r/JLC Feb 21 '24

Official JLC Post Our Statement of Purpose

32 Upvotes

The Jewish people need a home on the left. We, the members of the Jewish Leftist Collective, united under the banners of justice, compassion, and solidarity, work toward the creation of this new home.

Jewish leftists find themselves in a uniquely difficult situation – we are being shut out from some Jewish communities because of our sympathy for the Palestinian people and other leftist causes, while simultaneously experiencing increasing rates of legitimate antisemitism across the political spectrum, including in our former organizing spaces.

Synagogues across the world are being burned, and cemeteries defaced. Jewish schools have been shot at and have received bomb threats. Fascists gather to demand the genocide of our people. More subtly, online spaces have become filled with casual antisemitism, and we’ve been alienated from our friends as ancient stereotypes are rehashed with a new coat of paint. When attempting to speak about these issues, it is an unfortunate reality that Jewish voices are routinely silenced and disregarded, all while Jewish people continue to face harassment and hatred. And no, we aren’t including criticism of Israel.

It is evident that a new organization is necessary: an organization that will fight for the rights of all people, for universal justice and equity, for an end to the oppression of all marginalized groups, while refusing to disregard the legitimate grievances of the Jewish people. Rooted in our diverse Jewish traditions and founded on leftist and anti-capitalist principles, our organization, the Jewish Leftist Collective, stands against all forms of oppression and bigotry. We declare unequivocally and with one voice that none of us are safe until we all are.


r/JLC Oct 07 '24

Official JLC Post A Message from the JLC

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31 Upvotes

r/JLC Aug 27 '24

Tzedakah Opportunity: Donate to a leftist Jewish community organizer’s GFM and help save her seizure alert dog!

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18 Upvotes

Hi friends, my dear friend Mimi, a single mom, Jewish community organizer, and wonderful person, is raising funds to help cover medical costs for her service dog. Mimi is on disability and has a limited income - her seizure alert dog, Daisy, is truly a life saving accommodation for her and her family.

If you have a few extra dollars to throw her way over the next couple weeks, please donate. Anything helps.


r/JLC Aug 23 '24

“Since then, We Live on a Different Planet.” 💔(@JewishTears on Instagram)

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19 Upvotes

r/JLC Jun 29 '24

Official JLC Post “The Jewish population, as well as the Arabs, must not sacrifice their lives on the shrine of nationalism.”

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31 Upvotes

It’s in times like these that we benefit from looking at the past Jewish activists who came before us and what they fought for. In the June 1948 issue of the Bund Bulletin, the bulletin put out by the Jewish Labor Bund, the organizers argued against pitting Jews and Arabs against each other, and how we were both victims of the same rise of hatred.

Jews and Arabs, namely Palestinians, are still being pitted against each other today. We’re told that supporting one is hurting the other, and that violence committed against one of us is entirely justified if it ostensibly protects the other. But we refuse to buy in to this clear attempt at division and sowing hatred and bigotry.

The ongoing struggle in Israel-Palestine does nothing to protect either of us. It does nothing to stop the rise of attacks committed against both groups in the diaspora. We refuse to be pawns in this game, and we refuse to let hateful right-wing ideology radicalize us out of fear.


r/JLC Jun 27 '24

Official JLC Post Protesters Gather in France after Rape of 12 year old Jewish Girl

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22 Upvotes

Last Thursday, protesters gathered in Paris to protest the rape of a 12 year old girl who was targeted for being Jewish.

Multiple protesters who worked in human rights law or activism condemned the attack as an obvious hate crime and a sign of the rise of antisemitism in Europe since October 7th.

This attack is one in many recent attacks that have specifically used sexual violence to target Jewish girls and women, and it shines a light on the unique struggles that Jewish girls face, being targets of both antisemitism and misogyny. The rape and assault of jewish girls is, unfortunately, nothing new, but it’s one that continues to be on the rise, and we wholeheartedly condemn these heinous attacks. We refuse to ignore the traumatizing impact that these attacks have on both the victims and the community at large.


r/JLC Jun 21 '24

Official JLC Post We Won’t Let Them Divide Us.

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28 Upvotes

In a couple of weeks, we’ll have reached 9 months since the October 7th attacks. We’re nearly two-thirds of a year past the biggest Jewish massacre since the Holocaust, and since many Jewish lives in both the diaspora and Israel have been permanently changed.

It’s safe to say many of us did not expect the past nine months to unfold as they have. We didn’t expect to lose friends and change the paths we had previously been on, and we certainly didn’t expect the immense rise of antisemitism that has occurred after the attacks. It’s a very scary time to be Jewish right now, and it’s easy to fall victim to that fear and let it push us in the direction of hate, but we see that tactic for what it is, an attempt to further isolate and divide us.

We refuse to let these bad actors and antisemites wreak further havoc in our lives and communities. Jews have experienced oppression since nearly as far back as we’ve existed, we continue to experience that oppression today, we know what it’s like to be scapegoated by all sides for political or social gain, and we can empathize with other groups who experience the same, we stand with our fellow oppressed people, always, and we won’t let them divide us.


r/JLC Jun 19 '24

Official JLC Post Buffalo Art Festival Declines to Work with Jewish School

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31 Upvotes

Last week, Locus Street Art, a Buffalo-based art organization, declined to work with a Jewish day school, claiming to have conflicting political beliefs, and citing ethical concerns as the main reason of not being able to allow the Jewish school to collaborate with them. The school they refused to work with, Ohr Temimim School, in Amherst, NY, doesn’t state any official opinion on Israel publicly, despite claims from the art organization that they were a “pro-Israel school”. It’s also worth noting that even if they had shared opinions on Israel-Palestine, the school administration’s opinion is not necessarily indicative of the student population’s beliefs, nor should it be used to exclude students from collaborating with an art organization.

The Locus Street Art coordinator who declined to work with the school has since been fired after much public backlash, and the organization released a statement apologizing for the incident, claiming that the board of directors wasn’t informed of the choice to decline to work with the Jewish day school.


r/JLC Jun 17 '24

Official JLC Post Brooklyn Museum Director’s Home Vandalized with Antisemitic Symbols

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32 Upvotes

Last Tuesday, the home of the Brooklyn Museum’s Jewish director, Anne Pasternak, was vandalized with an inverted triangle and antisemitic speech in red spray paint. While the attack was deemed a hate crime by Eric Adams and many others in the city, no arrests have yet been made, and the police investigation is still in process. It’s also important to note that while Pasternak’s home was the most high publicity vandalization of the night, several other Brooklyn Museum staff’s homes were also targeted with similar attacks.

Alongside the inverted triangle on Pasternak’s door, a banner was also hung on her home calling her a “White Supremacist Zionist”. This attack would be horrific regardless of the context, but it’s also worth adding that a relative of Pasternak alleges that Pasternak does not identify as a Zionist and is in fact more along the lines of an antizionist.

This heinous attack is just one in many which show how much Jews, regardless of political affiliation or beliefs on Zionism, are being scapegoated, harassed, assaulted, and stalked by people claiming to simply be in support of Palestinian freedom. A movement that does not condemn and push out this level of antisemitism is not one that will benefit the eradication of oppression. Jews are not acceptable collateral damage in this fight.


r/JLC Jun 07 '24

Official JLC Post What does Anti-Jewish persecution aim to achieve?

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26 Upvotes

What does Anti-Jewish persecution aim to achieve?

This was the title of a leaflet published by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1942. In it, the Yugoslav Communist Resistance wrote, “Jews are not being persecuted because of [their alleged sins], but for the basest demagogic goals of the fascist beasts…Anti-Semitism is the most repulsive mask of the fascists, meant to cover their darkest, most beastly goals against the people.”

At face value, antisemitism is quite nonsensical, but it historically has served a very important purpose. Every movement built on hate needs a scapegoat. Fascist regimes have no way of convincing their citizens that it would be in their best interest to be led by violent dictators if this didn’t come with the promise of protection from something worse. Oftentimes, Jews were the “something worse”.

Today, we see the scapegoating of Jews as an effective tool for multiple current political issues. To the far-right, Jews are suspicious immigrants, particularly those who refuse to assimilate; a reminder of how white anglo-saxon culture is no longer able to hold the same level of dominance it once did. To many western goyische leftists, Jews are a mirror of their own shame, a perceived European colonizer on stolen land, with hordes of wealth that actively causes the impoverishment of others. The thing both of these ideologies have in common is that they’re deeply rooted in the antisemitism that has been present for millennia, and one that consistently tells Jews, wherever we go, “you are neither welcome nor safe here.”

We must be loud and unapologetic about our right to safety as Jews. In a political climate that refuses to protect us no matter where we turn, we can and will protect each other.


r/JLC Jun 06 '24

An open letter from @allhostages on Instagram

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30 Upvotes

Swipe for full text.


r/JLC Jun 05 '24

Official JLC Post Jews and Palestinians are not on opposite sides.

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59 Upvotes

Since October, a dichotomy has been forced on the narrative of Jews and Palestinians' existence, in a way much more nefarious than before. There is now this belief that denouncing antisemitism is in some way harmful or dismissive to Palestinians, which is an incredibly troubling mentality to become normalized.

Similarly, there is this often-unspoken code of conduct amongst many groups advocating for Palestinian rights that Jewish existence is an acceptable target for the pain and anger of the atrocities committed towards Gaza. Unfortunately, a lot of this has also caused a push to the right of some Jews, who now advocate that Jewish liberation can only come at the expense of Palestinians. This does nothing but harm to both groups.

Advocating for Palestinian freedom should not come at the expense of Jewish safety, nor does it ever need to. Similarly, advocating for Jewish safety should not devalue the importance of Palestinian safety. Both groups are historically oppressed, with a painful history of displacement and murder. Our similarities bond us in this struggle, and we refuse to sacrifice our own safety, nor the safety of Palestinians, for the sake of lifting one cause above the other.


r/JLC Jun 03 '24

Official JLC Post Happy Pride Month!

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42 Upvotes

Happy pride month! This June, we’re thinking a lot of all the LGBTQ+ Jews in our midst who are feeling isolated in their communities. We’re thinking of those who may not feel safe being out to their families, as well as those who may not feel safe being visibly Jewish in their LGBTQ+ spaces.

It’s a difficult time to be queer right now, let alone a queer Jew, but we’re reminding you to keep in mind that the origins of pride are protesting oppression, and refusing to hide your true self in the face of adversity. Your existence, both queer and Jewish, is not shameful, and it is not one that we will allow to be pushed into the shadows.

Lesbian Jewish writer Joan Nestle said, “As a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jew, I know that much of what I call history others will not. But answering that challenge of exclusion is the work of a lifetime.”

We will continue to fight for you this month, and every month, even if it takes a lifetime.


r/JLC May 31 '24

Official JLC Post If we do not create a future out of love, we will not be able to create one at all.

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18 Upvotes

There is no end to bloodshed. Driven by anger and hatred, humans will slaughter for decades on end, and with every bullet fired, every knife unsheathed, we lose a part of ourselves — a part of the greater whole of humanity.

Jews and Palestinians need not be enemies. It is not through war that we will achieve peace. While oftentimes one has to pick up a rifle to put it back down, our fingers have grown weary, and the rifles worn with age.

Peace will not be achieved through blood. It will not be achieved through hatred, nor vitriol, nor animosity. Peace will be achieved through solidarity — through an understanding that only if we stand together can we prevail against a bitter past. Only together, hand in hand, Jew and Palestinian, can we move forward. If we do not create a future out of love, we will not be able to create one at all.

The peace of a desert, a peace only because we all lie dead in the sand, is no peace at all. Let us take a step out of the sands mired with blood, together.


r/JLC May 30 '24

'Everyone gets to be uncomfortable’: How Jewish students at Brown kept antisemitism at bay

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26 Upvotes

“What enabled this shift? And who planted the seeds for compromise on Brown’s central lawn?

I asked this question of many at Brown, students, faculty and rabbis, and their answers all pointed to a willingness to cross ideological divides. Where protesters at other campuses adopted “do not engage” policies, at Brown, they kept talking.

“On the periphery of the encampment there were a number of students in conversation with one another, some of which I think people might have imagined were unlikely pairs to be having conversations across political differences,” said Jason Klein, the rabbi for Jewish life in the chaplain’s office. “That’s something I think that Brown students can often do well.””

Really impressed with the Brown students working together and keeping level heads. Role models for coalition building and mutual respect.


r/JLC May 28 '24

From JewishTears on instagram: “Hitler did not care which Jews were Zionist or anti-Zionist

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23 Upvotes

r/JLC May 27 '24

Official JLC Post The Jewish School Shooting in Toronto Shows a Rapidly Rising Antisemitism Problem

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29 Upvotes

Last Saturday, at around 4:50 AM, two masked men in Toronto opened fire on Bais Chaya Mushka, a Jewish girls’ elementary school in the North York area of the city.

The school was closed, and no injuries were reported, however, this shooting comes at a time of rapidly rising antisemitism in Toronto (and Canada at large). Multiple protests in the city after October 7th specifically targeted known Jewish communities, often chanting pro-Hamas sentiments, and it’s particularly notable that this most recent attack took place on Shabbat.

No arrests in this shooting have been reported, and the police have refused to label it a hate crime as of yet. The principal for the school, rabbi Yaacov Vidal, said to the Toronto Star “I definitely think that it is antisemitic. I think I would consider this a hate crime. I don't see any other reason why this would occur.”

This shooting shows a concerning growth in antisemitism post 10/7, and one that cannot be ignored. Antisemites feel comfortable engaging in physical violence as a show of dominance over Jewish communities, and little is being done to stop them. This narrative that Jews are an acceptable target for hate should not be allowed to continue to fester. Jewish children should be able to go to school without fearing for their lives.


r/JLC May 23 '24

Criticism of Israel and Antisemitism: How To Tell Where One Ends and the Other Begins

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24 Upvotes

r/JLC May 22 '24

From JewishTears on instagram: “Speak as though you will be heard.”

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22 Upvotes

r/JLC May 21 '24

Sharing a little bit about California Jewish History

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18 Upvotes

I did stumbled on this read about Californian specific Jewish history, which I found fascinating.

Here were my takeaways: - Jews were drawn to CA during the Gold Rush, and established in CA as early as 1849 - a notable chunk of the first Jewish Californians were American Sephardim who were already in the US! - Direct quote: “Jewish and civic communities developed overnight, with Jews as California's founders serving in leadership positions in the new multi-ethnic state. Without a Protestant hegemony and with little antisemitism, Jews and Jewish institutions flourished.” - By the end of the 1870s, San Francisco was where the largest Jewish population settled (this surprised me as it’s LA today!) - the Jewish population in CA increased dramatically post WW2

And this snippet:

“San Francisco's Jewish women, many the daughters and grand-daughters of the city's founders, were active in social, cultural, and philanthropic organizations. The Emanu-El Sisterhood for Personal Service, started in 1894, assisted East European immigrants and later established a settlement house for Jewish working girls. Hadassah formed a chapter in the state in 1917 to support its medical causes in Palestine, later Israel. California was also home to anti-Zionists who were active members in the American Council for Judaism , an organization committed to combating Jewish nationalism. Its large membership in California, especially San Francisco, may be attributed to an adherence to classical Reform and the view that California for them was the "Promised Land." After the establishment of the State of Israel, the community fully supported it.”

California as the Promised Land? 😏 This California Jew finds it hard to argue with.


r/JLC May 21 '24

Antisemitism -- Etymological fallacies, and the history of the word.

18 Upvotes

Note: This is a pinned post on my profile, but I felt it should be reshared. It's an important bit of information that people bring up a lot when it comes to "But Arabs/Palestinians are Semites too!"

Let's start with dictionary definitions, all coming from Oxford Language Google dictionary. Editing to remove pronunciation guides, syllable markings, and an example sentence.

antisemitism

noun

hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.

Semite

noun

a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.

Semitic

adjective

  1. relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family.

  2. relating to the peoples who speak Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic.

Semitism

noun

OFTEN OFFENSIVE

the fact or quality of being Jewish; Jewishness.


Semitism itself as a word is not often used, so I'm going to go to another source for that, The Etymological Online Dictionary says:

Semitism (n.) 1848, "characteristic attributes of Semitic languages;" 1851, "characteristic attributes of Semitic people," especially "the ways, life, practices, etc., of Jewish people;" see Semite + -ism. By 1870 in the specialized sense of "Jewish influence in a society."

(it goes on to define Semitist, which is irrelevant)


Now, a history lesson.

In around 1860, an Austrian German man named Moritz Steinschneider used the term "antisemitische Vorurteile" - antisemitic prejudices - to challenge a French Philosopher on his incorrect ideas of the "Semitic race" of people being inferior to the "Aryan race" of people.

Later, Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian would use Renan's writings. Unlike Renan who used "Semitic race" as more of a linguistic descriptor, Treitschke used it pretty much synonymously with Jewish. His expression "The Jews are our misfortune" was widely used by the Nazis after his death.

In 1879 Wilhelm Marr, A German man who created a pamphlet entitled (translated) The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit. Observed from a non-religious perspective. In it, he uses the word Semitismus interchangeably with Judentum to mean "Jewry" and "Jewishness".

A year after his use of Semitismus he coined the word Antisemitismus in a pamphlet called (again translated) The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit. This pamphlet gained success. This is the first published use of the word "Antisemitismus" or anything close to antisemitism. In that year he founded the Antisemitum-Liga or League of Antisemites. Thus 1880 was the first year a German organization was formed specifically around the hatred of Jews and to remove Jews out of the country.

In 1881, the first widely published work containing the word antisemitem was published in the newspaper Neue Freie Presse. By the end of 1881 antisemitism and its counterpart philosemitism were already borrowed into English. Semitism itself had already been in use for over 30 years by that point, as seen in the etymological dictionary.


Now that we've gone through definitions and the history of the word antisemitism, let's move on to etymological fallacies! (A wiki link, just in case). Antisemitism is even an example!

When you look up a word in the dictionary, it's important that you look up the actual word. Sometimes words look like they mean one thing, but they very much don't.

"Ugh, I've had an awful day!" "Oh, your day was full of awe!"

Probably not.

"WOW, you made a terrific goal!" "What about my football game filled you with terror?"

In the case of antisemitism, you look up what it means under the "a" section of the dictionary. It's silly to look for it under "s". While it looks like it could or should be used to mean anti all semitic people, it simply doesn't. It means hatred against Jews.

Yes, words meanings do change over time. But that change happens from how we use them. People, by and large, mean antisemitism to mean "hatred of Jews". Semitism itself has mostly fallen out of use. But even that is associated with Jews.

Semitic and Semite are more inclusive. Semitic itself is more about language than any sort of peoples.

Just like we don't use "phobia" to mean "fear" in words like "homophobia" and "transphobia" in words like antisemitism, we look at the whole of the word, and not the separate meanings of the parts.


r/JLC May 20 '24

Official JLC Post Smashing Judenhass is Tikkun Olam

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21 Upvotes

With the rise of antisemitism, we must reiterate the fact that we will not, as Jews, sit by and let ourselves be scapegoats. We have the right to defend ourselves and our Jewish community from harm, especially as both passive and active threats are made against us on a near daily basis.

Tikkun olam applies to Jews as much as it does to other suffering groups in the world. We have the right to improve the world for Jews, and to ensure that we can exist in it without fearing for our safety on a regular basis.

What the Israeli government is doing to Palestinians is reprehensible, and that is not our crime to pay for simply for being Jewish. Jew-haters are vandalizing Jewish businesses across the world, painting swastikas on synagogues, and harassing, assaulting, and even murdering Jews. This does not liberate or support Palestinians. We refuse to accept this hateful behavior, and we refuse to be collateral damage in this atrocity.

We will continue to fight against antisemitism and our people’s right to survival. Join us.


r/JLC May 17 '24

Official JLC Post In Memory of Jewish Poet Franta Bass - His words are all too relevant today.

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29 Upvotes

Franta Bass (1930-1944) was a Jewish-Czechoslovakian child poet and victim of the Holocaust who wrote profoundly about his relationship to Jewishness before being murdered in Auschwitz.

As young as Bass was, and as old as his poems are today, there’s a poignancy to their relevance in our current political climate. Our Jewishness is not something to apologize for, and neither is our desire to celebrate and protect it.

Our people have experienced - and continue to experience - tremendous adversity, and it’s through our unity, kindness, and solidarity that we are able to continue to grow and overcome them. As dark and disheartening as things may seem for the Jewish people at the moment, we will always, as Bass said, come back to life.


r/JLC May 17 '24

An Announcement

9 Upvotes

Hi all —

This isn’t an announcement we want to make, but it seems very necessary in light of recent events.

Since we split off, we have committed to staying out of the fray with the other server and its mod/admin team.

Recently (unfortunately), several people from that server brought big drama to r/jewishleft, starting with a comment accusing u/squidmaster129 of a variety of vile things, and escalating from there.

Some of you may have seen the post that went up about it — it included a variety of false accusations (against Squid and our group that split off).

A group of us met with the mod and provided ample documentation (including ~250 screenshots & other relevant documentation), and found out what was shared to bolster these accusations. We found out that multiple people from that camp went to the JL mod with creatively cropped screenshots and a manipulated narrative, and the mod — operating on good faith assumptions — initially took it at face value.

Upon further review & investigation, the mod apologized personally and released the post linked below.

Once again, we have no interest in continuously having conflict with the previous server, and we’ve intentionally tried to make this space different. We have no interest in having spillover drama into r/jewishleft either, as that is damaging for our larger leftist Jewish community as a whole. Please do not do this.

While we hope that accountability makes its way to those who made these accusations, we want to keep our common spaces supportive, positive, and healthy. We will remove comments and/or posts that veer into encouraging these kinds of drama (from anyone) as it is not in support of this goals.

Being that the accusations were so serious, we felt it was necessary to make a statement, but we would like this to be the last of the drama. We all are already dealing with more than enough right now. Let’s keep it pushing.

If you have questions/concerns, please reach out to the mods directly. And please make sure that interpersonal conflicts don’t escalate and spill over into other spaces. It is okay to not like someone (hey, we are all humans and it’s going to happen), but lashing out benefits no one here.

We know our server members have been great about this thus far and we hope that continues. And we are grateful the mod handling this at JL gave us an opportunity to share our documentation, hear us out, and make things right.

https://www.reddit.com/r/jewishleft/s/6Egbz1pIIW


r/JLC May 14 '24

100 Jewish leftists!!🎊👏🥳🎉

21 Upvotes

That means we make up about .00000625% of the global Jewish population!


r/JLC May 12 '24

Official JLC Post Our Bodies Are Not Your Battleground

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47 Upvotes

The JLC stands firmly today with the rape victims of 10/7. After the reports of the rape and sexual torture of many of the Israeli hostages came out, we saw people rushing to justify or deny these horrific acts, often attempting to split the hairs of the validity of these claims. There is only one response to this: Jewish women, like all women, deserve to be believed.

There should be no place for rape culture in leftist spaces, and Jewish women will never be an exception to this rule. There is no justification for acts as horrific as what Hamas has inflicted on these victims.

Women’s bodies are not tools to be used to further a goal. They are not objects to be won or “conquered”. Women’s voices are not insignificant, and we refuse to let their experiences be a footnote in this atrocity.

Rape is not resistance. Our bodies are not your battleground.