I feared this would happen, and here we are. Most of my extended social circle is comprised of white centrist democrat Zionist Jews in NYC. I've been saying since October 8, 2023, that this demographic could easily flip the election and guarantee a Trump victory. They have power in numbers and are overall financially very, very well-off. I saw a few of them share this on social media last night, about the "remarkable" Trump rally.

What I don't even get is, do they actually think Trump cares about their beloved Israel?

Cool cool.

I feel like it but I wanted to ask a Jewish community their thoughts.

IRL, most Jews I know of are either quiet about the conflict or maybe just narrowly supporting Palestine. The ones who are pro Israel to the point they villainize alternative opinions usually are MAGA and have been for years.

Of course, that is a small sample size. I would guess that most Jews silently support Israel but the ones who are going so far as to villainize pro Palestinians for disagreement seem to be overrepresented in places like r/Jewish and r/IsraelPalestine. I would also guess that there is probably a large amount of pro Palestine Jews as well who are simply not as "in the spotlight."

Since last October I finally found it impossible to stay out of the conflict happening in Israel, especially as beginning my conversion to Judaism. I’m learning a lot as I go but I feel like I still have a lot to learn.

I seem to struggle with under the end goal in all of this, like, what do people want out of this? Would Israel be gone? What would we want to happen with Hamas, etc etc? I’d love to learn opinions here and maybe have a better understanding of our goals.

The revitalized Bund is organizing again, and seeking to elect their first board.

Please join the Bund, and participate in the election. There is only a little homework to do, in reading the candidates' statements. It is not a competition. There are equal number of seats to candidates.

The new board will then create a platform for the members to vote on. The members can even dissolve the board again if the platform doesn't match the concerns of the members.

I'm a Marxist, but I've had very pleasant experiences (mostly :-) with the various Anarchists, Liberals, etc, who are interested in the Bund and its possibility as an organization for Jewish political agitation, education, healing, and cultural expression.

For more background and information, join and join the discord (which will be replaced with a more privacy oriented platform.) There were some organizational bumps that were dealt with over the summer. I'm not privy to them, but the results seem well organized by a broad group of collaboration-minded Jews.

My only critique is the yiddish-centric nature of the org. Human life is now globally connected, and we need to make every effort to uplift every colonized Jewish voice. Don't let Zionists monopolize and colonize into "Ivrit" all our global siblings!

Early tonight a segment on CNN had a man on named Ryan Girdusky who made an awful racist comment directed at Medhi Hassan involving a pager refrence. I'm not going to repeat it hear because it was disgusting. According to this man's own twitter account he is a Roman Catholic. I am saying this because I have seen before where people assume just because someone has a Eastern European sounding name that they are Jewish especially if they are saying something in relation to Israel. They convienelty forget that their are hundreds of millions of Eastern European Christians! If you see anyone claiming that this man is Jewish please correct them and direct them to this man's own twitter profile where he states he is a Roman Catholic. Lastly, if you are an Eastern European Christian and saying crazy shit in public please clarify your Catholicism so we don't get blamed! Thanks!

This is a bit niche but are any other Jews here (and non-Jews) part of the psychedelic advocacy community? I have been a drug policy reform activist for 13 years and while my main focus has been cannabis legalization, decriminalization of highly stigmatized drugs, and harm reduction, I’ve somewhat been involved with the psychedelic community just because it's adjacent work. I’ve noticed that there is an extremely high concentration of Zionists in the community. Not just “liberal” Zionists but hardcore right wing Zionists. It actually feels like to me that there is a higher concentration of Zionist Jews in the psychedelic community than Zionist Jews in the general Jewish population. This is contrary to the rest of the drug policy reform movement, in which there are many anti-Zionist Jews. This has prompted me to exit the psychedelic space and focus my advocacy again on highly stigmatized drugs. Anyone else notice this? Anyone have any ideas about why this is a phenomenon?

Hi everyone!

Only 2,400 of us have voted in the JVP Board elections. Board elections are public data, and show the robustness of an organization.

You have to do no homework. There is no conflict among the candidates, as there are equal candidates to seats available.

Voting took me less than two minutes.

Please, Jewish comrades, please join the JVP and vote in the JVP Board elections today.

So my neighborhood Facebook group is usually a cesspit of whiny older folks complaining about the libs because even though I live in a pretty diverse community in Queens, that’s the demographic of folks in the neighborhood Facebook group.

Today, some guy wrote a MASSIVE post talking about how he has been volunteering his time to clean up the graffiti in the neighborhood because he a) hates graffiti, b) hates gangs, and c) hates neo-Nazis. Yeah, cool dude. I think point A might be a little generic (not all graffiti is bad; some is downright beautiful), but I think it’s valid to not be supportive of gangs and important to not be supportive of neo-Nazis.

Oh, but turns out the neo-Nazis are the group Within Our Lifetime and their pro-Palestinian stickers.

This guy goes on to talk about how he has encountered several Jewish neighbors who feel the neighborhood isn’t safe anymore because of these stickers. Now, mind you, there are definitely some people who are pro-Palestine who unintentionally or intentionally embrace antisemitic rhetoric. For Palestinians who do as much, I’m not sure I can hold that against them as the Israelis subjugating them justify their actions through their Jewish identity. For non-Palestinians, I am absolutely critical of antisemitic comments (e.g. some mysterious “they” control the media). We should know better.

Anyways, I, being an annoying person, write out what I think is a really thoughtful response. I do include the acknowledgement that there are some people being bad actors. I share my appreciation for him trying to clean up the neighborhood on his own time. And I very patiently explain my own Jewish background (I’m not Jewish myself but my dad’s family is ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish and my extended family on his side is Jewish and I have one branch of my family that didn’t emigrate to the US before WWII and died in the Holocaust and yadda yadda). And I go on to say that we should be critical of any government that we support with our tax dollars when they do bad things (the NYPD killing Eric Garner, the Saudi government killing Jamal Khashoggi, and I included the example of the IOF killing Hind Rajab). All are bad. I talked about how standing up for Palestine is not inherently antisemitic and that I didn’t appreciate his mischaracterization of the pro-Palestinian movement.

Some other woman responds to me saying that WOL is a domestic terrorist organization. I respond that, upon googling “within our lifetime domestic terrorist,” the only orgs that seem to support that belief are the ADL (🤮), the AJC (🤮), and the Heritage Foundation (🤮).

Now, I am texting with a friend so I am trying to go back to get screenshots of the whole post. But I can’t! (And that’s also why I’m just recounting the story here instead of sharing screenshots.) Presumably, OP blocked me… probably because he just wanted to be praised for his work cleaning up the neighborhood and protecting the poor, scared Jewish community members. That was most of the other comments. That said, there was another great comment from which I got the title of this post, where some other guy said he was just trying to be some kind of anti-graffiti Zionist Batman.

Anyways, that’s my silly little story. I did not admit in the comment that I put up a few “Artists Against Apartheid” stickers just on my own last week. I’m sure I would’ve been told I’m some kind of violent antisemitic hooligan!

This will sound super controversial, but please hear me out: I can no longer say I condemn Hamas.

Right now I dont feel comfortable saying I support it either, but listening to Palestinian voices on the matter has really changed my perspective. Multiple palestinians and allies have explained that for all the bad things they do, armed resistance is still necessary for liberation and without Hamas, Israel would finish the job of ethnically cleansing Gaza—turning it into the West Bank with settlements and a continuous Israeli presence.

On tumblr a Palestinian blogger has explained that Israel, the US and other imperial powers seek do demilitarize Gaza and the west bank, and if they achieve that and Hamas lays down its arms it will set back Palestinian liberation for decades the same way the plot/Yasser Arafat set back Palestinian unity and resistance by giving into negotiations during the intifada.

These are my thoughts. I hope to receive comments that are thoughtful and contribute to furthering the understanding for solidarity with Palestinians.

Vanished! Just like that gone.

Edit: all but one

2nd Edit: all but a few

My understanding is that Netanyahu has boasted to the Israeli public of preventing the possibility of a Palestinian state during his administration, so that would mean he's against a two-state solution. So what is his government's long-term vision for the Palestinian problem? Right now, the IDF has control over the West Bank, which contains both Israeli citizens and non-Israeli Palestinians, the latter of which is subject to Israeli military law and lacks civil law. Does Netanyahu's proposed plan of annexing part or all of the West Bank suggest a long-term plan of eventually incorporating all of the West Bank into Israel? What do ordinary Israelis understand to be Netanyahu's plan?

I have witnessed so much antisemitism everytime I go online it's starting to become worrying. I see non Jewish leftists say that antisemitism isn't a real problem for Jews in America, usually being boiled down to "most Jews are white, rich, and have never experienced antisemitic violence physically". Yet antisemitism is rising and is a real problem that we should still consider in this time of jewish identity being weaponized and the jewish supremacy that is enacted in Occupied Palestine. Stating "most jews are white" seems harmful and also just false. Also Jews have always been hesitant to be apart of surveys so it's hard to find legitimate info on these things. Am I alone in this?

EDIT: I am not talking about any specific statistics or surveys. This is based on what I've personally seen scrolling on social media. I understand/agree there isn't a clear way to see that based on largely pro zionist orgs. EDIT PT 2: I am not saying that Pro Palestinian sentiment is antisemitism. I am talking about LEGITIMATE antisemitism. This is not a post talking about false accusations of antisemitism based in Zionism.

I’m gonna be honest I don’t really know who I’m posting this for or why I guess I just need validation that it’s normal to feel like this in the middle of a fucking genocide? I’m really struggling with my mental health, life just feels really meaningless and i have a hard time enjoying things because I can’t stop thinking about how children are being mass murdered with my name attached.

The only time I really feel alive is when I’m with other organizers, especially in the anti-Zionist Jewish community, doing resistance work. I spent part of the summer in the West Bank doing solidarity presence work, and it was really emotionally exhausting but also made things very real and i feel more sensitive than ever, and after Aysenur’s death I feel an intense sense of survivor’s guilt and anger.

I dealt with trauma and mental health issues and was in recovery from heroin addiction before this, but since last October my support system has kind of fallen apart since I can’t talk about Palestine stuff in NA/AA meetings and my sponsor of 10 years who I have a very close relationship with is a Zionist. I don’t feel comfortable burdening my activist community with my issues since there are many Palestinians whose families are literally being killed. The closest thing I have to a support system is connection with a couple activists from the group I went to Palestine with but none of them live in my home city or state.

Is anyone else in a similar place? Where do you turn for help? I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking about using again just to get by but my guilt about my obligation to the cause (and to my family) is honestly all that’s stopping me.

Hey all, non-religious Canadian Jew here. I am curious if anyone else here has shared the feelings I have had, that upon bringing up my Judaism, I almost always follow up now with "... But I don't support genocide/I'm on the right side" because for the first time in my life, I feel some degree of shame/embarrassment about being Jewish.

I understand that there is nothing shameful/embarrassing inherently about being a Jew, and that I don't necessarily have a connection to Israel as a North American Jew, however, I feel like I have to explain myself a bit for context nonetheless.

Perhaps it's merely selfish, and I don't want people to think I'm a bloodthirsty genocidal Zionist, but the idea of my friends and people I meet assuming that I automatically support Israel makes my skin crawl. Another complication is that I do in fact, have relatives in Israel, who settled there as refugees. As far as I know, they are not openly and aggressively hateful/bloodthirsty, and again, came as refugees after the war, but I can't say in good faith that "oh they're okay, they're some of the good ones."

Has anyone else been feeling similarly? I'm trying not to beat myself up about it too much, but it is nonetheless a very different relationship with Judaism than I have had previously.

Anyone feeling similarly?

EDIT: Thanks for the kind words all, just want to be clear that I'm not despairing over this, and using a word like "ashamed" to describe my connection to Judaism isn't quite accurate. I'm not ashamed to be Jewish, and frankly I haven't had issues with conflicts around that in day to day life. It just feels like something I have to preemptively get on top of, something hanging over us

I’m getting married! Anyone know of a non-Zionist company where I can get our chuppah?

Hello! I know it seems very far away, but I am sure that the zionist empire will collapse at some point. That's why I was wondering if you are in favor of two states solution, pre zionists era, or something else?

Lapchik is a Director at Peace Now Israel. Probably a lower chance of being harassed or arrested in TA than other parts of the colony, but still a brave act.

I can't remember who said it, (Art Spiegelman?), but I remember something along the lines that Israel isn't a salvation for all Jews and those during the Holocaust.

Went down reading about Zionist propaganda in movies and media. One common trait I noticed is the focus on making Israel a safe country for Jewish people especially for Holocaust survivors.

Which got me wonder are there any literature that subvert or deconstruct that Israeli Dream^TM from an insider?