw_wcB
The last Jew of Peki'in, Margalit Zinati https://aish.com/the-last-jew-of-pekiin/
Arab riots of 1930s- https://www.gov.il/en/Departments/General/ben_zvi_30 https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-1936-arab-riots
Israel's history from ancient times & timeline : https://www.travelingisrael.com/timeline-land-israel/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=iiUIWnU-Ofk
Second Temple era - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple_period
Forced conversion of Jews across history- https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18mvnct.7?seq=4
https://academic.oup.com/book/32113/chapter-abstract/268043723?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Key terms necessary for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict : Part 1- Ancient Israel to the founding of modern Israel, Jewish terms
A/N: Hey! The results are in, and this is the topic my followers chose🫶 Writing this felt very much like retaking my high school history finals lol. Enjoy reading.
*These terms and definitions will be organized by topics, in chronological order. **If I have made a mistake or if you feel like I forgot something important- don’t hesitate to tell me in the comments. It is very hard to summarize thousands of years. *** Be respectful, I am human.
1. Key terms in Judaism and the connection to the land of Israel :
Israel and Judea- Were the two ancient Jewish kingdoms.
Zion ציון- Is one of the 70 biblical names for the city of Jerusalem. In fact, Jerusalem is referenced by this name in the bible over 150 times.
The word Zion is very much embedded into our culture: it is used in many prayers and Jewish texts written throughout Jewish history, songs etc.
Zion and the exile from it:
It is especially used when describing longing and the wanting of return to the land of Israel:
The most famous example that uses the word Zion is the biblical prayer from the book of Psalms, 137:
1 By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
תהילים פרק קלז א עַל נַהֲרוֹת, בָּבֶל--שָׁם יָשַׁבְנוּ, גַּם-בָּכִינוּ: בְּזָכְרֵנוּ, אֶת-צִיּוֹן.
This verse is an example of the longing for Israel: as it was written after the exile to Babylon.
*Yes, the funky Boney M song is based on this Psalms verse :) Coming full circle- It is also used in the official hymn of the modern state of Israel, Ha'Tikva. התקווה, written by Naftali Herz Imber. This word might sound familiar to you, as it is also the origin of the word "Zionism".
Zionism- is the notion that the Jewish people deserve to have a state of their own.
Semite- is a term for people relating to, or constituting a subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic language family:
Semite languages- are a group of ancient languages, that originated around the same time, in Africa and the Middle East- aka the neighboring countries of Israel.
The Semitic languages are: Hebrew and its other ancient dialects , Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic and more. Unfortunately , most of these are extinct and no longer spoken.
The languages that are still spoken to this very day are : Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew.
Some Hebrew Fun facts :
-While there are only estimated 8 million Hebrew speakers nowadays( most of them Israeli), Hebrew is considered a holy language in is spoken during prayer.
-Ancient Hebrew and modern Hebrew are very similar. So much so that if I were to time travel, I could have a decent conversation with my ancestors😊 (some pronunciations, grammar and words have changed, but it’s essential the same).
-Which cannot be done with Romanic languages or Celtic languages..
Antisemitism A\N: This word is getting its whole section because it simply deserves it. Nowadays, every time a Jewish person says something is antisemitic, they will usually be bombarded with mocking comments about how Jews like to call everything antisemitic. If had a nickel for every time I got those comments or an Arab person tried to troll me in the comment section by saying "I can't be antisemitic if I'm a Semite myself"... Let's make it clear (once again).
As I have explained before, the word Semite refers to a group of ethnicities. However, the word Antisemitic refers to Jewish hatred: "Antisemitism is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews.[2][3][4] This sentiment is a form of racism,[5][6] and a person who harbors it is called an antisemite. Though antisemitism is overwhelmingly perpetrated by non-Jews, it may occasionally be perpetrated by Jews in a phenomenon known as auto-antisemitism ".
TLDR: Don't be a Jerk and use antisemitic rhetoric, blood libels, and stereotypes... You don't get to choose if something is antisemitic or not, Jews do.
2. Modern Israel and its founding
The Knesset- Is the Israeli parliament consisting of 120 members, elected democratically every 4 years. Usually- there have been 5 elections in the last 5 years. It also currently has 36 ministers. Yes, that _IS_ a lot.
Kibbutz- "Kibbutz is a community where people voluntarily live and work together on a noncompetitive basis. The first kibbutzim were organized by idealistic young Zionists in the beginning of the 20th century."
As time moved on, starting in the 80s, many Kibbutzim struggled financially and closed down. Today, there are 265 Kibbutzim left, with approximately 200,000 residents. Less than 20% of them are communal.
Unfortunately today, the word Kibbutz has a different connotation:
British mandate- Yep, they colonized us too lol. After the first world war, Between 1917 and May 1948 (Israel was founded literally as soon as the mandate ended).
Fun fact- Today, there are still a few rules left from the British mandate In Israel (Most of them were updated or changed by Israeli law makers after it's founding, usually by the Knesset and the Supreme court of justice).
“Homa U’migdal” (חומה ומגדל Tower and stockade)- During the British mandate, Jewish settlements were built overnight due to a legal loophole still valid from the Ottoman rule. The loophole prevented the British from destroying the new settlement: "Homa U'Migdal is the name of an operation that the leaders of the Yishuv initiated in Palestine, during which 52 new settlements were founded. This operation was a response of the Yishuv to the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt and the restrictions the Mandatory authorities placed, both on the building of new Jewish settlements, and on the amount of Jewish immigrants allowed into Palestine. The building of each settlement began at night. First, the guard tower and the defense stockade were set up, so the operation was named “Tower and Stockade”. According to an old Ottoman law that was still valid during the Mandate period, the destroying of a building was not allowed after the roof had been erected. For this reason the British did not destroy the "Tower and Stockade" settlements which had not received building permits. "
The 2-state solution - The notion that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be two states for two people- one for Arabs and one for Jews.
Balfour's declaration- is the famous letter sent by then-British foreign secretary Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild in 1917. In the letter, Lord Balfour stated that the British Empire would support the forming of a Jewish Zionist state in the land of Israel.
Peel Commission- was a community created in 1936 by the British rule during their Mandate over Israel. As the name suggests, the head of the Commity was Lord Peel. A suggestion for a Two-state solution was suggested to representatives of both Jews and Arabs. Unfortunately, the Arabs have refused it.
1947 Partition Plan- A partition plan suggested by the UN, that included another draft of the two-state solution, with different borders. The Arabs have refused it once more.
Declaration of Israel's Independence from Britain:
And so, as the British mandate ended on May 14th, 1948, the people's Council (that later served as the initial government of Israel) declared the formation of the modern state of Israel.
The day following the declaration, the Arabs in Israel revolted and with the help of 5 foreign armies that invaded Israel, tried to stop the formation of Israel: Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.
They failed and Israel was formed.
You can watch David Ben Gurion, head of the council (and Israel's future first prime minister) declare its formation/independence here.
PS- this was the flag of Palestine before the current one:
Sources:
-Semite languages pic: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Semitic-languages
-Kibbutz: * https://kibbutzulpan.org/about_kibbutz/ *https://www.hamichlol.org.il/%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C (Hebrew)
-Homa U'Migdal" : http://www.zionistarchives.org.il/en/Pages/TowerStockade.aspx