I think this is true to some extent. On the other hand, the Jewish community in the US and the (unconditional) support it leadership gives Israel is a large reason any of this is possible.
Saying you weren’t directly involved is only an excuse up to a point.
This kind of generalization is exactly the issue though. There is no singular “Jewish community” in the us. Every single temple or congregation is independent, there is no central authority. You saying that there is unconditional support is just a different degree of yelling at random Jews in the street. Every one of my Jewish family members and friends is horrified by Gaza and the AIPAC/GOP collaboration and speaks against it. So the support is not “unconditional” as you posit.
Why aren’t we anti-war Jews the “Jewish community”? Lumping us all together as “unconditional” supporters of Israel and any supporter of Zionism as a supporter of the apartheid state is exactly the problem. It is definitionally racism to say that my behavior or viewpoint is a function of my heritage. So please stop.
What exactly am I supposed to do? Of course I’m not involved. I’ve never been to Israel. I don’t support their war aims. I don’t associate with any Jews or Jewish organizations who really do. Your last sentence is akin to saying that random Muslims can only claim not to be responsible for 9/11 up to a point. It’s reductive, stupid and racist.
> Why aren’t we anti-war Jews the “Jewish community”?
I'm not blaming you individually for that, just like I don't blame Russians individually for the invasion of Ukraine, but to say that they have no power to stop it as a whole feels a bit like individual Germans claiming they didn't know what was happening in the camps and had no power to stop it anyway.
Really has little to do with faith, except that one of the nations involved is built on faith. As an American or Israeli your country is complicit in genocide. It's your responsibility as a nation to elect people that don't do that.
Thanks for writing this. It's frustrating to see political-based bigotry be condoned and platformed by mainstream political and media figures. Like seeing the criminal Eric Adams, Kathy Hochul, and Chuck Schumer marching with Bezalel Smotrich and Amichay Eliyahu in the "Israel Day" NYC parade... it reminds me of the 1939 Nazi rally @ MSG or the 1925 KKK DC march. Every ethno-religious supremacist organization and national regime is inherently repugnant to human decency and desecrates the trauma and cost paid by and memories of previous generations to free us from tyrannical oppression by terrible ideologies where one group believes they are superior and another group are animals.
I find this very hard to believe. I find it much easier to believe a throwaway account was made specifically to spread some form of zionist propaganda.
I don’t share this experience at all. I bought a fully finished new house in Japan, and I haven’t had to do or pay anything extra (other than mortgage and yearly tax) for the past 6 years.
My understanding that Japan is exceptional in this case; I've been told that houses in Japan depreciate about as fast as a quality roof, so e.g. a roof-replacement is not ever needed -- it's just time to build a new house.
If that was the case, you wouldn’t expect property crime like motor vehicle theft to follow a similar trend, but it does. A very large chunk of the crime is gang related, and there is no gang violence in the suburb I live in.
Bars are also disbursed all over not just in the city center. We have bars here, and they produce essentially zero crime.
But even if all of the crime was alcohol related, all of the crime isn’t occurring inside bars.
I don't think you have an accurate and full understanding of the issues plaguing some areas of American city centers. I can't even recall the last time I saw a person who was drunk in public causing a serious issue after leaving a downtown bar. It just doesn't happen. Besides, you don't need to go to the city center to get drunk, we sell full proof booze in the supermarkets here.
People go to the city center to buy their fentanyl and their P-2P supermeth, shoot up, and zombify the city streets. I see that on a daily basis. If you are not familiar with this phenomenon, go to YouTube and search for Kensington, Philadelphia. Most American cities have similar areas, For example Pike/Pine in Seattle, Tenderloin in SFO, and Skid Row in LA, but the scope of the situation is of a different magnitude in Philly.
I keep telling my wife our son is literally more likely to be hit by lightning than to be snatched by some rando, but somehow that is hard to understand.
It is funny because we now know that in the 1970s there were far more randos kidnapping people than today. The FBI actually got pretty good at these crimes.
I went to a school run by monks[0]. Technically at least two were also priests (although I wasn't sure of the distinction then and I'm still not sure decades later.)
[0] Alas, a dodgy branch of monks who have since encountered many legal issues around child care, etc., as have at least one of my teachers.
The fact that you call them progressives hints at a more general frustration that I doubt has anything to do with the problem.
There is nothing wrong with some people working on a regional or global fix while others work on a local one. The important thing is that they’re working for it.
I think there's more nuance to it. The big failing of progressive movements is that they seek, often from a position of disadvantage, to impose power over society too, but in the ways they feel are more just. The vast majority of progressives I know aren't very interested in listening to the other side, or implicitly believe that the other side is wrong and it's just a matter of making them see that.
But this ignores the humanity of people on the other side of the issue--people who may have legitimate moral and philosophical questions about very difficult and complex issues.
It does seem that acting locally, within the realm of actual human relationships rather than alienating impositions of authority, would likely result in much greater good in the long term.
Even if you do think the other side is evil in many of their beliefs and actions, you still may need to work with them on issues where you find agreement.
Like diplomacy with regimes you find reprehensible may still be preferable to war.
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