Don't talk out of turn

Everyone's an armchair pundit on social media.
• Charlotte, North Carolina
3 minute read

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This was originally written and posted to Instagram in 2023. Hamas had attacked Israel and taken hostages, but Israel had not yet responded.

Israel and Hamas have since agreed to displace and wipe out Palestinians and their territories, which is a fucking despicable response to a fucking despicable provocation.

I stand by my words here, but I wish that anyone in power would put a stop to it instead of leveraging the imagery of millions of deaths for political theater.

A photo of Osterman Beach in Chicago
Osterman Beach in Chicago, using my sunglasses for a lens filter. Instagram requires an image. August 20, 2023

My ticket was punched before I was born. Mom is of European descent, but my biological father’s genes are card-carrying members of the Ashkenazim. I am half-white, white-passing, mixed race, you name it.

Jewish identity means you are a part of a heritage of gratitude that you ever got to exist, you're endlessly curious and hope to live a good life. You are a descendant of a people who trace back to the Levant more than three millennia ago.

It means a lot of people hate that you exist. You’re exiled, massacred, displaced, called a colonizer (by colonizers) even in your ancestral land. Your people even wrote the book about the god that they worship. People weigh in on your fate, but don't know how to engage with your Jewishness. You feel radioactive sometimes for bringing it up.

Instagram, the world’s #1 vanity dumpster, shows hot takes claiming that a group, whose sole mission is to paint the earth in my blood, are freedom fighters for killing kids. A video from 2023 of people outside of the Sydney Opera House, chanting, “Gas the Jews! Gas the Jews!” Nazi swastikas at rallies around the world, held by many who would be forced to stand in line for the gas chamber with me. When the past-tense of history shifted to present-tense, my emotional dam broke.

Read their charter online: Hamas does not care about land or sovereignty. If we are 5% or 100% Jewish, we are targets. Their calls for global protests are attempts to scare Jews everywhere, not liberate Gaza. They want me terrified watching my friends endanger my life by virtue of vanity and hubris and Share buttons, and they are actively staging their own civilians as targets. Nazi Playbook 101.

Palestinians should be free and Israel is stepping in shit. But if you are not Jewish, Palestinian, Israeli, or Muslim, your ignorant pantomiming on an issue older than history rouses an ancient hatred that puts lives like mine at risk, and you have diminished my humanity in the process.

I used to post long-form writing here regularly, but while I’ve had words to say, I’ve found that most haven’t been worth sharing. There is a kind of peace in disillusioning yourself of publicly inflated self-image. Consider that.

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Did this make sense? What'd I miss? I want to hear it all. Shoot me an email or buy me a coffee. ☕️

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