NoJoMo 23:16-17 in NoJoMo 2023

There’s a lot I want to say about Israel and Palestine, but as maybe the only (kind-of, sort-of, according to Pew, anyway) Jew on Prosebox, I end up thinking about the response, and, well… Jon Stewart covered that, all the way back in 2014.

Although, if you want to know my feelings on it in a nutshell, Jon also covered that, in an interview with Kweli Talib and Uproxx earlier this year:

As a Jewish person, you are saddled with the idea that you are not a citizen of America, you are not a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of Israel. And you must back their actions […] and one has nothing to do with the other. One has nothing to do with being Jewish, or not being Jewish, or whatever it is people choose on their religion, on their history, or on their background. It has to do with the way I view governments […]

What has happened in that part of the world is tragic. And unfortunately, I think the biggest problem is it’s to nobody’s benefit, except the Palestinian people, that it get resolved.

It’s not to the benefit of the Israeli government. They use the Palestinian issue as a cudgel. And they continue to build settlements and whatever it is they want to do. And no one is suggesting that terror attacks are okay and a good thing, but if you’re held to that standard, that you don’t get your state until nobody tries to kill anybody else, well, then you’re never going to get your state.

It’s not to the benefit of other Arab leaders in the region, because their people can be mistreated in the same way by their autocracies. So, why do they want to fix the Palestinian situation, when they can use “Israel” as an easy code to keep their people in line? “Don’t look at us, look at Israel! We’re fucking with you? Look how they fuck with the Palestinians!”

It’s not to the United States’ benefit, because we have an ally in the region. That’s a lot more complicated for us than it is in other ways, because they rely on us for military aid and all other kinds of things.

So, if it’s not in anybody’s interest, in the powers of status quo? What chance do they have?
And it’s not really to Hamas’s benefit, and it’s not to Fatah’s benefit, because then they lose their grip on power.

The only people who constantly lose are the day-in, day-out Palestinian people. Because it’s to no one’s benefit to help them, but them.

And so, not recognizing that is to be blind to any dynamic. But that doesn’t negate how I feel about antisemitism. And semitism is not the same as Zionism. It’s not the same as any of it. But, boy, don’t have that conversation!

Quick note: Zionism is a specific belief that Israel was promised to the Jews and the Holy Land in the Levant “belongs” to them. Not all Jews are Zionists; for all intents and purposes, it’s a fringe belief and many, many Jews do not agree with it. I wanted to note this, because way too often, “Zionist” is used as a right-wing dog whistle. In this entry, I’m using “Zionist” to refer to a specific type of Jewish person, one who believes Israel not only should exist, but that Palestinians don’t have a right to their land and believes any and all criticisms of Israel or its government is inherently antisemitic.

Also: Orthodox Jews, I’ve learned this past week, actually tend more towards anti-Zionism and being anti-Israel, because they believe Israel can only be given to the Jews by a miraculous act of God, usually considered the coming of the Messiah (remember, Jews do not believe Christ was the Messiah, they believe he was a false prophet and that the Messiah is yet to come).

Political Zionism, which is what created Israel in 1948, was more or less invented by Theodor Herzl, who was a less compelling and far less convincing Karl Marx (his pamphlet, “The Jewish State”, is available in its entirety at the Jewish Virtual Library) and also, importantly, what’s known as a “secular Jew”. Basically, these are Jews who claim Jewish identity, have Jewish parents (or one Jewish parent, like in my case), may or may not have been raised in the faith and the culture, but don’t practice, don’t keep kosher, and don’t go to the temple. Technically, I’m a secular Jew, but I’m not a Zionist, because I don’t think the world owes me anything except, on occasion, hate crime laws. Which, looky there, already exist in the US.

Yeah, to all these American Zionists who claim that it’s “dangerous” to be Jewish in the US in 2023: We have hate crime laws that apply in cases of antisemitic crime. We’re not legally barred from home ownership on the basis of being Jewish or having Jewish ancestry. We’re not legally barred from any type of housing, employment, public services, social services, or even customer service purely on the basis of being Jewish. Jews in America are not oppressed in any way, because oppression is a state of legality.

Oppression is when the government bars someone from fully participating in society on the basis of their race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexuality, disability, language spoken, and country of origin. Trans people are oppressed in the US. Same-sex couples are oppressed. Women are oppressed. BIPOC, especially Native Americans, are oppressed. Disabled people are oppressed (did you know there’s a specific category of “subminimum wage” in the US of $4.25 cents an hour, and one of the categories of people who are eligible for this are disabled people?) But not Jews. It’s not legal to pay us less than Christians or other white people¹ for the same job. It’s not legal for a bank to take a mortgage application and say, “Oh, your last name is Bernstein? Well, sorry, but we don’t work with Jews.” There are no laws that prevent Jews, specifically, from getting an abortion (those laws apply to cis women and other people who can get pregnant). Jews aren’t likely to get killed by police for being Jewish in public. Wearing a yarmulke or a Star of David isn’t thought of by police as “suspicious”, and there isn’t an exceedingly high rate of arrest and imprisonment for Jews, most of which are for minor offenses and the direct result of laws that stemmed from slavery. There are no laws preventing Jews from marrying gentiles (I am the product of a Jewish-gentile marriage, I know this for a fact). There are no laws preventing Jews from adopting children. There are no laws preventing Jews from living in certain areas; even if the neighbors are the worst sort of antisemitic scumfucks, it is absolutely legal for a Jew to live in any neighborhood, in any city, in any county, in any state, throughout this country. There are no laws in the US that penalize “half-Jewish” people like me for existing.

Jewish people are not oppressed in the United States of America. That is just a statement of fact, which is abundantly and clearly supported by both empirical and legal evidence.

As to whether it’s “dangerous” to be Jewish? Well… Look, there’s really no right way to say this, so here it is. Antisemitism is wrong. I know antisemitic hate crimes have been on the rise since 10/7. A lot of Jews and people posting in support of Jews on social media are having their comments sections inundated with antisemitic comments and slurs. I understand that, and I feel that pain. That’s my community and people being hurt and victimized just for being Jewish. When a rabbi was murdered in Detroit a few weeks ago, literally everyone was condemning it as a hate crime, even though the Detroit PD has stated that her death was the result of a domestic dispute. (Look, people: When a woman is murdered, always consider first that it’s because of domestic violence, and if the evidence doesn’t bear it out, then look for other motives. It’s not like women don’t get murdered just for being women all the fucking time or anything– Oh, wait…)

But at the same time, I also know Islamophobic hate crimes have been on the upswing since 10/7, too, including a six-year-old Palestinian-American boy in Illinois who was murdered by his parents’ landlord (who also seriously wounded his mother, who was trying to protect him). I’ve heard crickets on this absolutely heinous, evil act from most Americans, including Zionists. And yes, it’s being investigated as a hate crime, but look at the initial reactions to both crimes: A rabbi was murdered, and people immediately condemned it as a hate crime and called it antisemitic. A literal fucking child was murdered, and crickets. Or worse, “Well, yes, that’s awful, but–“

That really says it all, doesn’t it?

The biggest problem I’m seeing with a lot of American Zionists is that they don’t know what real antisemitic oppression looks like. All they have are secondhand and third-hand stories about the Holocaust, and because a lot of them grew up in a safe space (like New York City, whose culture is so deeply intertwined with Ashkenazi Jewish culture as to be inextricable, or other Jewish communities), they didn’t have to deal with everyday antisemitism the way I did, growing up in the Rust Belt and being made to attend an Assemblies of God church. (Because, man alive, the AOGs really fuckin’ hate Jews.) So when someone throws a Nazi salute or calls them a k!ke, they don’t have the tools, knowledge, or experience to compare that to genuine Jewish oppression.

They never lived in a time when employers would run “Help Wanted - No Jews” ads, or when landlords could refuse to rent to Jewish families and banks could refuse mortgages to Jewish applicants. They can’t remember a time where the government was passing and enforcing laws limiting the number of Jewish immigrants and refugees allowed in every year. They never lived during the time when Americans’ attitudes towards Jews were worse than their attitudes towards communists (and probably never had the chance to learn about it; hell, I didn’t know about it until I watched Lindsay Ellis’s video about Mel Brooks and The Producers; oh, and a big part of that incredible negativity was the propaganda that Jews are communists). They didn’t grow up in a time where pogroms and lynchings were commonplace and rarely, if ever, punished by the law.

So yeah, if you’ve never had to deal directly with the knowledge that some people hate Jews? If you grew up surrounded by people who were constantly telling you that everyone hates Jews, the whole damned world is antisemitic, and Jews are among the most oppressed groups in the US, but you never experienced antisemitism directly in your daily life? If you grew up in a culture where nagging is common (and yeah, I know it’s a stereotype, but Jewish nagging really is a thing; my grandmother is a champion at it²) and no one sees a problem with it, and tells you it’s love? Where your parents and grandparents are dealing with a literal ton of intergenerational trauma and don’t even know the phrase “intergenerational trauma” and don’t have the tools to process it and heal? How else are you going to respond when something brushes up against you in such a hateful way?

I’m not excusing any of this, or saying “well, it’s just the way they are.” I’m saying I get it. I don’t have to condone something just because I understand it. It’s actually frustrating to me, how I’m expected to condone the worst attitudes from my people, just because I understand and even share in the trauma. Like, no, my sweet tangerines, I’m not going to cheer on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of any group of people, and certainly not because “Never Again!” “Never Again” means “Never Again For Anyone,” bubbales.

Yes, being called a k!ke or a Christ-killer hurts, but it’s not oppression. Getting antisemitic comments on social media is a form of abuse, but it’s not oppression (it’s not even a crime; whether or not it should be, it isn’t). Having someone throw a Nazi salute at you is scary, but it’s not oppression. Having acts of terror committed against us is terrible, but considering that (a) it was done by a terrorist outfit that Palestinians hate even more than we do and (b) the US government sends billions of dollars to Israel and backs them with our military, it cannot be a form of oppression. Oppression comes from the top, not the bottom. And the people who commit hate crimes are horrible, empty, hateful people, but they’re not oppressors; at best, they’re people who have nothing to live for except showing off how much hate they have for people who didn’t hurt them and couldn’t have helped them.

I really don’t know how much clearer or simpler this needs to be made. Something rubbing up against you and your existence isn’t oppressive, even if it’s abrasive. And to be clear, it’s not just Zionists who need to learn this. It’s most of us. TERFs, conservatives, bad comedians, politicians, everyone. At the end of the day, I think we all just need to learn the difference between oppression and discomfort, and realize that while the former is never acceptable, the latter is just part of life and you have to learn to deal with it.

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¹Can someone who’s Jewish please explain to me why so many American Zionists are not only okay with, but fully supportive of, the idea that Jews aren’t white? I’m not talking about Jews who are genuinely not of European ancestry (Judaism is practiced all over the world, by people of all races and ethnicity). I’m talking about my fellow Ashkenazis. Isn’t us being othered what got us shoved into the gas chambers in the first place? Because the Nazis were big fans of eugenics, and believed that Jews were genetically inferior to whites? Oy fucking gevalt. I love my people, but some of y’all are just unbelievably stupid.

And here’s the funny thing: I’m a third-generation Italian-American on my sperm donor’s side… Which is also where I’m Jewish (my paternal grandmother’s people were Russian Jews from the Pale of Settlement). And I look very Italian: Dark hair, olive skin, and dark eyes. So I don’t even look like an Ashkenazi Jew; I look like a Sephardic (southern Italian/Mediterranean) Jew! But thanks to the idea that not only are all Jews European, but Ashkenazi, no one except (some) Jews know about Sephardic or African or South American or Indian or East Asian Jews!

End the madness. Race is a social construct, and we Jews, of all fuckin’ people, should understand that and be working like hell to dismantle systems of racial oppression.

²I love the woman, but my god. “[Mulling], when are you going to get married? You’re 35, you’re running out of time!” “That’s your room?! Slob!” “What the hell did you do to your arm?! Don’t you know tattoos are permanent?!” “You’re so brilliant, you could have graduated high school at 16!” I like how Isa Chandra Moskowitz put it in Vegan With a Vengeance: “In Jewish culture, even something as simple as a great-smelling herb [fresh dill] can lead to nagging.”

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Last updated November 18, 2023