This link is to a post that my dear friend Sarah wrote, and you need to know that what she expressed is how nearly all of your Jewish and Israeli friends are feeling, no matter where they are in the world. I was going to write that this is how we’re feeling now, but not only have we been feeling this way for the past four months – we’ve been feeling it at lower levels forever. It’s always just below the surface, and while some periods are worse than others, the hatred we are experiencing today is unprecedented, terrifying, and exhausting.
I’m active on various social networking platforms, and I think you’d be horrified by the comments that people have written to me, the names I’ve been called (Zionist POS, Zionazi, baby killer, genocidal, white supremacist – to name a few), the gleeful hatred sent in my direction, the random laughter emojis I often receive on my public war-related Facebook posts or on comments I write elsewhere from strangers (and if they don’t block me immediately, I admit to being petty and doing the same thing on their public posts before blocking them), the threat to share my profiles and screenshots of my posts in “anti-Zionist” groups, the gaslighting, the trolling…
And it’s not just directed at me. It’s directed at every Jew and Israeli who dares to mention Judaism, antisemitism, the Holocaust, or Israel in online spaces. It’s bringing up Judaism/antisemitism without mentioning Israel, and at least several people immediately criticizing Israel while claiming that being anti-Israel (or anti-Zionist, because somehow, “everyone” is convinced that they know what Zionism is) is not being antisemitic. (Spoiler alert: If someone talks about rising antisemitism and you feel the need to claim it’s not true or justify the increase in Jew hatred by talking about Israel, that’s antisemitic.)
It’s mentioning antisemitism, and instead of receiving validation, comfort or concern, you’re asked about Islamophobia – which is also terrible, but why are you demanding that we Jews not focus on ourselves and what we are experiencing? Would you ask any other minority group facing outrageous levels of hatred to think about other groups? If you get angry when people respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter”, why are you responding to Jewish concerns by essentially stating that “All Lives Matter” and expecting us to do the same? Do Jewish lives matter less?
It’s grieving about what happened in Israel on October 7th and the losses we are still experiencing daily (and if you are Israeli, you either know someone who suffered/was abducted/was killed or knows someone with family in those situations), and having your grief minimized, been asked to think about Palestinian losses, or had people respond with demands to stop centering yourself as a Jew/Israeli.
It’s hundreds of Jews in Australia being doxxed in anti-Israel/anti-Zionist/antisemitic online spaces. It’s a ski shop in Davos putting up a sign stating that Jews are not allowed to rent equipment from them.
It’s a rabbi and his family at a university in Leeds being forced to go into hiding due to threats on his and his family’s lives because he also has Israeli citizenship and served in the IDF (and people seeing nothing wrong with this because he’s a “genocidal baby-killer”).
It’s people who write “No Zionists” in their online dating profiles.
It’s an Israeli in London being told by a comedian to leave his show while the audience chanted “leave” repeatedly.
It’s protesters demonstrating loudly outside of a hospital in Toronto because the hospital has Jewish donors.
It’s scary.
It’s constant.
It’s everywhere.
It’s worse than you think it is.
It’s happening to almost every Jewish person you know, and if it isn’t happening to them, it’s definitely happening to people they know.
As Jews, we don’t have the privilege to ignore what’s happening – it’s happening to us. Please speak up for us. Please defend us. Please don’t make us fight Jew hatred on our own. I want to make something clear. I’m not asking you to defend Israel. I’m asking you to help fight antisemitism.
Jewish lives matter. Our lives matter.
