This post originally appeared on LinkedIn on May 1, 2024.
Don't try to tell Jews what antisemitism is or isn't.
We've been here before: the angry mobs, the gaslighting, the inevitable violence. The only thing worse for us than antisemitism is everyone minimizing it, or diminishing our pain, or telling us that none of what we are experiencing is real.
Don't try to tell us we are weaponizing the Holocaust. Who is weaponizing what against whom when you use our greatest tragedy against us? Accuse us of being led like sheep to slaughter, or decry us when we stand up and fight for our right to exist? The Holocaust may have been the largest, most well-documented and most devastating genocide we've experienced, but it was not the first. And it clearly wasn't the last.
Don't try to tell us we don't belong in our ancestral homeland, which is deeply ingrained in virtually every aspect of our culture, our heritage and our faith. Don't try to tell us it's an apartheid, when you likely have never been there and know nothing about it aside from what you've seen on tiktok. Despite a terrible leader, Israel is still the only democracy in the Middle East.
Don't try to tell us "go back to Poland," a country where none of us are actually from, the one country in Europe where the Nazis killed more Jews than any other when it erased 85% of its Jewish population by sending them to death camps. Oh, the irony of American, Canadian, Australian and British progressives telling Jews and Israelis to "go back to where you came from" when they are themselves the descendants of colonizers living on stolen land. Go back to where we came from? We did: as refugees and survivors. But you won't let us be there, either.
Don't try to tell us that we don't have a right to self-determination, liberation, freedom, and the right to exist. Don't try to play Israelis and Palestinians like we are pawns in your sick game of virtue signaling.
Jews, Israelis and Palestinians are real people, and we are suffering. Your hate does nothing for any cause. It only divides us all further.
We will tell you what we have always known: The Jewish people are alone, but we know who we are. And we will survive. We always have. We always will.
Because while you may hate us for surviving and thriving, we don't need your permission. If we did, we all would have been wiped out long ago.
ETA: Sad that today is the first day of hashtag#JewishAmericanHeritageMonth and this is where the world is.
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