daniela 📚 Profile picture
Ashkenormative Afghan Jew, Queens native. Life is confusing, and people are insane.
Nov 3 8 tweets 3 min read
If you think the Jewish guy who wore a hat to a Palestinian coffeeshop was a setup, have I got a story to tell you about the plaintiffs in Lawrence v. Texas... 🧵 Briefly, Lawrence v. Texas is the landmark Supreme Court case striking down the Texas laws criminalizing sodomy as unconstitutional. It is one of the most important LGBTQ rights cases of modern times. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_…
Sep 17 10 tweets 3 min read
For my entire childhood I was told (and told others) I was a "Sephardic" Jew - which didn't mean "Sephardic" (Western European) at all - it meant "Not Ashkenazi." It wasn't until extremely recently, maybe a few years ago, that I learned that I wasn't Sephardic, I was Mizrahi. 1/ Part of the group of Jews from Arab countries that left or were expelled. In my case, my grandmother left Afghanistan at 9 yo in 1948. These stories aren't told in the US because there are so few Mizrahi Jews here. Almost all of them went to Israel, which is 50% Mizrahi. 2/
Aug 21 7 tweets 2 min read
Leifer is a founder of If Not Now, an anti/non-zionist AsAJew group that's extremely critical of Israel. @powerHouseBooks hosted this talk because it thought it was getting the right type of Jew. But when it found out who was moderating, @powerHouseBooks abruptly canceled. 1/ Rabbi Andy Bachman, a rabbi in Brooklyn, was to moderate the talk. Back in December, Rabbi Bachman also appeared at a panel discussion at CUNY to discuss the film Israelism, and had prepared a series of critical questions to ask. 2/ andybachman.substack.com/p/a-difficult-…


Image
Image
Image
Jun 14 15 tweets 5 min read
Thread about Nerdeen Kiswani, leader of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), who lead the protest outside of the Nova Exhibit on June 11 2024. You can see her in this video leading the chant about Israelis partying next to gas chambers during the Holocaust. 1/ Nerdeen also led the riot in front of the Brooklyn Museum & defended the Hamas-style targeting of the home of the museum's Jewish board members. A few months ago, she led a protest against Memorial Sloan Kettering, a cancer hospital in NYC, saying it was complicit in genocide. 2/
Image
Image
May 27 4 tweets 2 min read
This, from a DSA organizer I follow.

Top priority for DSA is changing the US's position on Israel. Not improving conditions for working people in the US, or student debt relief, or immigration reform, or any of the other domestic issues that face our country. Instead, Israel. 1/ Image DSA is comprised of mostly white, overprivileged, and overeducated people who have found their ubercause in a topic that has almost nothing to do with their day to day lives or the day to day lives of most working class Americans. 2/2
May 25 7 tweets 2 min read
Someone asked how I was qualified to talk about what "the Jews" are thinking, which is a fair question so here is the answer.

Since Oct 7th Jews have talked to other Jews about almost nothing but Oct 7th and the explosion of antisemitism. 1/ If they haven't spoken about it *with you* it's because either they don't trust you enough to know how you feel, or they don't want to burden you with their constant anxiety. 2/ karolmarkowicz.substack.com/p/your-jewish-…
May 24 10 tweets 2 min read
I disagree on how "unshakably D" Jews are right now.

Jewish loyalty to the Democratic party stemmed from our belief that tolerance & pluralism is what saved American Jewry from the fate of European Jewry. 1/ American Jews sought to universalize our experience and promote pluralism, liberalism, and tolerance as a way to ensure our safety ("never again" became "never again for anyone"). Voting for Democrats was one way we sought to accomplish that. 2/
May 23 7 tweets 2 min read
The most gracious explanation I can give this is that Phil has 12 tweets on how he doesn't understand that you can't always rely on literal translations, sometimes you need to use context clues to figure out what's going on. 1/ This happens all the time. The phrase "That's my boy!" could refer to my dog or my son, depending on context. And if you had to translate it into a different language, whether it was my dog or my son may affect the translation. So a correct translation would rely on context. 2/
May 17 8 tweets 3 min read
I read through this "bombshell" WaPo report & mostly I'm amused that rich Jews reacted to Oct 7th the same way us poor(er) Jews did: by forming group chats to freak out over antisemitism together, albeit with way more money & slightly more influence 1/ archive.is/nHuBS Seriously they reacted just like you and I did: they commiserated, they brainstormed how to keep the focus on what Hamas did on Oct 7th, they met with Israeli politicians, and they worried about their safety. 2/


Image
Image
Image
Image
May 15 6 tweets 3 min read
Sonoma State Univ, a public univ in CA, capitulated to the anti-Israel protesters on campus last night.

It creates an "advisory council" of SJP, an anti-Israel extremist group, and puts them in charge of future academic boycotts of Israel. This is outrageous & illegal. 1/

Image
Image
Image
A well-researched bombshell lawsuit brought by the survivors of Oct 7th details how SJP chapters across the US have been used since 10/7 to sanitize Hamas's atrocities, call for the destruction of Israel, & terrorize Jewish students. 2/ 3/ gtlaw.com/en/-/media/fil…



Image
Image
Image
Image
Apr 20 7 tweets 2 min read
If you are a rich white woman, the easiest thing you can do to be accepted in the cool social justice circles is to listen to NPR, read prestige media, "listen to and learn from Black women," internalize those opinions, & start espousing them. I know because I was this woman. 1/ It's really very easy to do. I did it for years - it was fun, mostly subconscious, & most of the time not even that nefarious. I learned a lot about a lot of topics. I can still talk good social justice talk, and sometimes do it to my husband because it annoys him 😂 2/
Mar 3 17 tweets 7 min read
I read the attempt to discredit the NY Times reporting on Hamas's systemic sexual violence so you don't have to. You should, so you can see the full extent of the depravity & misogyny enabled & required by antisemitism. But here are the highlights. theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new… Top line, the argument is that there is insufficient forensic evidence of any mass rape; if there were rapes, they were committed by ordinary Palestinians, not Hamas; the rapes were incidental, not systemic; and anyway, reporter is not credible because she liked bad tweets.
Dec 16, 2023 10 tweets 3 min read
Am I supposed to feel bad for people like this?

Because I don't.

My only thought is what is wrong with you, crying over a home you've never been to and olive trees that existed 75 years ago. 🧵 Image Virtually every Jewish person has this story. Almost all of our grandparents were expelled, with various levels of violence, from their homelands.

Very few of us harbor illusions that we're going back. We moved on and focused on the future.

This mindset makes no sense to us.
Jun 28, 2023 5 tweets 2 min read
This is for every single "education equity" activist who called open schools parents racists or white supremacists. You fought to keep schools remote, and as a result you took an already abysmal system and somehow made it even worse. Relatively wealthy white kids gained in reading because their private schools opened or their parents hired tutors. Asian families are super organized around education and were able to activate the community. Black and Hispanic kids weren't as fortunate. Oops!
Aug 31, 2022 14 tweets 4 min read
Someone asked me today how covid had affected my relationship with Jewish institutions and the answer is negatively, probably irrevocably so.

In August 2022, almost every non-Orthodox synagogue in NYC requires masks, vaccines, or both. For everyone, including babies. 🧵 None of these synagogues is my synagogue, but mine has similar policies. Everyone over 6 mos has to be vaccinated, and everyone over the age of 2 has to wear a KN95 mask. My younger children cannot go to services or Hebrew school because they're not vaccinated.
May 30, 2022 14 tweets 3 min read
I spent about half an hour today chatting with a high level employee at NYCDOHMH and I'm still kind of processing it, but my main takeaway was that if we let these people continue to call the shots we are going to be dealing with restrictions for a very very very long time. 🧵 The thinking is that we don't know the long term effects of covid, so we need to continue protecting people. But won't we not know the long term effects for a very long time? Are we going to continue these restrictions for 20 years? No clear answer to that.
May 13, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
We did when instead of giving new moms paid time off to support breastfeeding, we stuck a pump in their hands and said, "You figure it out." It is now, at most, "breastMILK is best." And there is very little evidence that breastmilk is better than formula. New moms are guaranteed time to pump at work but that time doesn't have to be paid. So a shift worker who takes 45 mins to pump, needs to stay at work 45 mins longer. Is it better to give your baby breastMILK or is it better to get home earlier and spend 45 mins with your baby?
Mar 25, 2022 11 tweets 7 min read
When the dust settles & we're able to have a rational convo abt closed schools & prolonged child masking, many will claim they were always against it. Luckily people like @GiniaNYT are willing to go on the record as a school closure & mask proponent. 🧵
nyti.ms/3Lhzu0i Let's start with @GiniaNYT's article last year, in which she highlighted @drkysr, who claimed *in May 2021* that reopening schools was white supremacy. No pushback from Ginia, obviously. nytimes.com/2021/05/07/nyr…
Dec 12, 2021 12 tweets 3 min read
Kids did everything right. They "stayed home to stay safe" (even though they were never at risk); they "masked up" (even the littlest kids, those learning how to speak & read); they got vaccinated. And we are still actively making their lives worse, smaller, because we can. In my neighborhood, the annual (outdoor) children's Halloween parade was canceled "because COVID." Meanwhile, NYC's Village Halloween Parade went forward. npr.org/2021/10/29/104…
Oct 27, 2021 8 tweets 2 min read
Does anyone remember this #flattenthecurve graphic from March 2020? It's been a while so I want to revisit it. A thread. In March 2020, we were told that we had to take extreme measures to "flatten the curve" and avoid overwhelming our hospital system. That was the goal. Eventually most of us would get covid, but we had to do what we could to avoid all getting it at the same time
Oct 27, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
PSAL athletes have mandated vaccination and are still subject to arbitrary, senseless rules that are hindering their ability to compete, showcase their talent, and be recruited.

@NYCMayor can you please cha he these rules to allow our @NYCSchools
athletes to compete? 🧵 I spoke to @Coachlanese13 last night about the city's restrictions on PSAL. Right now, PSAL can only compete against other PSAL athletes. So our public school athletes cannot participate in state competitions, because athletes from other cities and towns will be there.