Antisemitism in the Name of
The image above is of some random White goyishe dude spraying "Free Palestine" in graffiti, defacing a synagogue during Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The number of alleged progressives I've seen talking about this and missing the point about why defacing a synagogue is wrong is just fucking wild.
But the number of my fellow Jews defending it!?
Like, goyishe antisemitism is kinda expected, but the internalized antisemitism from antizionist Jews? Whew... Hard to tell if the perfect misunderstandings are intentional or genuinely ignorant.
Like, there's disagreement about Israel's and Palestine's rights to exist - which are real problems! - and then there's a hate crime. Done by some random White dude gentile. We saw this same shit in May at Beth Israel in Los Angeles, where there were no flags. Indeed, that's exactly how we know its never been about the flags.
Defacing synagogues for the actions of Israel's government is textbook antisemitism. Half of the world's Jews live in Israel, our family, our friends, and our people. It's our ancestral homeland, the place we originally came from, the place all Jews are indigenous to. (That's partly why 95% of all Jews are Zionists, by the way.) But no Jew, whether Israeli or not, is responsible or representative of the legitimately terrible things happening to Palestinians. We fly the flag because it has been a symbol of Jewish people for a very long time.
The same way that all Mexicans are not responsible for Mexico's problems, or Afghanistanis for Afghanistan, or Indians for India, or Chinese for China, or Nigerians for Nigeria. The same way we should agree that it's racism and xenophobia and discrimination based on national origin to attack any of these people for displaying the flags of the countries they, their families, or their ancestors came from.
This helps no one - not Black Lives Matter, not Jacob Blake, not the victims of Kyle Rittenhouse, not the plight of the Palestinians - but it does harm Jews. Everywhere and especially in America right now.
It's the same kind of bigotry that leads to Chabad houses in Delaware being burned down. The same kind that leads to LGBTQIA+ Jews being excluded from queer spaces. The same kind that leads to so many further acts antisemitism... and people defending it, let alone other Jews defending it, is shameful. Chillul hashem. Full stop.
And, for me particularly, it's traumatizing because when I was a kid, my childhood synagogue was vandalized and defaced too. Swastikas and slurs and even the corruption of a precious Torah scroll.
It reminds that, even now, I'm not safe as a Jewish person in America.
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Additional sources:
https://www.jewishchronicle.org/2020/08/27/video-posted-of-kenosha-synagogue-vandalism/
https://whyy.org/articles/jewish-center-intentionally-set-on-fire-at-university-of-delaware-investigator-says/
https://jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/316561/los-angeles-synagogue-vandalized-with-free-palestine-f-israel-graffiti/
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/chicago-dyke-march-drops-pretense-deploys-anti-semitic-term-popularized-by-neo-nazis
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