as someone who isn’t Jewish, antisemitism is something that perplexes me greatly. Like, i get that Israel isn’t the nicest nation in the region, but don’t understand the sources of it. Is there any reading you would recommend, because I’m considering doing some reading over break, but figured i’d ask if you knew of anything off hand. If not that’s fine, im just curious.

jewishdragon:

jewishdragon:

I’m not an authority on this, I don’t know if any readings.

But know that anti-semitism isn’t about Israel. You are perplexed because you think it’s about Israel. It’s not. it’s only been a country for a little over 60 years and antisemitism has been around for a couple thousand

My fucking favorite piece of historical antisemitic rhetoric is that Jewish people aren’t human. We’ve got horns under our head coverings, it’s why we cover our hair (the men with kippot and the women with head scarves)

My second favorite is that we steal and kill Christian babies to use their blood to make our matzah.

I say those are old but I’m fairly certain I mean some people still believe those, it’s just very few people in the last hundred years but certainly a lot of people believed it up to the end of the 1800s and into the early 1900s

In 1904 my ancestors immigrated to America from Russia because of the pogroms (which had been happening for at least 100 years but Jewish people try not to leave places we don’t want to leave but we are eventually forced to or die)

Pogroms were when Russians (Jewish people weren’t exactly citizens) murdered, looted the houses and burned the houses of Jewish people.

Israel was not a country then.

Also, the holocaust!??? Israel was NOT a country then!

And you can’t ever think that antisemitism stopped after the holocaust. Don’t ever think that all hatred of Jewish people after Israel was founded is because of how Israel has conducted itself.

The anti-Israel rhetoric is the traditional anti-Semites trying and succeeding to get liberals to hate Jewish people for being Jewish by telling them that then that being Jewish means we support the Israeli government and its actions.

Even many Jewish people who move to Israel don’t do it because they like it, but because it’s a scary antisemitic world out there and it’s much safer to be surrounded by other Jewish people. Plus the physical location has all of our holy sites!?

And if Israel “isn’t the nicest” country in the region I am seriously wondering which one you think is because all the countries surrounding it aren’t exactly the models for morality either. And damn but I was born in America, which is so much worse.

I’m not scared of being hurt by those liberals, I’m scared that said liberals will ignore/allow the violent antisemitism. That pogroms will happen again and no one will even blink.

White supremacists do not think Jewish people are white. They also reinforce the idea that we control the economy and media so that when stuff goes to shit we can be blamed. I’m on mobile and can’t remember the quote exactly but it was along the lines of “Jews aren’t white and need to go” on a white supremacist site in the 21st century. People still vandalize Jewish business and it’s not reported as hate crimes. People still fire Jewish employees for practicing their religion. We do not get our holidays off, we are fired for asking for those days off. At school we are told our grades will suffer because our holidays are not excuses for being absent. I’m lucky that my university actually does protect my right to my holidays and that my professors can’t punish me for observing my holidays. But still. my dorm has been graffitied with swastikas which made me to scared to go to class or to practice my religion.

Have we been relatively safe for the past half century in America? Yeah, compared to Europe. But not entirely safe, and a lot of the safety comes from being assimilated into the Christian normative secularism. But Jewish people are still actively discriminated against.

That was a nice-ish half century (mass assimilation sucked and discrimination/hate crimes still occurred) I guess that’s over now

I’m tired and I’m very very scared. This probably wasn’t coherent.

I vaguely remember writing this but wow I went off