DevorahBackman

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@mycr_karenina If you send your kids to Israel to escape MO materialism (while presumably continuing to live that way yourself) they will just import MO materialism to Israel. And they have. (Cough - Goop-approved Herzliya luxury condos- cough)

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@SkylarSPowell @CREID2852 The thing I keep coming back to is bedrooms. Modern American culture declares a bedroom per child to be the standard. That means 3+ kids requires a BIG house (especially if you also want a guest room for grandma, home office for remote work, etc.)

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@Romy_Holland In theory it’s no different than being in your own backyard but I never want a locked door between me and baby, and I can’t imagine leaving the door unlocked with baby and without me in the house, so for me it’s a no.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@tallsnail Then one day when your kid has long forgotten his funny little expressions and you’re still using them, you’ll have to explain to him why you call milk “amongee”.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@jewishmemequeen That’s a rodef, as far as I’m concerned .

[The Jewish Meme Queen @jewishmemequeen]

Attention Frum Jews: the word “retard” or “retarded” is a slur. It is offensive. It is disgusting. Stop using it.

[David G. Greenfield @NYCGreenfield]

Many people have pushed back on our MLK Day event and said, “A Day of Service should be about our own community.”

As CEO of @MetCouncil, I see it differently, and I think Dr. King would too.

MLK Day is about service, yes, but it is also about bridge-building. Especially when there is tension. Especially when it would be easier to stay in our own lane. The whole point of a Day of Service is to move toward each other, not away from each other.

As the largest Jewish charity fighting poverty in the United States, we spend every day serving New Yorkers and yes, Jews, in need.

Today, in honor of Dr. King, we’re widening the circle by doing something intentional: packing and distributing for 25 halal food distributions across New York for our tens of thousands of our Muslim neighbors in honor of Ramadan next month.

This is not “instead of” serving our community. It is part of the same mission: fighting hunger, honoring human dignity, and choosing partnership over suspicion.

We can disagree passionately about politics. But we can still agree that hunger is wrong, and that service is a language that all people understand.

That is the spirit of #MLKday.

And that is the spirit we’re trying to share as a leading Jewish charity.

We are all responsible for one another. 🙏

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@mycr_karenina @AbbyChavaStein I’ve always said it’s the Bohemian Rhapsody of niggunim.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@jewishstudent1 I agree that it’s weird 😄 but I’m genuinely curious what you mean about the second part??

[Haviv Rettig Gur @havivrettiggur]

I appreciate the tone and the challenge. Let me try to explain seriously why I'm coming around to the belief that Mamdani really is antisemitic. And not of the Islamist variety, but of the progressive one.

I honestly and authentically think that the global campaign to dissect everything Israeli, to label and libel it - every term of art for evil that academia has ever produced is leveled at Israel, while all the world's crimes and criminals are ignored; marches in Western capitals totally unprecedented in the history of Western protest, and which won't return for any other future war unless Israel is involved - what if I honestly believe it's a global outburst of antisemitism, and not, given its extreme selectivity, a genuine concern for the victims of war?

Antisemitism isn't "hatred of Jews." It isn't mere stereotypes or prejudices. It's a much more interesting and powerful - and destructive - idea. It is the casting of Jews as the obstacle to redemption and utopia.

In Islamic dogma, even in the mainstream, Jews are said to have lied about their revelation, and so are the great liars of history, as demonstrated by their refusal to accept Islam during Mohammed's time and ever since. To Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood ideologues, Israel's Jewishness - making its survival a challenge to Islam's rightful redemptionist expansion - is the reason it must be eradicated. It's not about Palestinian rights or ending military rule in the West Bank.

Similarly, in some streams of Christianity over the millennia, Jews either killed God or rejected the divinity of Christ, and so continue to delay his return. That's what Crusaders told the Jews of the cities of the Rhine as they massacred them in massive numbers on their way to the Holy Land.

In Marxism Jews are coded as the paradigmatic capitalists, and in Nazism as the paradigmatic anti-volk globalists.

In all cases, the point is the same: They stand in the way of redemption or utopia.

And in progressive discourse today, the world's only Jewish state - and no other state, even if it is far larger, more powerful or commits vastly greater mistakes and crimes - is once again coded as the distillation of all evils, as standing in the way of the progressive utopia.

All the world's problems, every evil in the progressive or academic imagination - imperialism, colonialism, settler-colonialism, apartheid, genocide, ecocide and a dozen other "cides" - are encapsulated and distilled in Israel. No one rages or marches this way about Russia or China or the endless massacres and genocides of the Arab world. No one pins every evil ever conceived on any other people.

And as with every strain of antisemitism in 2,000 years, it feels righteous, because the hatred is framed as a yearning for redemption/utopia.

That deep-seated mental structure embedded in the substrata of Western and Islamic culture from a very early stage is how you get to this logic in which an extremely minor program in the vast edifice of the NYPD, the cooperation with the Israeli police - a couple dozen officers in each cohort in a force of 34,000, and only specializing in certain narrow professions within the force - means the IDF "laced the boots" of NYPD violence, as Mamdani put it.

It is how this concern over violent policing and over-policing fixates on Israel and never utters a breath about the NYPD's collaborations with the police and security forces of outright dictatorships and police states like Qatar and Jordan, or of security forces that routinely carry out extrajudicial killings, as in Mexico.

If it was about policing, about the rights of New Yorkers, about making the NYPD more conscious of the needs of the communities they serve, you'd think people would ask hard questions about what officers are learning in Mexico and Qatar.

Alas, it is about Jews, about how they thwart the progressive yearning for redemption, and not about policing at all.

The NYPD - going out on a limb here - would still have all the problems it now has without the occasional trip by some officers to Israel.

And Zohran is very much an eager participant and trumpeter of this antisemitic discourse. He has a history of joining in the progressive chorus that blames Israel for things that have nothing at all to do with Israel.

That he feels righteous about it, that he doesn't care to check or respond to the point that it is selective and dishonest, doesn't exonerate him of this bias. It's literally how this bias has always functioned.

That he will soon be mayor, this man whose mind wanders to Israel when thinking about the problems of the NYPD, means he will either have to wake up from this prejudice, or he will fail to fix the things he thinks are wrong. Antisemitism never, ever solves the problem it claims to be trying to solve by turning on the Jews.

So yes, I really and truly, and after much thought, believe he's an eager participant in an antisemitic insanity that has gripped so many of the elites of the West. Either he believes it - that Israel is somehow the nexus of all progressive evils - or he's pretending to because he knows it mobilizes his audience. Which is worse?

[Samer Sinijlawiسامر السنجلاوي @SSinijlawi]

Jews have always been here. That’s an historical fact. They didn’t vanish and return. Their presence in the land is unbroken over centuries. I know this from personal experience. My grandfather had a Jewish business partner in the 1920s.

And just like Jews were never alone here, neither were we. Palestinians, too - whatever we were called at different stages of our history - have long lived in this land.

We spend so much time fighting over competing narratives, we forget the truth: we’ve always lived side by side. Sometimes in tension. Sometimes in harmony. But always together.

We don’t need to erase each other’s history to claim our own. We need to recognize that both peoples have roots here - deep ones. And from those roots, we can grow something new.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@mendelkalmenson What if you want women to have abortion access but don’t want to globalize the intifada? Where do we go?

[Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk]

People like this have too much confidence and not enough humility to actually consider that we are not "brainwashed" and have real concerns. I will try to lay it out.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@EliLebowicz Are we really doing “the priest is a secret Jew” allegations again?? Yawn. That’s so 1492.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@mycr_karenina In my experience they disavow it in theory but w/ all the caveats—“if it really happened, you can’t trust the reporting, there’s probably more to the story, anyway it pales in comparison to xyz, etc.” and then there is always “you want to give fuel to the enemy?” Sigh .

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@bigsnugga $800 for a *tiny* 2-bedroom in 2008 (no living room, just two tiny bedrooms off a kitchen.) then $1200 for a giant pre-war one bedroom a block from the Brooklyn botanical gardens in 2013.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@bridgelenderguy @DBashIdeas It has, this flyer was included in the Jewish Link recently. It has almost no info about the org and what the $ is for, the prizes that make no sense, and the name of the org is (purposely, maybe) similar to that of a well known org. Feels like a scam.

[DevorahBackman @BackmanDevorah]

@jewishmemequeen You forgot the box of dried out raisins or the clementine.

[Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib @afalkhatib]

“Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) hate Palestinians & pissed on my slaughtered family in Gaza: A few days ago, I spoke at a prominent New Jersey university where a professor invited me to address a class dealing with peace, conflict resolution, religion, and reconciliation. There were students from all walks of life and all backgrounds, continents, and lived experiences. During the presentation, I discussed my background and that of my family in Gaza, my lived experience, my journey to the United States, past years as a young activist who was once part of college activism, protests, and typical forms of “pro-Palestine” activism, and how/why I decided to pursue a radically different path. I described in detail how the neo “pro-Palestine” movement has become an abject failure and a disastrous misrepresentation of what Palestinians really want and seek.

I also offered ubiquitous and detailed critiques, condemnations, and harsh attacks against the nefarious 3D chess game that Netanyahu and the far right in Israel have played to use Hamas as a tool that kept Palestinians politically divided, prevented the emergence of a Palestinian state, and allowed the settlement enterprise to grow out of control. I decried the injustices of the military occupation that Palestinians face and how there must be a different pathway forward, even while addressing Israelis' right to safety and security. Hamas is a useful idiot, a tool of oppression, a mutation that does not represent Palestinian values, a spoiler for any hope of a better future in Gaza, and not worthy of support on American college campuses by student activist groups who proclaim to care about the Palestinian people.

But a group of “pro-Palestine” students had something else in mind. A few gathered outside the classroom, where I spoke and put on masks while communicating with a co-conspirator who attended my talk. I knew that they were there to act out and cause trouble, but I carried on. I spoke about my family’s suffering and pain, both historic and contemporary, as what sustains me and keeps me going, describing my desire to honor their legacy by promoting a different path forward that breaks the vicious cycle of violence.

For a few minutes, I spent time talking about the Israeli airstrikes that destroyed both of my childhood homes after October 7 and the tragic loss of 33 of my immediate and extended family members, talking about my 12-year-old niece Farah, my uncles Riyad and Abdullah, my aunt Zinab, and all the children and women who were mercilessly slaughtered in targeted bombardment in the Gaza Strip.

Then the yelling and screaming began outside the classroom – “Ahmed, you’re a traitor,” screeched a masked goblin while sprinkling random “free Palestine” chants. It was one of the most comical, bizarre, offensive, and surreal scenes in my life. Here were privileged losers who were acting with so much righteousness, indignation, ignorance, and disrespect, supposedly because they care about “justice” in Palestine, when in fact, they appear to have devolved into Students for Jihad in Palestine. To yell free Palestine at me while I was literally talking about Palestinians’ right to freedom, dignity, and independence shows you an unimaginable level of stupidity, embarrassing ignorance, and lack of basic cognitive capabilities.

SJP imbeciles disrespected and pissed on the tragedy of 33 Palestinians from Gaza, my family, to whom I dedicated my talk and my work, ignoring the fact that I am far more pro-Palestine than they even know what this word means, and didn’t care for any of my critique of occupation, injustices, Netanyahu, or the far right in Israel.

Their primary gripe and grievance with me is that I don’t support Hamas and the armed resistance narrative, which they absolutely, 1000% do and endorse. They celebrate October 7; they don’t seek peace; they want Israel’s annihilation, and they are behaving like little extremist ideologues who won’t tolerate any deviation from their ignorant, maximalist, overly simplistic manifestos. This is not a free speech issue, for there are time, place, and manner considerations for protected speech on college campuses. They want to suppress my free speech and that of any other speaker, Palestinian, Jewish, or anyone else, who doesn’t conform to their rigid ideology.

It is time to stop this madness. University leaders and administrators must take robust and rapid action to protect the free speech and access of those who are not part of the Sinwar Brigades. The just and urgent Palestinian cause has been horrendously maligned and hijacked by violent, hateful, and extremist actors, who are masked, unknown, and may very well be outside agitators acting at the behest of nefarious players. Activists' free speech can never come at the expense of others', especially when speaking in a classroom environment and when invited by a faculty member.

I will not be silenced or suppressed; if anything, this experience is making me even more determined to go to college campuses and share my story, talk about my family’s tragedy in Gaza, and the need to pursue healing, peace, and reconciliation as the pathway forward between Palestinians and Israelis. Reach out if you want me to speak on your campus.

[Dilan Esper @dilanesper]

Here's in one tweet why Palestinians keep getting killed and immiserated. Really, it's right here

It's that "Israel must recognize the right of return". A full "right of return" would destroy Jewish Israel and start a civil war that Palestinian activists hope will drive out Jews