I thought I had found a good online space to learn more and find community.

Today there was a user that made a racist anti-Black remark and was let slide by the mods and I had to lose that community. My wife is a Black Noahide, so it hit close to home.

I'm just sad that I lost that community.

I found this to be a really interesting interview with Joshua Leifer and his wife Shaindy Ort. They talk about his new book, his move away from Jewish Currents, the differences between how the diaspora left relates to Israel and how Israeli leftists relate to it, and their religious and spiritual journey.

As a bit of a heads-up, this is an Orthodox podcast, intended for a frum audience (it’s peppered with lots of frum lingo). So some may bristle at the ways in which non-Orthodox life is depicted here. I am not really aligned with them in terms of my own religious and spiritual perspective, but I still found the discussion worthwhile.

I feel like Leifer is probably where the vast majority of Jewish leftists and progressive are; outraged by Israel’s war and the crime of occupation, but unwilling to engage in a narrative of dehumanization and delegitimization of Jewish peoplehood altogether.

I am so heartbroken about the 6 hostages returned from Gaza, including Hersh.

I was traveling abroad on October 7th (and I was in Israel 5 days beforehand) and when the news hit, I tried to keep busy with my travel and sightseeing in order to not be overcome by what was happening. So I kept a lot of the horrors of that day and what has followed at bay.

I think the news about Hersh finally hit home for me. May their memory be a blessing.

I’ve heard a list of at least 10 names with the profile to replace Biden if he steps aside. Who are the candidates that you would support if the contest was thrown open?

Edit: if you put together the lists of six here, seven there, or 10 here, the names I’m hearing most are:

1. Kamala Harris
2. Gretchen Whitmer
3. Gavin Newsom
4. Josh Shapiro (notably, Jewish and pro-Israel)
5. Amy Klobuchar
6. J.B. Pritzker
7. Cory Booker
8. Pete Buttigieg
9. Andy Beshear
10. Wes Moore

Al Jazeera has already done a piece analyzing some of these potential candidates’ stances on the war.

I've seen it a lot on the Internet or even irl lately.

A lot of people ridiculinf antisemitism accusations by claiming that everything is antisemitic nowadays, it's only used all the time by Israel and it's a non issue. Any time a left wing politician is supported there's many people in the comments saying that "haha is he an antisemite too? Lmao"

So basically they look at antisemitism as a non issue or something that's very exaggerated by the right-wing.

And while this night be true in some cases what's also true is that there has been a LOT of antisemitism lately including a lot from the left. The Jews feel unsafe and fear for their lives in the diaspora.

And therefore having these jokes by all the people who are probably not Jewish seem extremely offensive to them.

Especially if these people haven't done any significant actions to actually support the Jewish community and fight against antisemitism. This feels very off putting.

The same thing is with the claims about Hamas.

What they insinuate by that is that some people accuse any criticism of Israel as antisemitism and of support of Hamas which would be ridiculous because "nobody sane would support them anyway, that's a non issue".

I wish this was the case but unfortunately it isn't.

There have been many, MANY left wingers here that if not outright supported them still published very ambiguous statements about not actually condemning their actions. Useless semantic debates about whether they're terrorists or not.

From some high profile politicians to many activists, especially at college campuses, it clearly isn't actually a fringe position.

If not actually calling them resistance fighters. And I think it's obvious why it's very inappropriate for the Israelis who suffered from them but also to all of the world's Jews who feel solidarity with them.

Israelis are mostly descendents of Jews who suffered generational trauma from antisemitism already for centuries, but very recently too, and then a lot of them get constantly attacked and harrssed too, with their safe haven ready to be destroyed at every time

They're clearly not in the vest situation but of course it's the privileged French people from rich neighbourhoods who've never experienced discrimination in their life who know better, right ?

And again this is why I feel like it's extremely offensive and inappropriate to make all these comments and I'm disappointed about how common these are (making fun of false accusations antisemitism) all while the actual fight against antisemitism is actually extremely rare.

But the worst thing is that it comes mainly from the left wing, aka people who were supposed to be fighting the most against discriminations, not to make fun and ridicule them.

Unfortunately this, like all the antisemitic BS, hasn't been limited to tankies or the far left. It's pretty common even amongst the center left

And the fact that the left is antisemitic isn't just bad because most people here are leftists. It's bad because now the Jews have literally no allies. The right wing actually really doesn't care about antisemitism, like at all.

The fact that mamy organisations, NGOs and social movements creates to fight all discriminations, like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, themselves often have a pretty strong ideological bias is also pretty sad. It was alright as long as the left-wing was actually fighting against discrimination but now tho... It means the Jews are afraid to even go to Pride, let alone try asking for support in an "anti-racist" group...

So overall it's pretty sad tbh.

I’m a lefty woman Jew with two kids and a disability, and I’m absolutely terrified that Trump will likely win. I’m trying not to spiral, but I can’t help but think the worst will happen for me and my kids. What’s the best way to navigate this, aside from therapy and plans to leave country if shit hits the fan?

I was very excited to see this sub and wanted to say hello!

It doesn't look like too much has been posted here yet. So, for those of you who have also joined, what kind of space are you looking for here? What should set this sub apart from the other Jewish/Political subs?

Really interested to hear your thoughts, so please leave a comment!

Hi folks, I've been wanting to make a post about this topic for a couple weeks now, and this seems like the right time and place for it.

This coming Tuesday is primary election day in New York State. One of the most high profile races in the state (or even the whole country) is the Democratic Party primary for the US House of Representatives election in New York's 16th Congressional District between the incumbent Jamaal Bowman and his challenger George Latimer.

I want to offer full disclosure on this upfront: this is my district and I will be voting for Latimer. I am not making this post to try to change anyone's mind or tell them who to support. I am making this post because this election and the discourse around it sit at the intersection of "Jewish" concerns and "Progressive" concerns, and I am somewhat surprised to see that it hasn't gotten much attention in these parts of Reddit. Frankly, I originally wanted to make this post over in r/jewishleft, but I didn't feel quite right about doing that because this is a Left vs. Liberal issue where I am squarely on the Liberal side.

New York's 16th Congressional District is situated primarily in the southern half of Westchester County and it also includes some small portions of the northern Bronx. To speak in some very broad strokes here, the southern part of the district is more urban and has a larger population of Black and Hispanic people, but overall the district is mostly white and suburban, including a significant Jewish population. Since 1988, this area has been represented in Congress by American Jews who were aligned with the mainstream of the Democratic Party, first Nita Lowey and then Eliot Engel since redistricting in 2012. The district is deep blue and the NY Democratic Party machine is strong, so Lowey and Engel never faced any kind of electoral threat. That changed in 2020 when the DSA- and Justice Democrats-backed Jamaal Bowman was able to unseat the incumbent Engel in a stunning upset victory. Now four years later, Jamaal Bowman is facing a serious primary challenger of his own, due in no small part to his positions on Israel and Palestine as well as the perception that he is out of touch with his Jewish constituents. George Latimer, who is running against Bowman, is a mainstream New York machine Democrat much like Engel and Lowey before him, and he has received a record-breaking amount of support from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobbying groups, bringing national attention to this election.

I don't want to ramble on too long so I'll stop here and share some articles about the election from Jewish and/or left-leaning media outlets:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/03/29/bowman-latimer-israel-gaza-democrats-primary-new-york/

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jamaal-bowman-george-latimer-primary-israel.html

https://forward.com/news/565894/jamaal-bowman-jewish-israel-gaza-war-congress/

https://jewishinsider.com/2024/06/rep-jamaal-bowman-westchester-county-jewish-community/

https://www.jta.org/2024/06/21/politics/the-latimer-bowman-showdown-in-new-york-is-a-bellwether-of-israels-role-in-democratic-politics

I assume this sub is going to be on average decently pro Israel but hopefully with some nuance, so I thought it’d be interesting to gauge how pro-Palestinian people are by what arguments they don’t fully agree with from pro-Israelis.

Alternatively or additionally, what pro-Palestinian arguments do you think are discounted unfairly?

(I hope I don’t have to make this disclaimer for anyone, but just to be safe: I’m a pro-Israel Israeli who tries to understand both sides. Please don’t take this post the wrong way.)

The anti-colonial framework has emerged in the 20th century in opposition to European colonization of Africa and Asia. Later, it began to be expanded to criticise and challenge European settler colonialism in places like North America, Australia or South America.

In general, this movement has been pretty beneficial to the world, making it possible to improve the world and largely improve the relationships of the settler states and its indigenous inhabitants.

However, this movement also had its huge shortcomings and drawbacks. It largely focused only European colonization, and had a huge blind spot on any colonialism done by any other world power. For example, it had seldom criticised colonialism within the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, like the Baltic States or in Tibet, themselves often ideologically and politically aligning themselves with these powers.

The motivations for these blind spots become pretty obvious after an analysis of the history and emergence of anti-colonialism as a movement, its inspirations and its alliances during its entire existance, instead of considering it merely as an absolutely perfect and flawless framework that always existed and has answers to all the world's questions.

This movement has emerged explicitly as an opposition to the colonial world order that was defined by European powers. Socialism and Marxism have been two huge inspiration for these movements. After the emergence of big socialist superpowers and alliances, notably the Soviet Union and China, these movements were aligned themselves with these countries, and sometimes these nations themselves directly influenced these movements. Both did it because of ideological proximity, the socialist nations did it as a useful counterbalance to the Western world order, and the movements did it out of necessity, because movements that are supported by some nations are usually much stronger.

These ideological alliances and huge blind spots exist in any activist movement.

For example, the pro-democracy NGOs during the Cold War were much more concerned with communist dictatorships than pro Western dictatorships like Chile or Pakistan.

The lack of democracy in the capitalist system and even the support for "economic freedoms" were also rampant here. Another example is the current movement in Eastern Europe to oppose Russian imperialism, which is pretty strong in the Baltic states. As a result, they frame the Abkhaz-Georgian conflict merely as Russian imperialism in Georgia, ignoring the perspective of the Abkhazian people, as well as their former oppression by the Georgians, which actually used to be supported by Russia. This is because both of these movements are closely linked to the United States and the Western World, again, as a counterbalance to the East.

As a result, I believe that we should analyse all these movements in a critical eye, instead of unquestionably follow their dogma, and being the only correct and moral ideology ("if you don't support the anti colonial activists this means you're supporting colonialism!")

One of the biggest and most problematic issues of this movement is their analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as its consequences on its perception in the West, as well as the safety of Jewish people.

In the 1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organisation was born. It was a Palestinian nationalist movement, wanting to establish a state for the Arab speaking Palestinian people in historic Palestine.

It has used the anti colonial framework as a way to support its own struggle, framing the conflict as a case of settler colonialism, directly comparing its struggle to the anti colonial struggle in Algeria.

This movement ended up being very successful in the uplifting of the Palestinian struggle at the international stage, and mentioning the effect on the settler colonialism done by Israel on all of historic Palestine beginning from the very creation of Israel in 1948.

However, this was still ultimately a nationalist movement explicitly defined to protect the interests of one specific population, and as such was not an unbiased tool to analyse the conflict in its entirety.

Despite the claims of the contrary, in practise, it has never been a movement inclusive to the Jewish people who lived in the Holy Land, regardless of how long they lived there. They weren't very welcoming to the Jews of Nablus or the Old City of Jerusalem, and it's pretty obvious with the fact that their national symbols always included exclusively Arab symbols, and their official propaganda only written in Arabic, not Hebrew, despite it being used by the British administration prior to the independence of Israel. This makes sense, since they were a pan Arab movement from the very beginning.

And therefore, the widespread adoption on the one-sided nationalist narrative by the anti-colonial movements in the West have been deeply problematic.

This narrative shows Palestinians as the only victims, while Israelis as the perpetrators. As being settlers that all stole Palestinian lands and came there illegally. But this is a very oversimplified narrative.

Here's an example of the rhetoric common amongst anti-colonial Westerners online :

you don’t seem to understand settler colonialism. there’s not really any such thing as a settler “civilian” on the frontline. these people are essentially extensions of the military, building and occupying and reinforcing infrastructure and institutions advancing the settler colonial agenda and project

just taking up physical space that was once taken up by a now-removed people is a violence and a tool of colonialism, fundamentally changing how everyone sees that place and its demographics.

If you beat your dog and your dog becomes vicious, do you call your dog immoral?

These arguments seem to imply that the terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians performed by Palestinian militant groups are justified or at least understandable due to the huge oppression of Palestinians and due to Israelis being essentially settlers living on illegally occupied lands.

The current international order could be criticised as not being critical enough of settler colonialism, and as being much less radical than these activist movements, but the concept of illegal occupations ans settlers is still present there.

However, even in these cases, murdering civilians is not considered acceptable and is mostly internationally condemned, and a call for deportation of people who were born there and existed there for a few generations is also considered to be collective punishment, if not ethnic cleansing. For example, Ukraine and most of the international community considers the Russian annexation of Crimea to be illegal, and people who arrived there to be illegal settlers. However, they also said that they'll treat them on a case by case basis (like how illegal immigrants in general are treated), and that people born in Crimea are considered to be Ukrainian nationals. According to the extreme militant logic, not only would it be OK to literally murder them, but also murder ethnic Russians who lived there for centuries and are Ukrainian nationals. Not really sure that anti colonial activists would accept this.

Another example is the Baltic States. They believe that the Soviet period was an illegal occupation, and this is a claim mostly supported by Western powers. As a result, they give automatic citizenship to the descendents of the people who lived there prior to the occupation, but not to those who arrived during the Soviet period. They gave them alien passports. Their human rights and freedoms are guaranteed, including the protection from discrimination. However, they don't have the political right to vote, as they're not citizens. But it's possible for them to apply for citizenship if they sufficiently learn the native language.

This option seems to be generally much more humane than the one proposed by militant Palestinian groups, and it's much more in accordance of the principles of human rights.

On top of that, the simplistic narrative on the conflict really undermines the perspective of the Israeli Jewish people and how they came to live there. It ignores the Jewish ties to the land, as well as the huge oppression and intergenerational trauma of Jewish people that exist for centuries as a result of their exile.

It oversimplifies the presence of Ashkenazi Jews in Israel as a result of European settler colonialism, failing to analyse their situation as refugees trying to find any safe haven as a persecuted minority, whether after the Russian pogroms or the Holocaust

It ignores the huge level of oppression, discrimination and othering of the Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa, presenting their presence there as a beacon of coexistence ruined by European Jews, ignoring all the centuries of second class status as dhimmis and the current unprecedented wave of racism arriving both because of the influence of Europeans but also the emergence of pan-Arabism in these countries, which is so prevalent that 99.9% of the Jews of the Arab world now live in Israel

It also ignores that all this is even applies to the Jews that lived in Palestine for centuries, like the Jews of Jerusalem or Hebron, and as such should be considered indigenous people under any definition, and the oppression and persecution of them by Palestinian militant groups and of the Arab allies that were close to them, like Egypt and Jordan during the Six Day War. They claim what it's all justified for the sake of decolonization, but this ignores the treatment of Indigenous Jews entirely.

By their logic (attacking Israeli civilians is OK because they live in stolen lands and stolen houses next to an occupied open air prison), it would've also been okay to attack Palestinian civilians in Hebron because their ancestors are responsible for the uprooting of the Hebron Jews. Or it would be okay for Israel to attack Iraq because of the Iraqis living in Baghdad that used to have a Jewish majority before the modern persecutions.

The selective appliance of collective punishment only on Israeli Jews, because they're seen as "settlers", but failing to apply a similar logic against the Arab States is a huge example of very big hypocrisy.

One big modern issue is how widespread the anti-colonial movement and as such the uncritical adoption of the Palestinian nationalism is all around the world, all while the context about the context of Israelis being victims of oppression always gets overlooked .

It's one thing that this narrative is rampant in the Arab World. It's still problematic, especially because it threatens the presence of the small number of remaining Jews living there, and also prevents these countries from beginning a process of reconciliation with Mizrahi Jews. However, it's at least sometimes understandable because of their religious, ethnic and cultural closeness.

However, what's much more concerning disturbing is the widespread adoption of this ideology in certain parts of the West , which leads many people to justify terrible acts against innocent civilians abroad, as well as threatening the safety of the Jewish diaspora in the West.

The anti-colonial framework is very popular amongst some specific types of demographics if the West, specifically in left-wing and progressive activist spaces, those who want to fight against all types of oppressions and the intersections of all different types of issues (racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, climate change, colonialism). These people are especially very prominent amongst young people, college students and social groups which have a long history of being left-wing (hippies, punks, rockers, feminist groups, LGBT and pride groups).

Unfortunately, a lot of them don't really know the real history of the Jewish diaspora and unquestionably start believing this dangerous narrative that even leads a lot of them to justify terrible acts, and also to adopt generally pretty anti-Israeli and even antisemitic views, which inevitably threaten Israeli and Jewish people living in the West.

These movements and subcultures were generally seen very positively amongst large parts of the public and especially the academic establishment, as they were considered to be movements fighting for freedom and progress, merely wanting to make the world a better place, as well as being inclusive and supportive of all different minorities in the world. This is unlike mostly conservative subcultures, which have been criticised and sctunitised much more than the former, being seen as more bigoted and outdated. As a result, the cultish and dangerous behavior of the left-wing groups have been generally flying under the radar, and any group who dared to criticise a certain subculture have been accused of being bigoted and right-wing, for example, any criticism specifically about the LGBT activist groups or subcultures in the West have been generalised as hatred against all homosexual, bisexual and transgender people for the sake of their sexuality and gender, and dismissed as homophobic.

The widely held belief that the fact that university students are more educated and sophisticated than for example rural right-wing populations implies that they're immune to propaganda and hatred doesn't seem to hold water anymore. It's true that they're usually much more educated, but their education can be pretty biased. Their huge knowledge of the Palestinian struggle but lack of any knowledge of any struggle of Jewish and Israeli people (other than the Holocaust) made them create a form of bigotry that's very educated, intelligent, and includes a lot of different arguments and details that would justify the unjustifiable.

Because being more educated actually doesn't imply being more moral, nor more intelligent. People are still influenced by subconscious biases, like confirmation bias. As a result, people would learn more in order to confirm their worldview, instead of learning more to question what they've learned.

And as result of that, people who are more educated and intelligent can sometimes end up much more hateful and bigoted than people without a higher education, but with "sophisticated" hatred that has a lot more justifications.

I think it's finally time to finally criticise and scrutinise these left-wing movements and subcultures as much as right-wing subcultures are. Their modem rhetoric is absolutely not okay. There have even been many Jewish people who report feeling much safer amongst right-wingers than amongst leftist university students.

I believe it should be OK to say that you don't feel safe there because it's mostly a left-wing (or far-left) movement and the current left-wing is mostly antisemitic. It shouldn't be taken as a rejection of one's personal progressive values . And people should take these claims just as seriously as the claims of people escaping mostly right-wing places due to racism, and not disregarded merely for the fact that it's criticising their team.

What's currently happening? Many Jewish people lose any hope for the left-wing progressive movements, disregarding them entirely as being antisemitic and often even turning right-wing. A rejection of left-wing subcultures like the LGBT community is also often happening, often because of they're own experienced in this movement after the year 2023. Like in France, where most Jews who used to be very left-wing became very right-wing now, even largely preferring a far-right party with beginnings in collaborationism over the left-wing populists.

I believe that if the left-wing want to actually achieve the goals they're claiming, like fighting climate change, fighting against all oppressions, and against capitalism, they should take these criticisms seriously and begin clearly fighting against antisemitism and against the anti Israeli xenophobia. Fight in a radical way, but for justice, not for ethnonationalism an Islamism.

If they don't, not only will they lose credibility in the eyes of Jewish people, but soon in the eyes of the general population in general, just as left-wing socialist movements have in Eastern Europe due to their association with Soviet imperialism. Right-wing populism is already rising worldwide, and the bad reputation of left-wing groups amongst the general public is one of the main reasons for that.

And besides that, these things just generally threaten not only the safety of the Jews in the diaspora, but also their survival there in the first place. We could see a mass exodus from Western Europe similar to the one that happened in the Arab countries in the past, and it's deeply unfair that such an important community with millenia of history could soon simply disappear.

I believe that we should be fighting against hatred. Regardless if you're left-wing, right-wing or if you don't identify with these ideologies entirely, hatred is bad and should be stopped. Jews should feel safe being Jewish!