Anybody even vaguely familiar with Israel's government and society would see there is no apartheid there. Repeating the lie shows she is not interested in being any kind of conduit for peace and only contributes to violence against Jews around the world.
I expect better from one of my Michigan representatives in Congress. I'm completely disappointed that she continuously misses opportunities to bring the Jewish and Palestinian communities together in my state.
@jdforward@RashidaTlaib "We need to call out anti-Semitism wherever it’s found, including Rashida Tlaib, whom I really want to support, but cannot because she has not risen to the occasion." howardlovy.com/rashida-tlaib/
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Let's talk about Israeli "apartheid." This lie bothers me because back in the 1980s, when I was in college (yes, I am very, very old), I would march against real apartheid. I once took a bus from Detroit to NYC for a big anti-apartheid rally. I was proud to part of the movement.
In South Africa, apartheid was systematic discrimination against blacks in all areas of society, from education to government to services to where they could live. Black people were truly oppressed under this system.
In Israel, people of all religions, races, colors, and beliefs are an integral part of society, with access to education, the voting booth, party affiliation, and complete freedom of expression and thought.
When I lived in Augusta, Georgia, in the early '70s, our house was vandalized, with epithets painted on the walls calling us n****r-loving Jews because we supported school integration. Today, #BLM leaders say that, as a Jew, I am a white colonizer.
I was ten years old when this happened and it had a huge impact on my life and on my identity as a Jew. We left Georgia for good after that, and moved to Michigan.
It was an early lesson in what it means to be Jewish. We are often on the side of the powerless, yet we are always under suspicion for wielding an unseen, yet nonexistent, power.
This idea that the Palestinians are the only indigenous people of Israel is ridiculous. The land of Israel has been central to Judaism since the beginning, and through the long exile. Most of the Palestinians are descendents of later colonizers and conquerors.
Arguing history, though, is a sure way to repeat it and never move forward. But there needs to be an understanding that Zionism was never a colonial project. Jews were never powerful enough in the diaspora to colonize anything. Zionism was, and is, a movement to come home.
Palestinian nationalism, indeed any thought of nationhood, was born as a reaction to Zionism. It did not exist before Israel's creation. It was, at its roots, an anti-Semitic movement to deny Jewish connection to our land.
Between the Jewish white nationalists of the @RJC and anti-Zionists of @jvplive, there are just enough Jewish apologists for anti-Semites to make it appear that we are complicit in our own persecution. They may be outliers, but they appear to be more numerous in the online world.
@RJC@jvplive Because, in the end, it is always the Jews, themselves, who are blamed for anti-Semitism. If only they weren't communists, if only they weren't white supremacists, if only they didn't support Israel, if only they didn't think they were white ... etc.
@RJC@jvplive Anti-Semites love tokens like Trump-supporting Jews or anti-Israel Jews as examples of "good Jews." But in the post-mortem of persecution, the outliers are held up as the reason behind the pogroms. If you don't believe me, look at how Poland now blames the Jews for the Holocaust.
When the white supremacists or Islamists come for the Jews, they will not separate us into "woke" and Zionist camps. They will not ask for our voting records. They will not separate @ZOA_National from @jvplive. They will not care who disrupted a speech on a college campus.
@ZOA_National@jvplive They will not care if you banned the Star of David at the Dyke March, or if you're a member of @IfNotNowOrg who hounded your fellow Jews with "apartheid" taunts. They won't care if you're a Trump supporter or anti-occupation activist. They will come equally for all Jews.
@ZOA_National@jvplive@IfNotNowOrg Right-wing Jews who feel safe because Trump supports Israel and has Jewish grandkids are no more protected than left-wing anti-Zionist Jews who protest the occupation. Neither the armed white supremacist nor the Islamist at the synagogue door care about our internal divisions.
I'll do occasional history of #Zionism tweets to set the record straight. First, Zionism was never a monolith. Uganda was briefly considered as the site for a Jewish state. But, in the end, most agreed that joining our existing brethren who had never left Eretz Yisrael was best.
#Zionism was never a colonial plan. European Jews had no power to "colonize" anywhere. We had prayed for our return to Jerusalem every day for 2,000 years. Zionism was seen as a return home. Religious Jews wanted to wait for God to make it happen. Secular Jews were less patient.
Meanwhile, in the region that was once Israel before the exile, Jews and southern Syrian Arabs (they would not have recognized the term “Palestinians”) lived under the rule an ailing Ottoman Empire. After WWI, the British took it over and administered it as Mandate Palestine.