I just.
yup, spin away…. TO YOUR DOOM
(via menpale)
"
It’s 1951. A young woman, maybe 19, a newcomer from Iran, gives birth to her first daughter. The daughter is taken away and the woman is told she had died.
“Where is the dead daughter?” asks the young woman.
“There is no daughter, go home.”
She went home with no daughter. She went home with no funeral and no grave.
A year goes by, the same young woman gives birth to a son at the same hospital. The son is taken. Where is my son, the woman asked. He’s dead, they say to her. Your son in dead, there is no son.
“Give him to me dead,” the woman said.
“There is no dead, go home.”
She went home with no son, she went home with no funeral, with no grave.
She had no more children. They remained alone, just she and her husband. Three years ago her husband died and she was left all alone – no husband and no children, 82 years old, sick and lonely, with no family or friends left.
I met this woman an hour ago. She was sitting on a bench on Zamenhof Street in Tel Aviv asking for help. She held a hospital bill of 909 shekels for calling for an ambulance for her husband over three years ago. Not only she does she lack the ability to pay, she doesn’t know how to do it. When I offered her something, she determinedly said no, saying she only wanted to find out what she can do, before bursting into tears. Then she spoke of her children who may be alive today, and cried again. One woman, two children.
God, how efficient they were back then, in 1951.
"—
- Kair Atlan, Yemeni Children Affair: Families of the Kidnapped Speak Out
“A baby disappeared from one out of every eight Yemenite families. One out of eight.”
(via tzionut-gizanut)
“Efficient”? So many of the families of vanished children got draft notices when they would have been the right age - that’s not “efficient.” That’s dumb, clumsy, and thoughtless. Which is exactly how this whole nightmare happened in the first place.
After Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans and the U.S. government botched the response because it was run by idiots who didn’t believe in science and didn’t care about black people, some of the victims started to swear up and down that the government had actively bombed the levees to drown them on purpose. The mind needs a cause, needs agency, needs an intelligent designer to all the chaos and cruelty in the world. “It happened because dumb racists weren’t paying attention” is too horrible for people to handle. “You are step 6 in Doctor Evil’s conquest plan” at least means SOMEBODY thought SOMETHING about you.
50,000+ Yemenite Mizrahim immigrated to late 40s-early 50s Israel more or less all at once, when the country had very crude and rudimentary infrastructure, power grid, and healthcare, and was under constant attack by terrorists. The newcomers lived side by side in tented refugee camps, near-perfect recipe for kids getting sick and dying. At all stages, during and after their care, both the kids and their families are victimized by Ashkenazi racism / colorism. The hospital staff look down on the Mizrahim as primitive, resent then for looking and dressing and speaking like Arabs, can’t actually communicate with them, probably thought they “all look alike,” and between the general chaos of mass immigration amidst continuous terror attacks, when the kids die the parents aren’t told, not in any way they can understand anyway. There was no return of the bodies, no graves or funerals. And no documentation of exactly who had died and, thus, who shouldn’t get draft notices.
It was heartbreaking, horrifying, unforgivable negligence.
What it WASN’T: Racist Ashkenazim stopped being racist just long enough to want to raise Mizrahi babies, got all their racist Ashkenazi friends to accept their having MIzrahi babies, staged a mass kidnapping of hundreds or thousands of children with no eyewitnesses or material evidence even when they all were apparently just taken down the street in a country the size of New Jersey, escaped attention as an enormous new population demographic segment of “Ashkenazi couples raising Mizrahi babies” in a country the size of New Jersey, and also made sure that absolutely nobody would ever ever confess or be willing to be bribed into confessing and that the children would all be raised to never ever question their life circumstances or ever take a DNA test forever and ever world without end.
The truth is awful enough. Cartoonifying it lets the actual villain - everyday mundane racism - off the hook. It lets average people think they’re better than they actually are, because as long as they DON’T engage in giant sordid international conspiracies they have some claim to virtue. When in reality, the world is full of people who can barely remember to take their own children out of the carseat on a hot summer day, much less give proper care to thousands of desperately sick refugees across cultural prejudice and a language gap during a life-or-death crisis.
Many people SHOULD have gone to jail for leaving Yemenite families in ruins. Just as many SHOULD have gone to jail for not responding to Katrina in a more competent and humane fashion.
But there wouldn’t be any mastermind, any leader, going to jail with them. Not because he successfully hid out for 68+ years but because there wasn’t one. There was no plan. And there sure was no “efficiency.”
(This is what it looks like when you can get past blood libel and “pinkwashing” Harry Potter spellcasting long enough to treat Israel like a real country and confront its real horrible fuckups)
Same thing for the whole “sterilized Ethiopian women” thing, from what I understand.
(via stupidjewishwhiteboy)
(via stupidjewishwhiteboy)
A.C. Strip has long understood the significance of the diary his older brother kept as they fled the Holocaust with their parents. He turned it into a self-published book that he gave to his brother as a 90th birthday gift.
But Strip never considered the diary to be an important historical document. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is making him rethink that.
Strip’s brother’s journal is one of more than 200 diaries written by Holocaust victims and survivors the museum hopes to digitize and make available to the public with the help of its first crowd-funding campaign. The museum is seeking $250,000 for the project and will begin soliciting donations through Kickstarter on Monday, the birthday of the most famous Holocaust diarist, Anne Frank.
Read More: Here
Donate here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ushmm/save-their-stories-undiscovered-diaries-of-the-hol
If their goal is reached, their entire diary collection will be catalogued, translated, and published online for EVERYONE. They hope to stem holocaust denial by the power of so many readily-available firsthand accounts.
Please signal boost even if you can’t spare $5 to donate!
@vaspider Throwing you a tag because I imagine you’d want to boost this
Thank you!
(via blueeyeddl)
This is a direct ATTACK on the queer Jewish community. The organizer’s claim that the parade was not in favor of Zionism, a claim which inherently IS antisemitic, has clouded their understanding of what the Star of David is and who is stands for. Although we can work to teach people the true meaning of Zionism, how to criticize Israel without being antisemitic and how the term Zionism is often hijacked by the far-right, in situations like this we do not have time to simply teach. We must stand up for the oppressed and stand with our brothers and sisters in Chicago.
Please #signalboost ,sign and pass, on to ALL of your friends and family ASAP!
Their great affirmation of inclusion:
“You can march with us as long as you’re a good jew”
(via progressivejudaism)
Real talk: Probably 90% of the people I’ve seen publicly take a stand against the anti-Semitic actions at the Dλke March this in the past 36 hours have been Queer Muslimahs, including one statement I saw on FB from a Queer Palestinian woman.
The rest of y’all need to step up and condemn this, there is literally no excuse.
Then just count me in as the evil type because I believe in Israel too. Anti-semites will take any excuse to oppose us. They even hide behind the banners of liberation like the pride parade. You would think that after generations of being the victims of persecution they would know better than to be the perpetrators of it. But we are Jews and we understand that this is just the way things are. We’ve seen this all before. Never forgetOP here
Don’t worry darling, I am one of ‘em Evil Jews that Refuse to be Wiped off of Earth™ too.
It is sad, indeed. But for now we at least have where to run to.
Please be safe there <3
They may break our bones but not our spirit. Never our spirit.
(via jewishwarriorprincess)
the people expelled from the chicago dyke march legitimately were with A Wider Bridge, an explicitly pro-Israel advocacy group which organised rallies in support of the IDF during its 2014 massacre in Gaza that killed 2,200 Palestinians. A member of Jewish Voice for Peace approached the A Wider Bridge people and correctly identified their political ideology as conflicting with the principles of the march.
at actions and rallies in Aotearoa i’ve approached other Māori who I knew were from reactionary and xenophobic organisations, confirmed what they were about, and then asked for the organisers to have them removed. to propose that this equates to racism by protest organisers is ludicrous: they’re ensuring their actions aren’t coopted by people who think murdering children is good.
blood libel? on my stupid fucking blogging website? it’s more likely than you think!
“the people expelled from the chicago dyke march legitimately were with A Wider Bridge” > Only one of them was, and the organisers did NOT know this at the time that they ejected her. They said so in their official statement that she was not identified as being part of the organization at the time. Moreover, other people who were ejected had nothing to do with her. The Persian Jewish WoC they ejected, for example, was not affiliated with her and explicitly tried to explain to the organisers that she was not there to make any statement on Israel in any way, only to be visibly Jewish, and they still made her leave.
“A member of Jewish Voice for Peace approached the A Wider Bridge people and correctly identified their political ideology as conflicting with the principles of the march.” > That is literally not what happened. JVP were not involved in this at all. Literally none of the statements about what happened from the people who were involved on all sides mentioned JVP or other Jews, nor did JVP say this was the case. You made that up.
Starbucks becomes the poster child for the commercial exploitation of Día de los Muertos
This fall, Starbucks hopped on the sugar skull “trend” with the above cookies. Critics have been quick to point out that this is appropriating cultural tradition associated with Día de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday that celebrates and honors the dead. In a statement, Starbucks defended their choice to make it in the least humble way possible.
Shut up with all this cultural appropriation nonsense. They are just cookies. Starbucks is allowed to sell cookies and if you’re butthurt that they are in the shape of a skull and for the day of the dead, that’s your problem, not theirs.
Put on your adult pants and deal with the fact that a coffee shop sells cookies.
Honestly, whining about a cookie has got to be the most First World Problem ever.
Y'all know nonwhite people profit from Starbucks too. Just making sure you are aware. Hell, I’m sure Mexican people profit off of Starbucks.
Also, you guys think that the skull is called a sugar skull when it’s not. Sugar skulls are just a type of calavera. The depiction of skulls with the fancy designs are more regularly called Calavera. The calavera represent a NUMBER of things, which includes a representative symbol for Día de los Muertos. But the putting it on a cookie is very similar to how it’s used in modern day Mexico. Imagine it sort of like the Jack O’ Lantern symbol but for Día de los Muertos.
I know how the Day of the dead works (somewhat) because I used to live next door to a family of Mexican immigrants who’d invite our whole block to celebrate with them. Literally, the word “sugar skull” never escaped their lips. They were always “calavera.”
Why do you guys talk about how these cultures should be treated when you don’t even know if what you are saying is correct? While I personally take no issue with the term “sugar skull,” tumblr is so hypocritical when it comes to how they treat culture.
I just want to point out that this year, Mexico had its first ever Día de los Muertos parade.
It was inspired by the James Bond film, Spectre.
You know, James Bond, the character created by English author, Ian Fleming? The film by Hollywood?
Yeah. Both locals and tourists loved it. And it was there hoping to boost tourism. Which it did.
So, if Mexico and Mexicans are happy to have some fun surrounding their actual culture, taking from a fictional Hollywood film based on a fictional English character to do so, I’m sure that Día de los Muertos as a concept can handle some cookies.
(Source: mic.com, via jewishmagpie-deactivated2018092)
historicity-was-already-taken:
As I mentioned previously, I, along with my boss and my coworker, write posts for my job’s project blog. I work for the American Jewish Historical Society at the Center for Jewish History processing the Communications papers of HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society).
For anyone who is interested in Jewish history, immigration history, archival processing, primary source analysis, the archival profession, etc–or anyone who just likes my writing–I have listed my contributions to the project blog below.
(via stupidjewishwhiteboy)
Remember that time the New York Times wrote that a community with a large Muslim population that provided women’s-only hours at a public pool was a “model of inclusion” and “blueprint for successful economic and cultural integration” (article)
…….and then a few months later wrote that women’s-only hours at a public pool in a heavily Orthodox Jewish community were causing the pool to be “unmoored from the laws of New York City and the Constitution, and commonly held principles of fairness and equal access” and that the policy is “unfortunate” with “a strong odor of religious intrusion into secular space” (article)?
(via jewishwarriorprincess)
them hips doin the most…
Yas, teach.
(Source: weloveshortvideos.com, via chai-on-life-blog1)
Jews and Arabs REFUSING to be enemies!
Love is stronger than hate!
(Source: facebook.com, via lachaim)
I need a better name to call people who spread sensationalist lies about Jews or Israel (”Israel sterilized black women” “Israeli soldiers invade random homes” “Israel steals Palestinian organs”)
I’m thinking maybe “Libel Thumpers”
I think my favorite of those was “Israel opens dams, floods Gaza” during the last rainy season in Israel, where about half the Negev was flooded to some extent.
And also there’re no dams anywhere near Gaza
Don’t forget the time we airlifted the bulk of Ethiopia’s Jewish population just so we could sterilize them.
I like “libel thumpers”. Gonna use that.
(via stupidjewishwhiteboy)
