r/JewsOfConscience Apr 08 '24

History Devil in disguise

These are old videos of Netanyahu speaking in interview and speaking to US Congress. Notice how US did regime change in all of these nation which were a potential threat to Israel. in Iraq they never found WMD's, in Libya they killed a good leader Gaddafi(Libya abandoned their nuclear program decades ago innexchange for peace)and they can't touch iran because iran actually has WMD's program unlike Iraq & Libya.

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u/unnatural_rights Jewish Apr 08 '24

potentially hot take: I would personally appreciate that we not, in a Jewish subreddit, indulge in language comparing any Jews to "the Devil", "Shaytan", "Satan" (again), "the spawn of Satan", "Moloch", and so forth, as is frequently present in this post and its comments, including from folks identified as non-Jewish allies.

Non-Jewish allies should, as allies, recognize the dangerous and ugly history of making such comparisons. However, even leaving that history aside, it's simply unnecessary. Netanyahu isn't a uniquely horrifying, inhuman, supernaturally evil creature; he's just a dude, a bad fucking dude, who believes and does bad fucking things, offends Jewish ethics and morals, and is actively harming Jews and non-Jews alike. Not only does exaggerating Netanyahu's beliefs and identity in this fashion indulge in over-the-top rhetoric - it suggests that the problem is Bibi specifically, rather than what Bibi's doing and how he's doing it.

Part of what we ought to be doing here on the Jewish left is orienting our work in a recognition of the fundamental humanity of everyone involved. That means recognizing that Palestinians are ordinary people being massacred in our name, and that our fellow Jews are ordinary people committing those massacres. Netanyahu doesn't need to be the villain in a fucking slasher movie to be viewed as reprehensible, and - if I'm being honest - the "Satan" and "Moloch" language smacks of a goyishe lens that is not appropriate in this space. If anything, I think it's worse that he's just some fucking putz who dragged his leftover room-temp ethnonationalism from the ash heap of history it was dumped in decades ago.

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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '24

[deleted]

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u/unnatural_rights Jewish Apr 08 '24 edited Apr 08 '24

that's definitely part of it; however, I think most of the negativity that gets directed our way from other Jewish subs comes from the recognition that many of us here are earnest, "genuine", believing and/or cultural and/or "real" Jews, who nevertheless don't toe the line on Israel or Zionism. We're harder to dismiss for that exact reason; we inconveniently complicate the narrative that all Jews support Israel and that Israel stands for all Jews.

I also want to be clear that this shouldn't be an exclusively Jewish space. I think having non-Jews and non-Jewish voices here enriches our conversations and our work and helps to refine our critical lens. I want non-Jews to be welcome here. I just also want the non-Jews among us to remember the space that they're in, and remember what certain ways of talking, including and especially about Jews, have meant for Jews historically, and to reconsider whether calling Netanyahu (or anyone else) "Satan" etc actually reflects what they believe, what they want to manifest in their support for Palestinians, or what they think is most effective at uplifting Palestinian dignity.

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u/Additional-Smile5645 Apr 09 '24

Netanyahu has forfeited his status as a jew technically hes more of a nazi

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u/unnatural_rights Jewish Apr 09 '24 edited Apr 09 '24

respectfully - do you seriously think your comment can be taken in good faith in response to mine? we do not get to declare that Netanyahu has "forfeited" his Jewishness; he is as Jewish as we are, which is precisely why his actions are so alarming to us. it's grotesque and offensive when right-wing Jews declare that progressive or leftist Jews aren't really Jews anymore, and it's not any less offensive for us to do it back to them. "no true Scotsman" is a fallacy, not a guidebook.

ETA: I want to emphasize that I think your response to my comments here embodies exactly the kind of extraordinary - as in, beyond the ordinary - exaggeration and dehumanization we should be rejecting in our work. I don't think it's a correct or accurate way to describe Netanyahu, but more importantly I think it's also counterproductive with respect to the cause of liberation for both Palestinians and Jews.

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u/[deleted] Apr 09 '24

[deleted]

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u/unnatural_rights Jewish Apr 09 '24

Yep. It feels like a logical / rhetorical cousin to arguments that Jews aren't "real" Semites, thus simultaneously misunderstanding why the term "Semite" was ever applied to Jews in the first place, clouding the argument over "indigeneity" or being "native" even further (in which most folks are already talking past one another anyway), AND way overstepping their ostensible points right into denial of basic historical and scientific facts.

It's all about avoiding inconvenient reality. That's all. Jews who are inconvenient to other Jews (because they're either Zionist, or not Zionist), Jews being inconvenient to arguments about Palestinian rights to the land (because Jews do have ethnocultural and historical origins there), Palestinians being inconvenient to Zionist arguments generally (because they were already there), etc. Which means it's also just lazy, on top of being offensive, never mind exhausting.