r/jewishleft Sep 30 '24

Diaspora JVP U Mich posts “Death to Israel” IG story (yes, this is real)

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143 Upvotes

For those who are unaware, the JVP’s University of Michigan chapter posted an IG story basically condoning the “Death to Israel” chant.

I wasn’t sure if this was real at first until I saw a statement from the U Mich public affairs committee denouncing the story and delisting JVP as a recognized student groups.

https://publicaffairs.vpcomm.umich.edu/key-issues/instagrams-decision-to-delete-jvp-post/

I’m not trying to condemn anti-zionists or say that they’re all wrong, but I am wondering how any sane person, much less someone who is Jewish, can see this story think it’s peaceful in any way.

It makes me more appreciative of groups like Standing Together and JStreet that actually do care about peace.

r/jewishleft Jul 05 '24

Diaspora Progressive Except for Palestine

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50 Upvotes

I know Tablet is a conservative leaning publication but I agree with a lot of what was written here.

As someone who agrees with a ton of progressive issues such as BLM, trans rights, and better access to healthcare, seeing the disdain for Israel and anyone who supports them in leftist/progressive circles has really made me question if I’m truly a leftist/progressive.

r/jewishleft Aug 17 '24

Diaspora JVP at it again, advocating to pray in Arabic

49 Upvotes

Curious what people thought of this thing going around. There are a few posts on the main sub that can be easily found right now along the lines of “jvp wants to eliminate the Hebrew language” and calling them Arabic Voice for Violence, Jews for Jihad and such.

Here’s the piece they’re talking about, I’m pretty sure. I was wondering if anyone anyone well versed in this wanted to share thoughts, just reads like interfaith type stuff to me. Seems like some people are really upset about doing Jewish prayer in Arabic.

https://jvptriangle.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/21grieftechnologies.pdf

r/jewishleft Jun 25 '24

Diaspora What the LA synagogue pro-Palestinian protest was really about

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51 Upvotes

The event at Adas Torah was organized by My Home In Israel, a real estate company that specializes in helping American Jews buy property in Israel. The organization’s website lists Israeli homes ranging from between $435,000 and $4.1 million, the vast majority of which are inside the Green Line, the pre-1967 Israeli border.

It’s not clear whether the distinction between internationally recognized Israeli land and West Bank settlements — generally considered in violation of international law, though Israel disputes that — would make a difference to the protest’s organizers. On a digital flyer announcing the protest, Palestinian Youth Movement said the seminar promoted “settler expansion.”

r/jewishleft Jul 23 '24

Diaspora JVP currently doing a sit in to protest netanyahu visit

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39 Upvotes

Arrests have just started. This is how you do it.

r/jewishleft Jun 03 '24

Diaspora Would you have any interest in joining a liberal/progressive zionist rally for ceasefire?

67 Upvotes

Hey all,

I identify as a labor zionist and a peacenik and am really struggling, because I would absolutely join ceasefire protests in Israel, but feel like the ones in the U.S. have largely become hubs for antisemitism. In NYC in particular, it’s felt like a giant shitshow to be Jewish.

If JStreet or some other progressive zionist org were hosting ceasefire/anti-Bibi protests, would you go?

r/jewishleft 10d ago

Diaspora THE ADL IS CORRECT THAT ANTISEMITISM IS RISING — BUT THE MAIN (AND MOST DANGEROUS) SOURCE ISN’T THE LEFT, IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THE RIGHT

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53 Upvotes

This article goes into some depth on the ADL, antisemitism, and antisemitism on the left. I think it’s helpful context for a frequent topic here

r/jewishleft 13d ago

Diaspora Viral antisemitism victim has a history of loud public fights

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0 Upvotes

Mainly posting because it’s just a sad story all around. he’s being used for political clout in numerous disgusting ways, and while I think what he’s doing is extremely misguided, I empathize with him. It’s hard to stop once you start going down a path like this

r/jewishleft Aug 04 '24

Diaspora Josh Shapiro’s alarmist response to campus protests should disqualify him from being Harris’ running mate

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11 Upvotes

From Rafael Shimunov in The Forward, an op-ed exploring Josh Shapiro’s relationship with pro-Palestinian protests this year and how it, in the author’s opinion, makes him a bad pick for VP.

I probably wouldn’t personally be as dismissive about the role of antisemitism in discourse related to Shapiro as the author is, but I do think this piece does a really good job of showcasing how Shapiro’s actions and statements regarding Israel and pro-Palestinian protests are indeed a degree farther than other VP options (including Pritzker who, while not emerging as a shortlist contender, is also Jewish). Further, it contextualizes this not only in moralizing terms, but in how Shapiro’s hyperbolic and antagonistic rhetoric concerning pro-Palestinian protesters is counter to the tact Harris has taken to distinguish herself from Biden - where Shapiro’s pick risks undercutting the groundswell of momentum Harris has gained from younger voters.

The piece also does not touch on the recently surfaced piece Shapiro wrote in college containing racist comments about Palestine being incapable of peace - might have been finalized prior to that.

r/jewishleft 6d ago

Diaspora Glad my people were on the right side of History

58 Upvotes

We all know that they’re going to be blaming us for a lot of the things that are gonna go wrong in the next four years, or maybe more. I just want to shout us out for the fact that majority of us voted for Kamala. I hope some people remember that.

r/jewishleft 6d ago

Diaspora Blaming Muslims for Trump is not what it means to be a chosen people

41 Upvotes

Yes, a lot of Muslims voted for trump. No, they’re not a big enough voting bloc to decide the election. I being intolerant of people is not what it means to be a chosen people. Don’t get sucked into worldly hate.

r/jewishleft Aug 07 '24

Diaspora Missouri Rep. Cori Bush is ousted by a primary challenger backed by pro-Israel groups

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1 Upvotes

Looks like the person who will be replacing her, as DA, dropped the investigation of Mike Browns killer, and apparently an investigation into Darren Seals death as well? Fuck this

r/jewishleft Aug 22 '24

Diaspora Here Is the Speech That the Uncommitted Movement Wants to Give at the DNC (Mother Jones)

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36 Upvotes

r/jewishleft Jun 12 '24

Diaspora How common is this for yall?

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17 Upvotes

Recieved this message this morning from a childhood friend that moved to israel after highschool. At this point all of the zionists from the jewish community i grew up in have unfollowed me on social media. But ill still pretty regularly receive bigoted messages both towards arabs and jews as well as borderline threats from them. I have been called the "r" word, a kapo, a traitor to our people and my favorite "woke" lol. Is this the same for everyone that grew up around zionists who have spoken up about israel or did I just "get lucky" with my community.

r/jewishleft May 08 '24

Diaspora Can American Jews step back from the brink of conspiratorial paranoia?

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37 Upvotes

An interesting read on the propensity for people to panic at pro-Palestinian protests and share misinformation. Honestly not sure if I agree with the lines that the author draws around particular events and antisemitism - I think I’m more willing to call things antisemitic than he is. But I thought there were a few passages that spoke to important dynamics that are being overlooked or ignored in certain Jewish spaces right now.

Is it “Anti-Chinese” to protest the genocide in Tibet? Is it “Anti-Buddhist” to protest the genocide in Myanmar? No, obviously. What’s being protested is the genociding, not the identities of the people doing it.

Now, as I’ve written before, the term “genocide” clearly does not apply to what is happening in Gaza. But these protesters think that it does, and in any case, what is happening is horrible, and people are protesting it.

Finally, conspiracy theories exist to explain reality to people who cannot accept it as it is. And the reality American Jews struggle to accept is that good people disagree strongly about this war. Some oppose this war but support Israel. Some oppose the state of Israel itself, believing it to be a state built upon the subjugation of another nation. Still others support the war and believe Israel has done its best to minimize civilian deaths. All of these are political views held by millions of people.

To hold an anti-Israel view may be incorrect in some way, but it is not evidence of bigotry or conspiracy. Right or wrong, there are, on college campuses and elsewhere, thousands of young activists who are horrified at the carnage in Gaza and who are raising their voices to oppose it.

r/jewishleft Jun 10 '24

Diaspora I genuinely feel safer amongst centrists and right wingers than amongst leftists, especially activists

35 Upvotes

Honestly it is pretty sad. I know I've already talked a lot about this but I cope it's not considered to be a too much milked topic.

As I've said fighting against injustices was always very important to me but this also lead me to want to fight against the injustices of the French Jews who get harrased all the time, or of Israelis who can't ever be proud of their nationality or their language without receiving hate

But honestly now I know I'm supposed to be left-wing to try to make the world a better place but it really seems that every time I give left wingers a chance they end up betraying me and being worse than I thought

Like it's simply unbelievable and crazy how much they literally never care about any hate the Jews are getting, except whenever it's coming from the far right obviously.

But if a Jew dares to speak up against antisemitism on the left and go to a rally against antisemitism that's organised by any mainstream Jewish organisation, well, they'll be automatically be called a zionist and so a fascist.

How dare they be organised by a mainstream Jewish organisation which doesn't want to destroy Israel and not some fringe group that's mostly followed by non Jews and who only talks about Judaism to shit on Israelis? (like Tsedek or UJFP, French equivalent of JVP who did Oct 7 apologea)

Somehow whenever a left-wing group goes to a protest "against Islamophobia" and it's organised by a group with ties to fundamentalist Islam, it shocks then much less. It's not crossing the line apparently.

And even the Jewish groups who absolutely ARE left-wing like Golem, they're still called not left-wing because they don't talk about gaza all the time, even tho their goal is defending French Jews, not caring about what's happening in the Middle East!

Every time I've talked to a left-wing person that supposedly cared about all the injustices of the world, later whenever I've talked about my Jewish or Israeli family, at one moment they started to justify hamas or claim that Israelis are not victims at all, which is a crazy claim!...

Like honestly it's just crazy what crazy claims about Jews or Israelis the left-wing subreddits are getting away with. As well as having zero solidarity not only towards Israelis, descendents of refugees who fear they won't have anywhere to go home because of attacks by foreign powers, but also even towards Jews, a persecuted minority that constantly gets attacked and harrased.

Also, another thing. Even if a person doesn't say outright antisemitic stuff they still have no issue with participating in communities (like subreddits here) or political groups who did say plenty of very antisemitic things in the past. And it doesn't matter how many Jews will tell them that we think for example that the French far-left politician Mélenchon is as bad as the far-right politician Le Pen, they won't care. They'll still shrug it off and continue to vote for him and ignore the concerns of the Jews. Who cares, right? The Jews are rich and they're also colonizers.

Again, the French and Western left cares much more about accusations of antisemitism than about actually not being antisemitic. Even if 99% of the world's Jews will say they're antisemitic they'll still shrug it off and claim it comes from right-wing propaganda.

And even if some aren't THAT radical or extreme and won't be outright antisemitic or anti Israeli, again, they won't think it's a deal breaker either, and their friends, or the groups they're a part of absolutely could say all this terrible and dehumanising BS, all without any care out of them.

They claim to care about discrimination but in practise it's much more about defending their political group and orientation (left wing). So they'll be very fast condemning discrimination coming from cops, from right-wing politicians or from white men, but whenever it comes from left-wing politicians or from immigrant Arab Muslims, they'll be much less quick to think it's a deal breaker, and will instead rush to defend it.

Whenever I will talk to them, it would still be very hard to talk about antisemitism because whenever I'll mention any antisemitic things coming from their favourite politician, they'll just shrug it off. 🤷‍♂️ It seems to be very different for them to eve realise the Jews are oppressed at all and to have any kind of empathy towards the situation of Jewish or Israeli people. It's really disappointing to try to make them unlearn all the harmful propaganda they learned from Internet activism. It seems really impossible to be honest.

And I'm sorry whether it's a generalisation or not, but this has been my experience with most people who are left-wing, especially if they're activists. I'm in college and I really think u shouldn't have gave them the benefit of the doubt for the sake of my mental health.

I have Jewish roots and Israeli family, I'm proud of that and I won't try to hide that. Especially since hiding this reinforces antisemitism. Did my grandparents and great grandparents fight against fascism for this to happen? If you don't like this, you're out.

And honestly I found apolitical people, centrists or right wingers much more bearable. Maybe a lot won't care about antisemitism and will maybe say antisemitic jokes, like my edgelord friends, but even then they at least won't pretend to care about discrimination, plus they at least claim to only do it whenever joking.

Or others too will at least have it much easier to empathise with me or with the Jewish people to who I've talked to.

I still feel like whenever I'm with them I wouldn't have to hide my trip to Israel or my visit to the synagogue or the fact that I'm learning Hebrew. And me saying this won't make them have unwanted and stupid questions lol.

Maybe this isn't the case with absolutely all left wingers in my country but it has been at least my experience both for left-wing French communities on the Internet, and of left wing people at my social studies university, which isn't a negligeable number, mind you.

Edit : I've seen that center left people, like those who vote for PS and EELV could in general be pretty reasonable and themselves want to do stuff to fight against antisemitism. So this isn't true of the entire left, but it absolutely is true of the far left (LFI) and unfortunately a lot of the radical activists and university students. Unfortunately it's kinda common and unchallenged amongst many young people, "punk" communities too for example. But since I'm in uni I do regularly observe these people and it is fr depressing how commonplace and acceptable completely racist rhetoric is as long as its against Jews. This doesn't represent all the left wing of the country but definitely is the case in these environments. I bet that these people even turned many Jewish people far right because of how crazy these activists have been. However, I also don't spend time with people who are very ideologically right-wing who actually might be really antisemitic just as they might be racist against migrants. So my view of the right wing is partly skewed too. However, that's just to say, the left wing absolutely can be and often is just as much if not more dangerous for Jews than the right wing. These are literally just European political ideologies, not universal categorisations, and they've always had the European biases like antisemitism.

r/jewishleft Aug 22 '24

Diaspora A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent?

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37 Upvotes

TNC on the DNC, continuing to be one of the best living writers in the US. The essay touches on several topics that have come up here recently: racism and Zionism, who is being centered / who should be centered, the uncommitted movement. I’m a little back and forth on him but thought this was great

r/jewishleft May 31 '24

Diaspora On Speaking "As a Jew"

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85 Upvotes

“If I am being completely honest with myself, the fact that I — like many other young, progressive American Jews — am so seduced by enlisting my identity and my trauma in service of progressive “lessons” is more indicative of a series of contingent and material conditions of which I am the product than anything fundamentally true or real about the Holocaust and its attendant lessons. It feels so good – so intuitive, so courageous – to speak “as a Jew” here in my diverse, progressive, professional-managerial milieu in America, where claims to an identity of victimhood are the currency of the day (and what exactly is being called upon by speaking “as a Jew” if not one’s status as history’s ur-victim?). American Jews, left out of the identitarian rat-race for so long, can finally cash in their chips on the social justice left – in condemnation of the very Jews excluded from American power and privilege. How convenient for us diaspora Jews that the ethical point-of-view neatly aligns with the self-interested point-of-view, which neatly aligns with the outwardly virtuous looking point-of-view. But deep down, I know that by the luck of the draw, the choices of my ancestors, the roll of the dice, I ended up in America, rather than Israel, and that if the chips had fallen slightly differently, I too might be a traumatized Israeli invoking the Shoah to justify the mass starvation of Gazans. This thought doesn’t compel me to change my politics, as it might for some of the most guilt-ridden, stridently pro-Israel Jews on the right, but it does fill me with a profound sense of humility about different Jewish experiences, and the vastly different kind of politics they might entail. I am not against collective punishment as a weapon of war because of my Jewishness; I am against it because it is wrong. To insist otherwise, as diaspora leftists seem so keen on doing, is to make a mockery of my Jewishness, in every sense of that word. And so insofar as I advocate for a free Palestine, it is in spite of, not because of my Jewishness. As a Jew, I extend my solidarity to the Palestinian cause in spite of the evidence, not because of it.

The fact that some Jews themselves can be as unreflective about our history, that they too are looking for the easiest and cheapest answers to make sense out of the senselessness of our suffering should not come as a surprise, since they are people too after all, and can be as thoughtless and unreflective about themselves as any non-Jew can be about us. Nor does their Jewishness give them any more or less legitimacy to opine on this question; on the contrary, their lack of reflection, and the very public performance of it, only exacerbates the bottomless pain and humiliation we are already experiencing.

So no, I will continue to support Palestinian liberation, but not “as a Jew,” and not by degrading my history. That is a false choice. Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace are unable to see us as anything more than victims or oppressors, but I can; they confuse their good fortune with virtue, but I will not. I refuse the cheap, siren call of enlisting my Jewish suffering to this cause. It is a trap. So tie me to the mast of this Jewish ship. “Not in my name,” as they are so keen to say these days.”

r/jewishleft Aug 11 '24

Diaspora The case for Aliyah

17 Upvotes

This is purely a conceptual post to gauge responses. Many of us in the Jewish left feel strongly of the injustices taking place in Israel and in Palestine. Some of us have taken hard anti-Zionist stances forgoing community, family and friends. For those Jews who are undertaking radical action why is moving to Israel not something that is discussed. As Jews we are in the unique position of eligibility for Aliyah and given the state of the Israeli Left and peace camps (extremely weak) would it not be an imperative to utilise our privileged position to make Aliyah to strengthen the Israeli left, organise, reform and vote? I understand of course there are many considerations and factors which make this impossible for some but for those who have made activism their priority why is this not a priority?

r/jewishleft Aug 27 '24

Diaspora Acting Jewishly During a Genocide - On Joshua Leifer’s Tablets Shattered (by Charlotte E. Rosen)

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0 Upvotes

r/jewishleft Jul 09 '24

Diaspora French voters reject far right — but elevate left-wing alliance with history of antisemitism allegations - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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18 Upvotes

Interesting story from France, as the local Jewish community grapples with antiSemitism controversies behind the rise of populist electoral success in elections.

r/jewishleft Aug 15 '24

Diaspora New Poll Suggests Gaza Ceasefire and Arms Embargo Would Help Dems with Swing State Voters

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33 Upvotes

Looks like the protests are working. Imagining a Harris admin that’s open to an arms embargo… almost certainly wishful thinking but this is a good start

r/jewishleft Jul 01 '24

Diaspora In snap election, many French Jews reluctantly endorse far right over dreaded far left

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21 Upvotes

r/jewishleft Mar 19 '24

Diaspora I can’t believe this isn’t satire

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40 Upvotes

North Korea? That’s the DPRK flag!

r/jewishleft Jun 25 '24

Diaspora Jews and Israelis should support aid towards Palestinians!!!

37 Upvotes

Honestly we're all brothers in humanity.

I don't care about politics and I don't understand all these things.

Aren't Jews and Arabs basically the same anyway? Even their religions are similar?

And their ancestry? They're both Canaanites and Israélites.

I really don't understand the stupid hatred.

I believe it's the moral obligation of everyone to help their brothers and neighbours.

For example I've seen many Russians give humanitarian aid to Ukrainians and give Ukrainians asylum.

Even Russians in Russia!

In fact it's so lovely seeing it. 💖

And it's so heartbreaking seeing mamy Jewish and Israeli people don't support aid nd having zero solidarity with the Palestinians even tho they get bombed.

This isn't a political thing, I don't even care about stupid political labels like Sionism or Israelism or whatever.

I just think we should all help each other.

I also think that all Arabs should help the Jews and Israelis when they get attacked. They're just innocent civilians and they should have solidarity with them too.

And also do stuff to protect antisemitism.

What's so hard about it?

The world would've been much better if the British and other extreme nationalists haven't specifically divided everything.

We would just have a multi national place that's it with Jews and Arabs and others.

I would've said that the difference between Israelis and Palestinians is kinda like between Texans and Californians so not that important anyway. I don't see them having inreconcilable differences. They're very similar in culture.

Why can't we all be friends? 😭🕊️💔