Anti-Semitic Social Justice
*Trigger Warning* anti-Semitism, rape culture
Originally published Nov 9 2020 in my Facebook post. Republished here with edits.
Screenshot Bene Israel Jewish community that has lived in India for centuries. Image description: A group of Bene Israel Jewish community. Children are seated on the floor in the front, women are seated on chairs, and men and older boy are standing behind women. The women are wearing saris and traditional Indian jewelry like nose rings, earrings, necklaces, and anklets, and are holding babies. The children and men are wearing traditional Jewish hats with flat tops that cover the crown of their heads.
Wow. Anti-semitism is deeply entrenched in our movement.
I just got accused by a man in this movement of having "Hebrew backers" because, according to him, I hadn't called out the rapists he thought I should be calling out ("because they have ties to Israel or something").
*stunned look*
This was after he messaged me gloating about Biden winning and I told him I don't celebrate rapists.
By the way, he's wrong, I've called out every person he thinks I "should have" called out. He just doesn't pay attention to my work. What. A. Surprise.
Also, it's not the job of a man to be telling a woman who and what she should call out. How dare he? We wouldn't have rape if men called out other men. I've been on these frontlines my entire life because of the rape culture created by men. But he wants to tell me, a brown Hindu woman, what to say to put myself in even more danger? As if he was ever going to come and rescue me?
Also, for people with specific marginalizations, I call out rape in ways that do not exacerbate their community's marginalization. When a Black or a brown man is a rapist, I go to that community and see what I can do to help those survivors. I act according to what they tell me they need because exacerbating racism or bigotry towards their community is not going to help anyone, including those survivors. That's important because the white people love an excuse to hate Black and brown people without having any understanding of how it is white men who have been raping and colonizing Black and brown people and thus have created this worldwide rape culture.
If a white man is a rapist, I call him out immediately because white supremacy is the dominant system of power worldwide and that needs to be exposed in all places in all ways. And if he's Jewish (since white Jews are included in the system of white supremacy) I don't bring up Israel for no reason because rape culture has not come from the people in Israel but has everything to do with the system of oppression that is patriarchy.
Do you have any idea how many centuries anti-semites have been raping Jews? No, neither have I, it's been that long that Jewish people have been oppressed by others. What kind of prolonged damage do you think that's going to do to a community? A lot. A serious amount of damage extended over multiple millennia. I even wrote an article about how the Romans oppressed the Jews to the point where they even appropriated a Jewish figure and based an entire bastardized state religion off of him, all in an effort to hold their empire together.
And yes, anti-semitism predates even that.
And yes, patriarchy predates even that also and is in every community including the Jewish community because patriarchy is a spiritual problem.
There's only one land in the entire world where Jews have lived and not been oppressed by the majority community who lived there. That land is India. Yep. My people are the only people in the world who have not harmed Jewish people. And it wasn't because we had any "Hebrew backers".
Who even thinks like that? What kind of sickening thought pattern is that?
Also, putting aside the obvious anti-semitic trope of "the Jews paid you with their Jew gold" have you ever, in all your years of knowing me, seen me refrain from calling something out just because that person or that organization or that community had supported me? Have you ever seen that? If anything I call people out "too much" and have been in danger of being houseless my entire adult life because of it. Because you can't smash the patriarchy without telling the truth. But was this anti-semitic patriarchal fool going to come along and give me housing?
To my Jewish community, I'm sorry that this violence is constantly being meted out to you even from people who should know better.
#SmashRapeCulture #SmashAntiSemitism #SmashAntiBlackness #SmashRacism #SmashHinduphobia #SmashBigotry #SmashMansplainers
Resources:
National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1–800–656–HOPE (4673)
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1–800–799-SAFE (7233)
National LGBT Hotline: 1–888–843–4564
Hotline for 2SLGBTQIA+: 1–519–752-HELP (4357)