tikkunolamorgtfo:

“If you’re in a space where you’re feeling uncomfortable, it’s not our job to make you comfortable,” [Sarsour] said. “It’s your job to reflect and say, ‘What is it about the space that’s making me feel uncomfortable? What is it about this particular form of injustice that’s making me feel uncomfortable? Why would a Jewish American feel alienated by speaking about the atrocities and human rights violations that the Israeli government is committing against Palestinian people,” Sarsour asked the audience. “Why would it make you uncomfortable?”

Well, Linda, I’ll fucking tell you! Most of us are actually not uncomfortable talking about the human rights violations Israel is committing against the Palestinian people—like, at all! What we are uncomfortable with is the way you frame the discussion so that Jews are depicted as a non-indigenous group of White McWhite people who just showed up one day and stole land from the Palestinians for kicks, rather than as another equally indigenous group who the Romans expelled, leading to a diasporic existence that saw us repeatedly exiled and murdered for 2,000 in countries all over the world because we were outsiders from the Levant. We aren’t uncomfortable acknowledging that Israel’s policies are heinous, and there are plenty of us who are even comfortable thinking of an alternative to Israel in which both peoples live side by side, BUT—that future where the peoples exist in a unified state can’t fucking exist if you refuse to recognise the Jewish people for who we actually are. Acting like Jews are Afrikaners 2.0 instead of understanding our history and our traumas and our peoplehood is not a foundation on which you can build mutual respect and coexistence. We’re “uncomfortable” in your spaces because you actively rewrite our history to fit your own narrative instead of respecting our identity as a people. In your spaces, everyone has a right to define their oppression and identity except for the Jews. 

Honestly, the fact that this whole thing is framed in the context of “Maybe you should examine why having your privilege called out makes you uncomfortable” is just another example of why we feel we don’t belong in your spaces. Because you’re equating us with supremacy in the same breath that you’re supposedly condemning the Nazis outside yelling “Jews will not divide us!” You see us being actively targeted, yet you leave us out of your activism because it doesn’t fit your I/P narrative. We’re fucking uncomfortable because when you’re not willing to take Jewish people at their word regarding their life experiences, you’re not willing to stand up for us or include us in your movements. This isn’t about glossing over the atrocities in Palestine. This is about you disliking Jews unless they let you define for them what it means to be Jewish. 

And we have a word for people like that: It’s antisemite. 

Or maybe, since these people deny the premise of antisemitism that Jews are a Semitic people – sharing language, ethnic heritage, and place of origin with other Middle Eastern and North African groups – we should go back to basics and call them what they are at bottom: Jew-haters.