Thread by @emanumiller

Hi @Mittaloak,

It seems we have a common interest: Indigenous rights. At least, that's per your bio on the @BenAndJerrys website.

It seems we have another thing in common: Indian roots.

Let me introduce you to my grandfather, Saba Joe.

Like you, my Saba grew up in India.

Unlike you, he wasn't born there. His family came from Baghdad, Iraq.

At the age of two, he was taken by his mother to India because Iraq was increasingly unsafe for Jews. They were far from alone. Their story was shared by many thousands of Jews in Iraq alone.

At one point, roughly 100 years ago, there were roughly 130,000-150,000 Jews in Baghdad. Fewer than five remain. A 2,600 year-old community was utterly decimated over the last century.

honestreporting.com/tragic-demise-…

Why?

Because those uppity Jews stopped being so timid, had enough of endless attacks by their Christian and Muslim neighbours, and decided they wanted to go home, to the Jewish ancestral homeland, and establish a state where Jews could live without being discriminated against.

Thankfully, my grandfather left before a pogrom in 1941 in which possibly hundreds of Jews in Baghdad were murdered by their neighbours over a bloody two-day frenzy. Women were raped, victims' limbs were cut off. There were rivers of blood.

honestreporting.com/farhud-massacr…

This episode may be more dramatic than most, but the experience of coming under unprovoked attack was shared by Jews throughout the Middle East. Roughly 850k-1M Jews fled from Muslim lands over the twentieth century.

Many went to America, others to Israel. Some, like my grandfather, came to India. But while he grew up in Kolkata, he yearned to move to the historic homeland of the Jewish people. After centuries of persecution, many Jews around the world made the same decision.

The news that your company, @BenAndJerrys, sought to boycott all of Israel is a terrible disappointment. You of all people should know that Jews have a strong claim to live in this land. We have never forgotten Jerusalem, we have never forgotten our bond to this place.

That is because we are indigenous.

To see you attempt to undermine our presence here, just two months after Israeli civilians were the targets of literally thousands of rocket attacks by Hamas, each one a war crime, is the very opposite of supporting indigenous rights.

You want to support the Palestinians? By all means. Millions of Israelis will join you.

But if you aim to delegitimise Jews' very existence in our ancestral homeland, don't think for a second you're a human rights defender.

You're not.

You're a human rights denier.