I will never trust another activist for social justice again. I will never trust a goy who postulates and pontificates about civil rights and the threat of fascism but cannot say the word Jew. Spare me your moralizing, your Holocaust comparisons, your frothing at the mouth about the excesses of Trumpism if you did not say a word on October 7th 2023. You lost your ability to decipher between right and wrong several years ago and I no longer care about anything you have to say.
There is no P in the Arabic language. There is no P in the Arabic language and up until the 1967 War the word Palestinian was a label not given to the Egyptians Jordanians and Ottoman Turks who lived on the land between the river and the sea–displaced peoples who were brought to the land known as Judea Samaria and the ancient kingdom of Israel by the Ottoman Empire and the Muslim Arab conquests of the 7th century–but to the Jews.
Up until 1948 when the land was finally reclaimed by the Zionists, the Jews were called “Palestinians.” Up until 1948, the “Free Palestine” movement was a Zionist “land back” movement–a Jewish, indigenous, anti-colonial movement–yes, that’s right, the Jews are in fact indigenous to the land of Judea–who would have thunk? Zionism is the most successful “land back” movement in the history of the world–and the original “Free Palestine” movement was a Jewish land liberation movement to free the indigenous land of the Jews from the clutches of British colonialism.
Don’t believe me? Here is your visual proof:
The word Palestine came from the Romans–it’s a reference to the Philistines, the ancient enemy of the Israelites. After the Roman conquest of Judea and Samaria (now known as the West Bank) and the kingdom of Israel, the Romans renamed the region after the Jewish people’s enemies as a final humiliation. That is where the word Palestine comes from–it is a remnant of lost empires and colonialist regimes meant to subjugate the Jews.
Ashkenazi Jews, the ethnic subgroup that were enslaved by the Romans—and the largest ethnic group of Jews in North America, are the genetic and archeological evidence of this Roman conquest. These Jews (my ancestors) were forced to build the Colosseum as slaves, a structure which also documented the sacking of Jerusalem in relief sculptures, where Romans are depicted carrying menorahs and other goods taken from the destruction of the Second Temple. The evidence of Roman colonialism also exists in Ashkenazi Jewish genetic markers—which is a mixture of Italian and ancient Israelite/Canaanite DNA.
If you need more proof that Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, we have coins, archeological remnants, and a language-Hebrew which is the only surviving language of the Canaanites–the ancestors of the modern Israelis and ethnic Jews. Everywhere Jews settled, whether it was Yemen, Ethiopia, Algeria, Iran, Russia–this language tied us back together.
Our religion–Judaism which isn’t really a religion at all, but really an indigenous spiritual practice, also ties us back to this tiny sliver of land. Holidays like Hanukkah which commemorates the victory of the Jews of Israel over the Hellenistic Greeks (cultural and political occupiers of Israel that predated the Romans) are based on actual historical events. The holiday Tu BiShvat, a holiday for trees, follows the growing and farming season of Israel–and it is far from the only holiday tied directly to the land and its climate.
And if none of this drives the point home, ask yourself why Arabic is spoken from the western edge of North Africa all the way to the border of Iran–do you truly believe the Middle East and North Africa are monocultures where the only ethnic group who resided in this large region of the world are Arabs? Ask yourself why you don’t know anything about the Amazighs, the Copts, the Kurds, the Yazidis, Druze, Armenians, and a whole host of other ethnicities and cultures that have lived in this region of the world prior to the 7th century, with their own customs, clothing, food, and languages.
I am done arguing with people who purposefully distort and diminish our history for their inverted moral games. No more will I sit back in silence as a former friend or even a family member bends the arc of history to fit their warped narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Amin al-Husseini the Grand Mufti of Palestine, the godfather of the modern day “Free Palestine Movement” was a friend of Hitler. It is even rumored that Husseini was the individual who came up with the idea of “the final solution.” While this rumor has never been corroborated, we do have historical records showing Husseini touring European concentration camps, and we also know he formed the first Muslim SS unit in the Balkans. And prior to World War 2, Husseini was responsible for orchestrating anti-Jewish massacres in the Holy Land, like the famous 1929 Hebron Massacre. In addition to Hebron, Husseini was responsible for several other large pogroms specifically targeting the Jews of Palestine and predating Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich by nearly 15 years—let that sink in for a second.
During the rise of the Third Reich, Hitler’s Mein Kampf became a best seller in the Middle East. And besides the copies of the book that the IDF has recovered from UNRWA schools and private residences in Gaza, you can still find Arabic copies of Hitler’s antisemitic screed in countries like Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, and Syria (among others) to this day.
While there is more known about the enslavement and mass murder of Ashkenazi Jews in Europe during the Holocaust than other regions of the world, the Jews who lived in the Middle East were not spared from the violence or the horrors. The Farhud which occurred in Baghdad in 1941 led to the destruction of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Middle East–a community that predated the Arab conquest of the fertile crescent and traced its roots back to the Babylonian Empire. Prior to the Iraqi Arabs going on an antisemitic murder and rape fest there were 10,000 Jews living in Basra and 90,000 living in Baghdad, now there are no Jews left in the entire country.
The Arab world in general has never been a safe haven for Jews, and these hostilities have predated modern antisemitism for 1400 Years. While some regions were better than others (Morocco was quite safe for a time for instance) there is a millennium and a half history of institutionalized antisemitism in the Middle East, spurned on by Arabic and Islamic colonialism and conquest.
During the days of Islamic empire, Jews and Christians were considered second class citizens–a term known as “dhimmi.” To be a dhimmi in the Arab Muslim world was to live a life of humiliation. Jewish and Christian women had to wear different clothes to distinguish them from Muslim women–usually the same clothing that was reserved for prostitutes and sex slaves, making religious minority women “fair game” to be sexually assaulted and raped by Muslim men. Jews could not hold certain jobs, and could not ride horses or build religious structures that reached a certain height, and they were also required to pay a “protection” tax known as jizya, and if they refused to pay this fee? well, a life of a Jew was cheap.
So spare me your historical revisionism about Jews living in peace in the Middle East until the creation of Israel, and spare me your distorted moralizing about “white Ashkenazi Jews” being “settler colonialists,” us Zionists–us Jews, have been forced to become scholars of our own culture, religion, and history to combat your lies and weaponized ignorance.
Tonight I will be on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art mourning babies who will be returned to Israel in bodybags. Their names are Kfir and Ariel Bibas. These were the babies whose desecrated hostage posters I had to walk past on my commutes to work. I will not forgive and I will not forget where the lies you told about the conflict have gotten us, and I will not forgive or forget the western protestors who scrawled swastikas on their faces and tore down their posters with such cruel glee.
I keep telling myself not to write anything else about Jews, but the world won’t let me shut up. I constantly feel the need to correct, refute, and combat, because it’s not about my bruised ego or loss of friends anymore, but it’s also about the truth. I may not be devout–but I know my history and it’s high time my history-the Jewish People’s history, is told in full by us–the Jews, and not by our detractors.
We must reclaim the word Holocaust, the word genocide, Nazi, and Fascism, from the mouths of those who claim to care so much about humanity except when it comes to the people whose violence it has historically impacted the most. And now, it’s time for you–the activist class to listen, to learn, to put down your signs, and practice the empathy you claim to care so much about. I will not forgive, I will not forget–but that doesn’t mean we cannot rebuild.
