Not Anonymous

That's what I see when I encounter a 100x100 icon of Erik's tattoo.

What tattoo?

The tattoo on his forearm, that was stamped (with needles and ink) on him when he and his family were sent to a concentration camp from a ghetto.

I know screen caps create the illusion of having no context. But the movie uses its first twenty minutes to ensure that we know that Erik has not forgiven the Nazis (human and not) for what they did to him and his family.

I mention this, because I feel it needs to be said that the Nazis marked people entering the camp (Jewish and not) as a way to keep them demoralised, without control and, I'll say it again, dehumanised.

An icon of that number, is a fetish of the aforementioned dehumanisation. What we are seeing on screen happened, in history, in real life, to millions of people.

Erik is fictional, what happened to him is not.

The number tattoo, being reduced to a number, actually happened.

People who went through and survived are still alive.

It is inappropriate to use that number on an icon as a way to present the character is an objectified manner and yes, that is what icons do and that is what they are for.

When we see Erik's tattoo, which is exactly twice, it is in the context of bringing down Nazis, because it is evidence to what was done to him, to Jews, to Gypsies, to homosexual men and women, to anyone the Nazis deemed subhuman and sent to die in a camp designed to kill.

That is what that number means.

I love Passover/Pesach.

I was practising reading a portion of the Haggadah with my father this afternoon and I commented, as I've done for years now, how skewed it is when it comes to gender (as in women are not mentioned even once in it) and the new finagled traditions that my American siblings of the feminist and queer variety have tried to instil (the Orange and Miriam's Cup) just do not fit in the Israeli culture, not even alternative culture (Fruit isn't a pun in Hebrew and water isn't an alcoholic beverage and thus has no significance).

I'm going to try and read something extra during the evening, to show that we aren't all free as of yet and just as we remember our bondage of past, we have to remember the bondage of present.

This is especially pertinent, because there are two things we say during the Seder that really cut through me.
"Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not" and Next year in Jerusalem, both recited at the end of the Hagadah.

I was chatting to a friend and mentioned that as an Israeli I'm conditioned to *SMASH* things I don't like. As an individual I mainly shout and judge things without apology.

It is, however, a symptom my locale.

An interpretation of "Next year in Jerusalem" for me, is protection from persecution and antisemitism. Knowing that my family are immigrants to a country designed and designated as a the Jewish Homeland. The historical and political issues and realities aside for the moment, one the things this has always meant in my understanding, that Jews in Israel are safe from persecution on account of our Judaism.

Well, if you're not the right kind of Jewish (i.e. Orthodox of a certain kind) your persecution is guaranteed.
It's one thing not to be completely understood (why I as an atheist goes to shul once a year and light Shabbat candles with my mom every Friday night), it's quite another to have your synagogue vandalised.
There is no doubt, that the Reform shul was vandalised by other Jews, seeing as it was spray painted with Hebrew words saying: "It's Begun" and was signed with a Star of David.
This is the third time this specific shul was targeted. Earlier this year, the shul my family attends, which is Conservative, was also vandalised and spray painted with "Live the People" which is fucking creepy.

But hey, we're the Jewish homeland.

The land of freedom.

If you're Jewish enough. God forbid, you're not a Jew, second class citizens doesn't even begin to cut it.

Making the whole "Wrath Unto the Nations" even more disturbing.

I love Passover. Sometimes (most of the time) I feel the majority of Israeli Jews are just too blinkered to get what it's all about.

As I said, I'm going to try and read something outside the Haggadah, because change only comes if you drag the tradition kicking and screaming.

Via a comment on a different journal, I read that the mod of the My Chemical Romance Bandom com on LJ wrote a response to what has been going down with the aforementioned AU H/C Bingo fic, in which a depiction of the Holocaust, the camps and the treatment of gays during that time was used as a backdrop for angst of two US soldiers.

Yeah, I read the story.

It makes me fingers itch. I want to grab a red pen and mark and correct and fucking rip that story inside out until something resembling "adequate" comes out of it.

The mod, has this to say:

The story was properly disclaimed, and with plenty of warnings with regards to the themes it dealt with, therefore any comment that is not related to any possible literary criticism, should have been left alone.
I chose not to read it at first, because I am uncomfortable with the themes dealt with, and that could have been the choice of all of those people who thought, at first glance, that they were going to find it offensive.
I am not going to ban this type of stories, because I still believe in freedom of speech and because I believe that if we ban stories that refer to that particular chapter in history, we need to ban stories about incest, about BDSM, torture, rape, and in one case necrophilia.

We write FICTION.

WE WRITE FICTIONAL STORIES.

These stories are not historically accurate, these stories ARE NOT just written for sexual gratification.

These stories express part of who we are, what we feel, what lives inside our heads and our hearts.

I hope you will agree that RESPECT for your feelings as readers, should find a corresponding level of RESPECT for the writers.

Emphasis mine
In the words of George Carlin: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits.
You know what I did there?
I executed my right to "free speech", are you offended?
Maybe.
You know what you have a right to do now?
TELL ME ABOUT IT! AT LENGTH! HOW I OFFENDED YOU WITH MY WORDS!
Yeah, really.

I find it utterly, utterly despicable that criticism of offensive material is considered more offensive than the actual subject discussed.

I hate getting personal about it, but it has to be done, because honestly, it's the only way to get it through people's heads.

I am a Queer Jewish Person.

Depictions of gays and Jewish people during the Holocaust matter to me, on a personal level. You know why? Because whole branches of my family tree were eradicated! An entire Queer European Culture was erased!
After the camps were liberated, gay men were sent to other prisons because homosexuality was still illegal regardless of Nazi legislation!
Yes.
Seriously.

Just to put that into perspective for you.

The story in question depicted horrors which happened. That is not the problem, the fact that it was used in a cavalier manner, disregarded the actual lives that lived through it, didn't bother to check the facts of what went on in concentration camps, the fact that American soldiers were sent to POW camps and of course putting the picture of the Gates to Auschwitz in order to illustrate the story.

Yes, these stories are fictional, that doesn't make them "untrue", that doesn't mean that the you can use the material available to you without considering who it affects and what it might mean if you use it. If you wanted to explore the themes and torture committed by the Nazi regime onto gays, you might want to find out what actually happened to these men, who they were, why they were persecuted and where they were sent to.
Let me give you a hint, none of them were captured POW experimented upon, mainly because non-Soviet Ally POW's were treated with the Geneva convention in mind.
Just, FYI.

Fiction does not mean "free for all". You do not write in a vacuum. You cannot say "Don't like, don't read", that's like saying "Shut up, your problems are meaningless".
Fiction, all art, is a dialogue.
You want to dialogue with history via fanfiction, by all means. That doesn't mean you, dear author, are immune from criticism when you are writing a story that depicts a period of time with gross inaccuracy and decides that any and all critical reaction to said story is illegitimate because it was "just a story".

Nothing, is "just a story".

We do not live in a vacuum, what you write will be reacted to, fiction is not a vehicle of self-expression, being accused of bad writing and bad taste is not a personal attack, it is a challenge to one's preconceived notions of what good story telling can and should be.
Good story telling does not continue the dehumanisation of people that happened during that period of time, it does not use Arbeit Macht Frei as a code for free speech (it doesn't mean what you think it means!) and saying that people should "be nice to each other" is silencing and derailing and basically tells those of us who are affected by the depictions of our history to suck it up!

When I see a story that treats a subject matter that is close to my heart for historical, personal and identity related reasons treated with utter DISRESPECT I will call on it. I will say that this author does not care, does not think about and is not informed about the subject zie is writing for "just a story", for "self-expression", for the sake of "fiction".

To conclude, if you're going to use free speech as a silencing mechanism for critical reaction of a piece of fiction that depicts controversial material... you're using it wrong.

It's ironic like rain on your wedding day to wake up on Israel's national Holocaust Remembrance Day and read this:

A retired Italian bishop has sparked a furious row after quotes attributed to him suggested claims of sexual abuse in the Catholic church are a Jewish conspiracy, a British newspaper reported on Monday.

A website quoted Giacomo Babini, emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a "Zionist attack" was behind the criticism, considering how "powerful and refined" the criticism is, the Guardian daily reported.

There aren't enough hours in the day I swear.

Expect more posts about Antisemitisim, the callous use of History and Saturday's Doctor Who episode before this day is done.

Directly continuing from my previous post, the persecution of those pesky Human Rights orgs and those who speak in criticism of Israel continues.

My initial comparison to The Crucible was not unwarranted and I wonder how long before a(n) unofficial committee to investigate un-Patriotic acts against the Jewish State is put together and made public.

Naomi Hazan (alternate spelling "Chazan") has been fired from The Jerusalem Post the daily Israeli English language News paper where she wrote a column. According to the Ha'aretz article regarding this turn of events, that Doron Horovitz, The JP's editor in cheif, declined from commenting about this very "sudden" decision.
The same article, titled "Amid row over contentious ad, Jerusalem Post fires Naomi Chazan of New Israel Fund", goes on to talk about the "Im Tirzu":

Im Tirtzu is trying to cast itself as a centrist movement, refusing to explicitly state an alliance to any party, Left or Right. However, a Haaretz probe found that the influential forces behind the movement make no secret of their rightist political loyalties. Financially, Im Tirtzu is supported by a foundation that has contributed to radical right-wing organizations such as the Women in Green; Pastor John Hagee, the head of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) which contributed to Im Tirtzu, has been implicated in the past by a number of anti-Semitic statements.

[...]

The main channel for donations to Im Tirtzu is the Central Fund of Israel. In addition to Women in Green and Im Tirtzu, it supports Honenu, an organization sponsoring legal defence to radical right-wing activists in trouble with the law. Honenu boasts of financially supporting the families of the Bat Ayin underground, convicted for trying to bomb a girls' school in East Jerusalem in 2002; of Ami Popper, who shot four Palestinian labourers during the first intifada; Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem in 2005; and Haggai Amir, brother of Yitzhak Rabin's assassin Yigal Amir. Im Tirtzu's Web site asks donations to be sent through the American foundation.

[...]

Meanwhile, the Hebrew news Web site Walla! revealed this week that one of the donors to Im Tirtzu is CUFI, Christians United for Israel, led by evangelist preacher John Hagee. CUFI's Web site stated it had given Im Tirtzu $100,000.

Hagee achieved notoriety in 2008, when saying that Hitler carried out the will of God, to return the Jews to Israel in accordance with the biblical promise.

Emphasis by me.

I find the fact that Israel gets funds and support from Christian groups that want to exist for the sole purpose of believing that through it we'll be annihilated... a tad disturbing, to say the very least.

The Knesset (our Parliament) has caught wind of this very ugly media shit storm and are going to be setting up an investigation committee that will check the "New Israel Fund"'s donors... not, you'll note, "Im Tirtzu"'s or "The Central Fund of Israel".
Those pesky human rights activists and organisations, questioning policies and disseminating information that pertains to Israel's character.
"Im Tirzu" are basically calling into question the right to free speech and whether it's legitimate to question anything the IDF and Israel does - all this in relation to the Goldstone Report, but it's so much deeper than that.

It's wrong to call for a proper investigation regarding excessive force, but inciting a media storm and publishing an ad in which Antisemitic iconography is employed is fine and dandy.

In other ways this country is going down the toilet - as though the Occupation and the violence that floods our society due to it wasn't enough, of which the above are direct examples - The minister of transportation said he was in favour gender segregated buses ("Kosher Buses" as they're called) is the segregation was, I'm not kidding, voluntary.
If you are a woman and you happen to get onto a gender segregated bus (which aren't marked to make them distinguishable from "regular" buses) then you will be either shamed into getting to the back, forcibly removed from the bus or simply, you know, told to wait.
Yes, well, of course it affects the women, who according to Jewish orthodoxy are filthy, impure and human enough to be mothers and workers in order to support the men who study Torah, Mishna and what-ever-the-fuck day in and day out in Yeshivas.

The phenomenon of gender segregated buses has spread beyond Jerusalem and to other cities which have large populations of Ultra-Orthodox, like Bnei Brak and Petach Tikva (both of which are 5-10 minutes away from liberal Tel-Aviv) issue as the Ultra-Orthodox who demand that buses be kosher for "modesty" because men and women are not supposed to be in contact with each other.

Yeah.

Of course, Israel's main problem is its image.
Who knew.

I think Antisemitism is an issue that should not be taken lightly. I feel very strongly about the fact that the history of my people is that of persecution, internment, exile and extermination.
Growing up in a home in which Jewish identity is very connected to Zionism has made it very difficult for me to unpack the baggage of post-Holocaust trauma and the privilege of being a Jewish person, born and raised in Israel.
I have no choice but to be a Zionist¹, it's what brought my family here and it's what keeps them here and I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for it.

Israel is an idea and an ideal and like most things which are idea and ideals they do not live up to the hype.
I've been over the hype for a while now and I'm not shy about busting people's happy shiny bubbles about the disaster that is Israeli policy both inside and outside it's ill-defined borders.

The Goldstone Report, the UN fact finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, a South-African Jewish man with a history of being good at what he does, has faced a barrage of undisguised Antisemitism for writing down, black on white, that Israel (and Hamas, as people conveniently forget) committed war crimes.

The mere fact that this accusation was brought about is enough for the reactionary monstrosity that is Israeli foreign propaganda known as Hasbara - literally meaning "explanation".

When I see stories like this: Finance Minister [Yuval Steinitz]: UN backing of Goldstone report is "anti-Semitic" it drives me 'round the fucking bend.
Because in the same paper you will see a story like this: Hungarian MP: Jews want to take over the world; and I have to wonder, have us Israeli Jews in fact forgotten what Antisemitism actually is and conflate with Zionism which is a National Ideology comparable to any other in it's myth building and telling of itself?
( Read Moar! )

This is long, but also important and I'm wondering if I should cross post this in some other blog or anti-oppression website.

Footnotes
(1)Ideologically speaking, I'm not a Zionist. At all. But I have to acknowledge the fact that Zionism has privileged me and my family and I wouldn't be who I am without that ideological push and existence.
Back to text.

Things I grew tired of hearing a long time ago:

#01 "You're aggressive" - You make me want to rip out your rib cage and wear it like a hat (h/t Spike/Willian the Bloody terrible poet, he was a brilliant word-smith...).

#02 "You're provocative" - I make you uncomfortable, not my problem!

#03 Rape apologia - Even if a woman (or man) is walking around, naked, with a placard stating in neon "Will Fuck Anyone!", no one has the right to violate his/her/hir body. Ever. Rape is a crime, stop punishing and blaming the victims.

#04 The term "self-hating Jew" - the next time I hear this term I'm calling on that person and saying they are an "Antisemitic shit-bag". Jewish self-hatred assumes some kind of essential Jewish trait that us (yeah, I'm one of those people) self-haters reject because we're just that disgusting.
Antisemitic Shit-Baggery!

#05 "You've lost weight, you look great!" - I know I've lost weight. I know I comply with the fashionable female body type. I'd appreciate it if no one comments about my body, it's fucking irritating, I'm not livestock to be commented upon, my my rump, ribs and tits are not in public for your consumption! Unless you've been given permission to do so (you know who you are), do stop!

#06 "You look much better now that your hair in longer. The shaved head didn't look good on you".
DIAF.

#07 "Is this another feminist thing?" - Yeah it is, and you're gonna listen to me annoy the fucking hell out of you!

#08 "You're so sensitive" - Yeah, this is me crying over your dead body.

#09 "You're so loud, why do you have to shout everything. It's all about how you say things you know" - Yeah I do know, I also know a big STFU when I see one. Stop trying to control my fucking tone!

And #10 "Why do you care so much?" - because the world is an ugly, cynical and corrupted blemish in this universe. We have to live on it, it may as well be with a modicum of empathy and dignity.

Those are the Top 10 things this week that made me go *rawr*, *arrgh*, swear under my breath, glare, lose my temper and want to throw things at people's faces.

I cannot wait for the semester to start (which it does this Sunday).

Tell me friends, readers and maybe lurkers, what grinds your gears?

Whenever I talk about race and/or racism I do it from a default point of privilege. I've never, nor will I ever in my country, be discriminated against due to the colour of my skin, my surname, or where I was born and raised.

I was born and raised in what is probably considered one the "better" towns. We are not the most affluent town in the district, but status wise that hardly matters. We are upwardly mobile. Both my parents have University degrees and the expectation is/was that all their children get a degree in what interested them and self-actualise themselves.

Hence me studying a Literary Theory and Women & Gender Studies double major for my BA.

My point is that when it comes to race, in Israel, I've pretty much got it made.

Which makes being the daughter of immigrants very interesting indeed.

Last year, my main entry for ibarw was about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the asymmetry of that conflict and the imbued racism of the Occupation - "What is this symmetry you speak of?".

Thinking about what to write this year and working closely with my dad in his Pharmacy for the past year or so, I came to the conclusion that my family's experience as immigrants falls into a very unique story. On the one hand, they've had to deal with the regular run-of-the-mill issues have to deal with; the language barrier, the culture shock, the separation from family and finding a community of other people with a background similar to their own.
One big difference though.
They left a country in which they were an ethnic and religious minority and came to a country in which they are an ethnic and religious majority(1).

My mother "jokes" that one of the reasons she wanted to move to Israel from South Africa was that she wouldn't have to "work so hard" to be Jewish.

Before people jump up and start saying that Antisemitism isn't the same as Racism and why am I writing about this for Intl. Blog Against Racism Week. Let me first state, that some Jews have white privilege, some Jews are people of colour. In the context of Israel, I am what would be considered the WASP, and even that is pushing it because people here insist on ethnicising (yeah I made up a word) practically everyone.
Obviously some ethnicities are better than others.
Regardless, Antisemitism exists in various forms and is espoused in various ways. Sometimes it intersects with Racism, sometimes it doesn't.

With that established, let's talk about the experience of a child who considers herself Israeli though and through who grew up with a name that was just that weird.

I remember as a child cringing when my parents spoke Hebrew to the friends I brought home, I remember cringing when my friends tried to speak English in order to accommodate my parents.
I remember hating my name, because it denoted me as non-"Israeli". I didn't even have the benefit of a Russian name, which while being an non-Hebrew name, there was no need to explain time and time again - where the family was from and why they had the name they had.

"Where are you from?"
"My home town"
"Where were you born?"
"In the hospital there"
"What? Really?!"
"Yeah, really"
"Then why do you have such a strange name?"

Suffice to say growing up, my name helped me weed out the idiots out of my life. It made for a slightly stand-offish existence and a pretty negative opinion on people in general.

Any way throughout my life my experience as a Jewish person was that of being default. I didn't understand where my parents persecution paranoia came from. For a long-long time I did not understand how the story of the Exodus, the Exile, the 1492 Expulsion from Spain, the Pogroms of Eastern Europe had anything to do with me.
I thought I understood the Holocaust, seeing as after WWII the state was founded.

The history of my people is that of persecution, seclusion and exclusion.

I understand that. But not really. I've never been different because I'm Jewish. I've never felt Foreign in my own country. I know quite a few people who do.
My perspective as an ethnically white Sabra (an Jewish person born in Israel) enabled me to be oblivious to most forms of discrimination and it took me a long time to break down and unpack that privilege.

What really helped was to actually listen to my parents, the way they spoke and the way they interacted with non-English speakers.
My mother is an English teacher, she has to speak to kids (some of whom can barely read and write Hebrew) and make them understand her in a way that I've never had to try.
My father is a pharmacist and the interaction between him and his clientèle can at times be non-verbal - they hand him a script, he fills it out, they pay, the end. At times it can lead to so much frustration on both parts I sometimes wonder how my dad retains loyal customers who are not the Addicts treated at the clinic situated above his pharmacy.

Being Jewish outside of Israel, wherever that is, is being different.
I've never had to take a special day off for any of the Jewish holidays. I've never had to think about keeping Kosher seeing as the default for goods in the supermarket is Kosher, the non-Kosher shops are the ones marked as different in these parts.

My parents tell me to this day, that anything non-Jewish is Antisemitic. To me that sounds like paranoia. And I'm pretty paranoid myself regarding my identity.

And sometimes I want to shake us, Isreali Jews in general, and tell ourselves "Get the fuck over it!", "Move on!", "It's 1492, 1883, 1939 any more!".
And Jews themselves are now oppressors in a land considered a Homeland to more than one people.
And yet it's because of that History that I can call this place my home.
I have no other place to call home.
My parents and siblings who were born a continent away do not consider any where else their home.
I have family in the Diaspora that will never consider Israel their home.

It is a confuzzeling existence.

I know of no other kind immigration pattern in which a minority becomes a majority. Like the rest of Jewish identity, it is no cohesive and it is a difficult task trying to explain what it has to do with blogging against racism.

I really hope I managed to put my point across.

Footnotes
(1) Israel is a very touchy subject, as almost everyone knows. I'm going to be talking about my experiences only and while I may touch on how that relates to how I think and feel about the Occupation and the conflict. The main subject of this post is not that. If you are interested in reading my thoughts about the Occupation and Israeli politics as they relate to it, you can press the tag the occupation.

And then spit.

Yeah yeah. I know, I've been away.
No inspiration to write will do that to you.

However, just a couple of days ago I came across an article (h/t lishablog) which I found incredibly disturbing (and funny!), as I feel it encapsulates the mainstream view of Israel much more than any other article I've read recently.
Mainstream in that it takes at face value the entire Israeli Zionist discourse.

Here it is, with a few added comments from your truly, who just couldn't help but think that this article deserved to be sliced, diced and criticised in that my oh so delicate and witty style.

Israel still looks good, warts and all
The alliance between the Western Left and Islamic anger is perplexing, writes Greg Sheridan

[...]
That Israel of the Western mind (and indeed of the Arab mind) is a hateful place: right-wing, militaristic, authoritarian, racist, ultra-religious, neo-colonial, narrow-minded, undemocratic, indifferent to world opinion, indifferent especially to Palestinian suffering.

It's really surprising how accurate these "distortions" are of Israel's image, isn't it?!

Yet the Israel I know is mostly secular, raucously, almost wildly democratic, has a vibrant left wing, having founded in the kibbutz movement one of the only successful experiments in socialism in human history.

Did this man step outside North-Central Tel-Aviv? Ever? In his visits, did he actually do things other than visit the regular tourist places, and maybe perhaps go to the Jaffa (Yaffo/Yaffa) that wasn't the port? Or Jerusalem that wasn't the Wailing Wall or the Souk?!
Also, The Kibbutz movement didn't actually work because it operated in a nominally Capitalist economy. The fact that people lived communally doesn't make it a successful socialist movement.

It is intellectually disputatious; any two Israelis will have three opinions and be happy to argue them to a lamp post. It is multi-ethnic,

The Black Panthers (the "Mizrahi Power" movement who were extremely active from the mid-60's all the way the First Intifada) were according to Golda Meir, "Not very nice" (paraphrased)
Arabs, of course, are another "race" altogether.

there is a great stress on human solidarity, there is due process. And I've never heard an Israeli speak casually about the value of Palestinian life.

I snorted so hard, I scared my cat.
The graffiti "Death to Arabs" in Hebrew can be found in many places.

I've heard Israelis voice a desire to neutralise Hezbollah or remove Hamas from leadership in Gaza,

By any means nessecary.
Including bombing innocent men, women and children.
July-August 2006.
December-January 2008-2009.
Just in case someone's forgotten.
( Cut for Length )
I hope you enjoyed that little ride.
It was certainly a fun article of FAIL to make fun of.
And help y'all to read.

I've been wringing my hands about the huge Race and Cultural Appropriation debate which I've mentioned.

I've read the posts and the arguments and what people have been saying.

What's really been shocking is the total lack of perspective and how unwilling people are to listen to those who actually do know what racism is, seeing as racism actually affects their lives every day.

Dramatic? Maybe. Doesn't make it any less true, and if you find it dramatic you're probably not experiencing that variety of oppression and discrimination.

Someone I was discussing racism (anti-racism more to the point) said that we should just stop classifying people and start from scratch.
I find that kind of attitude baffling.
We do not live in a world in which clean slates are possible. We do not live in a world in which history can be removed and nicely boxed away as the past.
Especially because, as I've mentioned, this happens every day, all the time. The mechanisms that keep power where it's at do not let go once they are acknowledged.
Knowing how something works doesn't mean you can take it apart.
Especially when there are many people who benefit, whether they know it or don't, from the way these power structures.

I do not face discrimination or prejudice due to the colour of my skin. I am peachy-pink in the face, all rosy and fair.
In my country I am at the top of the racial totem pole.
The reason I have a country is because my ancestors, not that long ago, my grand-parents generation, were being exterminated for being the lowest on the racial totem pole.
A reminder, I'm an Israeli Ashkenazi/White Jewish grrl, the extermination I'm talking about it the Holocaust.

The relevance of those two facts are whatever you think they are. To me they are fundamental parts of my identity. Not because I chose them, but because they were written unto me by the history of my people.

For the debate currently taking over fandom on LJ and we all know it's not just about fandom and never was.
It was/is the unwillingness to hear, to fucking listen, to what others are saying!
The fact the oppression Olympics came out to play is nothing new, nobody want to own up to the fact that the in my reality I am an Oppressor, especially when I am at the same time also Oppressed.
Racism is not like any other oppression, just as Sexism is not like any other, or Homophobia.
To begin qualifying your own prejudices by saying "look I'm oppressed as well"... it don't fly.

I've been called on my racist shit. Not because I believe that as a white Jew I'm better than someone who isn't, but because as a white Jew the system works in my benefit and if I so chose I do not have to see how my privilege makes my life easier than the lives of other people.
I've been called on my racist shit because I believed in being colour blind... what does it matter if I'm Jewish and you're not?
Let me tell you how...

In the course of a discussion IRL with my family I got so fed up with the way we were heading I said "does anyone have any idea how racist we sound?!"
And a family member said tetchily "Including you!"
Well, no shit.

I have no clue if this adds, detracts or actually does anything to this discussion. But I felt I had to contribute something.