Via Shagey_

boo

EEK! A SPOOK!!! and i shall call it ghostie and it shall be mine and it shall be my ghostie!!! 💚👻💚👻💚

(supreme irony in that i now feel alienated and a bit melancholy to lose my ghost girl url, so thank you for this my love, i can keep a part of her represented with a cute badge!)

The Jewish Chronicle

If the bodies of babies can’t make the world care about Jewish lives, nothing can - The Jewish Chronicle

It is not the silence itself that is earth-shattering. It is the discretion to be silent about this, but not of other’s suffering.

I thought I had felt all the disappointment there was to feel since October 7. That the indifference of strangers to Jewish lives could no longer surprise me. That well-meaning people choosing to highlight Palestinian suffering and ignore Israelis’ followed a predictable path that I had got used to.

But of course, I was wrong.

Yesterday, the image of Shiri Bibas clutching her two young children as terrorists tore them from their home was joined in our hearts by another horrifying sight.

Confronted with the sight of four coffins, two of which contained the bodies of Kfir and Ariel paraded on a Hamas stage in Gaza surrounded by masked terrorists, some of whom had even bought their children, I thought to myself, this has to be the moment where people wake up.

I watched in complete horror as this spectacle was being televised to the world, and the only people talking about it online were Jewish.

I don’t know any Jew since October 7, who has not felt paralysed with grief and rage about how little Jewish lives matter, particularly in the spaces of people who claim to care about injustice.

I looked online for the response from normally extremely vocal human rights charities. There was nothing from Save the Children UK about the boastful parading of dead Jewish babies, zero from UNICEF UK about the spectacle of evil.

Amnesty International could not even trouble themselves to focus on the direct and deliberate targeting of Jewish children without invoking false equivalence and bothsidesing on a day that we mourned two babies whose only crime was being Jewish.

No one, bar us, marches for our right to life. No one chants for our freedom, not even when our children are forcibly removed from their homes by murderous rapists and held underground for over a year, no campuses are taken over by spoilt students refusing to study, so devoted to our lived experience that they can't bring themselves to eat, and no one takes part in collective mourning, not even for the murder of our babies.

I do not know if the silence from people who have shared information about the desperate plight of children in Gaza interspersed with holiday pictures is deliberate. I do not know what conversations happen internally if at all. I know most of them will have no idea what it feels like to see your community degraded and dehumanised online and in the streets every week by thousands of people across the globe who claim to be moral and decent.

It is not the silence itself that is earth-shattering. It is the discretion to be silent about this, but not of others suffering. It is deliberate, it is considered.

The same people who were convinced Elon Musk is a raving Nazi and were so keen to educate their 201 followers about why his salute was antisemitic, have nothing to say about Hamas kidnapping and murdering Jewish children in cold blood.

More silence when the depravity goes further and forensic testing on the corpses returned by Hamas revealed they were covered in propaganda material and that Shiri is not even the fourth body returned. And nothing when it was revealed that the boys were killed in captivity.

But then if the image of a mother and her children in coffins while the monsters responsible for their death towered over them is not enough to shake the souls of ordinary people into saying something, then what is?

And so here we are again. Another moment in this barbaric timeline of terror and psychological torture where Jews are screaming into a void with mostly each other for company.

Our agony is for the families who have become our own. Shiri was every Jewish mother, her babies were our own. Oded Lifschitz was our peace-loving grandpa. How are generations of Israelis watching this expected to cling on to his unwavering commitment to peace and coexistence.

Meanwhile we have lived, slept and breathed their stories. We have witnessed their families' tireless efforts to get the world to notice their humanity and we have watched ordinary people destroy their posters with a latte in hand.

I will never understand why the image of a terrified mother clutching her babies flanked by frenzied gunmen in plain clothes did not inspire global movements to demand their immediate release. Perhaps if they had we might not be here now.

You will hear Jewish people talk about how October 7 changed everything for them. I fight daily not to let a whirlwind of pain consume me.

I do not want my world to shrink but we are constantly confronting the reality that people are indifferent to our violent murder at best, or defensive of it at worst.

Of course there are friends and allies outside our community who do care, they acknowledge the pain we are feeling, and we cling to them with dear life but they are few.

It feels trite to talk about the people who have spoken out for us and how important they are, because well, only a psychopath doesn’t care about a 9-month-old baby ripped from their bed and murdered by terrorists.

“But Hamas said they were killed in Israeli air strikes” I can see the apologists typing now. And honestly, I pity them.

How devoid of human decency do you have to be to hold anyone other than the murderous terrorist who stole them responsible?

[two notes: 1. I loathe Elon, but the non-Jewish people who were mad about Elon were lecturing us that we weren’t mad enough or performing enough for their satisfaction, and have NOTHING to say about murdered Jewish children. they do not care about antisemitism nor Jewish lives, they are hypocrites.

2. anyone who claims Ariel and Kfir were killed by an airstrike rather than murdered in cold blood by their captors is a vile liar and should be called on their moral bankruptcy, every single time.]

Hello friend!

Ahoy! You are now anonymous (because you asked so nicely and it's a valid question.)

G-d I wish I had a real answer for this. I think it depends on the person, but is this someone you feel like will be receptive to you approaching her with some vulnerability about how unsafe that makes you feel? Do you think she will listen to reason if you give her fact-based explanations for why that rhetoric is more antisemitic than it is helpful to the Palestinian cause? + your perspective and feelings on it? If so, it's worth a try if you are intent on maintaining a trust-based friendship.

If you don't think you'll be safe/you aren't really in a place to take the risk of vulnerability, I'd say you have a few choices:

Avoid her or at least talking about that with her for now, and talk to her later when some of the heat has died down on this issue. Admittedly, this is not optimal because it's way easier to apologize and backtrack when the stakes are low(er), but if you really work on it with her maybe you could rebuild some of that trust.

Stay friends but don't trust her with your safety (emotional or physical). Up to you about how you answer her if she notices and asks about this.

Cut ties at whatever speed you are comfortable with and don't tell her why. You can drift or just start avoiding her. That happens sometimes for non-political reasons.

Cut ties with her and tell her why you aren't interested in maintaining the relationship. That's obviously the most direct, confrontational version; if you go this route but don't want to have a fight about it, you could just say "hey - this really showed me that you do not value the lives and human rights of my people and therefore me, and so I no longer feel safe around you. I wish that was different, but it can't be fixed at this point because I can't trust you anymore." That's a tough lesson, but it's one some people need to learn.

Obviously none of that is ideal, but we're not working with ideal circumstances here unfortunately. Idk if other people have suggestions, but those are mine. I'm sorry you're in this position and hope that you have other supportive community no matter what you decide and how she responds.

Motherfuckers will say "Autumn is my COMFORT TIME it's the best season" and then proceed to have the worst month of October of their whole entire lives

Audrey Hepburn wearing Givenchy in 'Sabrina' (1954)

Jenny Holzer, “Marquees,” 1993 (from the collection of Don Shewey)

OCTOBER 2023 (Life is very long and you, after all, shall live it)

Mine / Will Barnet / Albert Camus / Jihyun Yun / agoera / The Japanese House / The Wind Rises (2013) / Jenny Holzer / Hadestown / Garth Nix / Edith Magdalene / Rainer Maria Rilke / William Stafford / Jill Barklem / Ada Limón / Czesław Miłosz / Anne Sexton / Eva Harr / Deborah Landau / The Cranberries

John William Waterhouse, Psyche Entering Cupid’s Garden - 1904 

ok ive been keeping my mouth shut on the topic bc im a coward but it is seriously seriously concerning how many people feel comfortable gleefully being mask-off antisemites at the first possible opportunity, and even more concerning how many of said people are very popular tumblr users whose thousands and thousands of followers at best cannot recognize antisemitism and at worst condone or even encourage it. and yeah some of these people have had at least somewhat concerning politics for a while (not naming names but iykyk) but some of them have seemed mostly normal or even positioned themselves as allies to the jewish community. so uh please excuse me feeling very distrustful and scared rn