As prisoners who, after Ben Gvir has his way with them, are miserable? Yep, I condemn that, for like the 18th time today.
I have a very hard time believing that. What do prisons in Kiwiland look like? Are they beautifully designed glass sculptures of buildings? In both the US and in Israel, pretty much every prison I’ve ever driven past looks exactly like the one in that video; nothing about it says “concentration camp” to me. The only reason I can see to make that claim is to push the Zionists = Nazis blood libel, which is why I’m so critical of whoever posted that video in your feed and called it a depiction of concentration camps.
There’s plenty of disgusting behavior to go around. I didn’t call you behavior disgusting, though; I’m outraged that you would fall for such obvious propaganda, but I’m disgusted with the propagandist who put that idea in front of you, not with you personally.
If you’re talking about their portrayal as fat and jovial prisoners whose lives are made worse by Ben Gvir, then I have in fact condemned that multiple times. I find it quite… Interesting… That you would imply I have not.
Are you getting at something else? That they look like racial stereotypes or something?
…for the bigoted caricature of them. Not “making them miserable.” But portraying Palestinians as fat and food obsessed.
At various points here on the dope I’ve been banned from saying the word Nakba, ethnic cleansing, genocide, apartheid. I’ve been accused of being an antisemite. For being a “Hamas mouthpiece.” Of blood libel multiple times.
And to be quite frank I’m tired of it. I almost never use the word “Zionist.” I’ve never said “Zionists = Nazis.”
So if you think I’m going to get scared and not call an obvious concentration camp a concentration camp, then I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m not scared any more. I think it’s a concentration camp. I’m going to call it a concentration camp.
And nobody posted that video in my feed. I posted the original Ben Gvir tweet as soon as I saw it. I called it a concentration camp because thats what it looks like to me. I’m not going to apologise for that.
I haven’t fallen for any propaganda.
The term has meaning outside of the context you keep bringing it back to.
It was a bigoted caricature of them. Calling it “jovial” is…interesting.
If you aren’t upset and at their depiction in the meme, then I don’t really have anything else to say here. I don’t think we should be treating any humans like that. I would be equally upset and outraged if this were a video of Israeli hostages depicted in the same way.
Fat and food obsessed are stereotypes you associate with Palestinians? Huh? These are not stereotypes I have ever heard of. What kind of Palestinian haters are you hanging out with who hold these stereotypes?
…and you expect me to believe that anyone is referring to any of those other contexts when they spew nonsense about concentration camps in regards to this particular conflict? That’s rich.
You think that there’s a biggoted stereotype about Israelis being fat and food obsessed too? Huh?
Maybe you’d have a half of a point if someone made a video like that about Americans; I could buy that being a biggoted stereotype of an American. But the idea that they were portrayed as “fat and food obsessed” because they are Palestinian is beyond ridiculous.
Ben Gvir has been bragging about worsening conditions at prisons in terms of fresh baked bread and other supposedly “luxurious” food items (which is a bullshit narrative, of course). He has had a number of bakeries at prisons across Israel closed, and replaced fresh food with cheap processed stuff. In the video, the prisoners are being sentenced and imagining the food they will get in prison; Ben Gvir literally and figuratively “bursts their bubble”. That’s the narrative.
It’s odious enough on its own, and if it appeals to someone, it’s almost certainly because that someone is an odious racist. That’s what I condemned.
But I have no idea where you’re coming from with this idea that the portrayal of the prisoners as “fat and food obsessed” stems from a negative caricature of Palestinians. These are not stereotypes anyone associates with Palestinian people.
What is wrong with living in Israel/the West Bank/Gaza and not being a Jew at all? The ethnic-cleansing statements quoted above are really stomach-churning and I wonder how such people, especially in politics, escape hate-speech charges.
The ones that lots of Israeli people seem to want to vote for, like the current minister of national security. If you haven’t seen the stereotype, then congratulations: now you have.
What nonsense are you talking about? They literally wheeled overweight Palestinians in what looks like an industrial pipeline. They pop out the other end thin. The tropes being invoked here by Ben-Gvir (not me) are obvious. I’m not asking you to buy into it. But the intent here is pretty clear.
I think that antisemitic imagery would be pretty obvious, and I would condemn anything and anybody who invoked it.
The point is that there are some people (like Ben Gvir along with others) who DO mock Palestinians for being “fat,” and Israel using food as a weapon of war didn’t happen. The reality is that Gaza isn’t getting enough food. It isn’t getting enough nutrition. And the kind of nonsense that Ben Gvir shares helps keep it that way.
…it’s a bigoted caricature of Palestinians that you are defending as “jovial.” It mocks the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. It evokes industrial imagery.
I don’t question the Jewishness of Nachman of Breslov, but I do very much question his sanity and don’t regard him as any sort of authoritative source.
As for the “really interesting” part, well, it’s really interesting. I learned it from an Israeli Substacker I’ve mentioned who I don’t link to directly or support financially because he is in fact openly racist against Mizrachim and dark-skinned people in general.
I had no idea that tattoos were in general part of some (alleged) racist stereotype against Mizrachim or that there was a “narrative” involved.
The blogger’s point about the tattoos (and the shirtless, suggestive pose in the photo he shared), which I do agree with, is that it’s hypocritical for someone who claims to be a devoutly Orthodox Jew to be using the music of someone who quite obviously isn’t (since tattoos are forbidden, although clearly the tattoos aren’t the main issue with this guy).
So would it be fair to say that these Zionists, just like JVP, are “culturally appropriating Jewish holidays in order to use them for political aims”?
Do you have any cite for your claim that some significant number of JVP members are falsely claiming to be Jewish? I only know a handful of JVP members personally, but they are all serious committed Jews with deep roots in the community. I just skimmed the ADL fact sheet on JVP, which is, as you would expect, extremely negative towards them but doesn’t question that they are in fact Jews. (Although the organization doesn’t actually require you to be Jewish in order to join, which would be creepy).
Haven’t followed the whole convo but it went on a few layers of sidetrack to whether secular zionism goes against cultural Jewish values or if those values even exist. I’m basically in they don’t eeally exist at least as bright lines and are so vague thaf you can’t really answer the question.
No, because they’re actually Jewish? You can’t appropriate your own culture.
It’s (an exceedingly obvious) psyop:
(That’s the founder of Students Justice for Palestine, a professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, who forgot to log out of his personal account before making a post on behalf of “Jewish” Voices For Peace. “As Jews” indeed!
It’s almost as funny as this all-time classic:
Then it’s interesting that none of these “serious committed Jews with deep roots in the community” are ever able to stop them from using Kwanzaa lamps or writing their Seder plates backwards:
I guess Dr Bazian couldn’t find any of those “serious committed Jews” those days…
OK, this is disappointing. You are falling for stupid internet conspiracy theories here. JVP, like basically every other activist group in existence, spams its supporters with memes and encourages them to post them on social media. What’s more likely, that Bazian reposted without considering whether it was appropriate for him to do so without editing, or that this proves Bazian secretly controls JVP?
The JVP members that I know personally are people I have known for decades. One of them I first met when he was president of my synagogue and used to host Torah study in his house. A couple of the others I have done Seder with every year for over twenty years. They have all raised children with strong Jewish identities. One of them currently belongs to my shul, the others belong to the shul up the road led by a rabbi who has been a prominent member of the community for decades, was part of the committee that edited the current Reconstructionist siddur, and who is…wait for it…also a JVP member.
As it happens, they were all raised Reform, don’t speak Hebrew and wouldn’t have noticed the backwards wording on the seder plate. So what? If you’re going to use Hebrew fluency as a test to gatekeep Jewishness, you’re going to exclude the large majority of American Jews, including most of the Zionists and almost all of the secularists.
It felt like we were having a nice respectful conversation here, but if you’re going to continue to slander my friends based on slop you saw on the dumbest corners of the internet, it’s going to come to an end.
(In fairness, I should note that the small sample of JVP members I have known personally also includes a different rabbi, Israeli yet, who turned out to be a horribly unethical person, but for reasons unrelated to his politics)
Considering the well documented financial involvement between JVP and Bazian’s own SJP it doesn’t seem to me to be a conspiracy theory at all. You gonna give Joey Mannarino the same charitability? Maybe he was just reposting a black woman’s expression of support for Trump without considering whether it was appropriate for him to do so?
But if you really think that this is what happened, then fine - where’s the original tweet he was reposting?
I’m not slandering your friends. I’m sure they’re nice enough people (other than the whole anti-Zionism thing). But the organization they belong to is not run by Jews.
Do Reform Jews not have Torah scrolls? Do they not know how many candles a Menorah should have? The Reform Jews I know read from the same Torah and use the same Menorahs as other Jews.
The biggest threat to Hamas is peace loving Palestinians. Similarly, the biggest threat to Israeli apartheid, atrocities, and their cover up is organized opposition from Jews.
So it’s about as unsurprising to see supporters and excusers of Israeli apartheid and other atrocities slandering organizations like JvP as “not really Jewish” or “not run by Jews” as it is when Hamas slanders and attacks peaceful Palestinians.
Not my responsibility to fact check every conspiracy theory you come up with.
The ADL routinely slanders and defames anti-Zionists, with little regard for truth. If even they aren’t promoting this accusation, I feel very safe in assuming it’s complete bullshit.
I also note you’ve now apparently moved the goalposts from “Most JVP members are only pretending to be Jews” to “OK, most of them are Jews, but the leadership,including all the rabbis, are secretly gentile anti-Semites”.
You know a lot of American Reform Jews who can read directly from a Torah scroll? Unless you’re hanging out with Reform rabbis, I seriously doubt that. And what does that even matter? If they had been raised as secular Jews, they certainly wouldn’t be able to read Hebrew, but they’d still be Jews.
