Mumsnet could do better (part trois)

[EllaDisenchanted]

Hello all, decompression thread 3️⃣

People are ignorant and don't even know how ignorant they are. When we say racism is a social construct it is clear that melatonin is really the last thing important. British forms are just outrages. White other? what that is supposed to describe? measure? but then you can tick white British wich describes nationality, not ethnicity. I could tick Arab at Uni but couldn't Jewish or Slavic.
I had many difficult experiences at Uni, surrounded by very ignorant people who are well read in one particular issue ( Slavery and colonialism) and tried to explain everything else using the same framework. So, I was gaslighted a lot.
But things I was told and heard...Jews are responsible for Holocaust because if you are disliked whenever you go it is you problem. I was told that this person did not meant to say that/they are just ignorant/ I have Jewish roots too so don't be upset.
Holocaust was mentioned once during my whole time there - main victims were non - white people. I doubt the lecturer meant Romani.

However, if I have a feeling that I interact with someone open and willing to learn I always suggest to read this: https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/w-e-b-du-bois-the-negro-and-the-warsaw-ghetto/collection/black-americans-and-world-war-ii

Du Bois is toady almost a cult figure for black liberation movement in America. In this short text he caught perfectly what it really means that racism is a social problem.

The fact that people love to compare IRA to Hamas also shows how little they know about other places and other regions history.

@deragod "The fact that people love to compare IRA to Hamas also shows how little they know about other places and other regions history."

Yes! Even the ICC prosecutor was clueless on this. People doing that get on my nerves.

It also shows a lack of knowledge of terrorism and counter-terrorism including how & why people join terrorist groups. Many would be surprised at the motivations.

I will address that at some point in future.

Jews are responsible for Holocaust because if you are disliked whenever you go it is you problem

This is SICK!

Thank you for the link

Jews are responsible for Holocaust because if you are disliked whenever you go it is you problem

This is certainly not my area of expertise, but I have always assumed that antisemitism is widespread in predominantly Christian countries because of the difference in religious teachings between Judaism and Christianity about Jesus. That does not sound like a "you problem" for the Jewish community, but rather a lack of tolerance on the part of Christians.

I may have to consult with the ESL team on this question. 😁

Yes, it is. I lived in a bubble for years, so this type of hardcore antisemitism and Holocaust denialism was really something that threw me off the track and did not help in achieving.

@MissConductUS

ah, Jews the cunning psychos who killed our Jesus! Although it was Romans and Roman laws. Funny thing, but even in New Testament you can find more nuanced accounts of Jesus execution than st. John's testimony. Though, I might be wrong about evangelist's name. I would need to check with my father and I am not going to call him now as he is too geeky and I cannot spend 2hrs on the phone right now! ;)

There's a very early episode of birds of a feather from the 1980s...it's a Christmas episode and Sharon says to Dorien something like, Do we send you jews a christmas card seeing as you killed Jesus? Dorien responds by saying, not me personally, I was at the hairdressers!

My DM actually does have 2 fridges. The kitchen fridge is very small so she has an extra fridge in the garage. The garage fridge is better because it is often where the desserts are hiding. She is obviously a top-level Jewess.

Ethnicity boxes are weird. I am whiter than an anaemic ghost to look at but still wouldn't be "white" at all as far as white supremacists are concerned, which seems unfair. But I've been told a number of times that I don't really count as an ethnic minority at work becomes we need someone who looks like they belong to a minority "so that people from minorities feel more comfortable approaching them". I tend to tick other and write Ashkenazi where possible since that is my ethnicity and actually comes with genuine implications for health, culture, discrimination etc.

I never know what to tick on those forms. Weirdly I was doing one for a new GP and one of the options for ethnic background was Polish (alongside Irish which I also find strange although it's not new). In some ways Polish (by geographical location, no-one in my family is actually Polish) is the closest option for me but I don't think that's what they meant!

@deragod, you're right; the "who killed Jesus" question is a big part of it. As I've posted previously, mainstream Christian churches have taught for decades that it was the Romans, not the Jews who killed him, but some people are slow to get the message. There's also the more fundamental theological disagreement about the divinity of Jesus or lack thereof.

I never answer the ethnicity question the same way twice in a row 😅 It depends on what it's for and what mood I'm in, if I can be bothered explaining that I may look white but I'm actually 50% Arab.

Weirdly, my husband who is the first generation born outside of Iraq tends to say he's white if Jewish isn't an option, despite being 100% Arab. Although since I pointed it out to him I think he mixes it up a bit too and varies it depending on what options are available and how the question is phrased.

It was the thread on here about the BRCA testing kits that made me start thinking about giving a more accurate answer to that question. Huge omission IMHO that it's not there as standard on medical questionnaires.

Catching up with some of these posts. I also read some and then abandoned the halal burger thread. You just can’t keep hitting your head against a brick wall.

someone upthread has mentioned an experience at uni. When I went I had a lovely tutor and then one day she began a debate style group thing with one of the questions being, removing the atrocities, could you argue that Hitler was a good leader? 😮😮😮 it beggars belief that she ever thought that was okay in any stretch and what was worse was the people in the class ferociously arguing that yes he was a good leader!! It was absolutely absurd. I showed my disdain as at the end of the class she asked to speak to me as she “get my attitude had changed / I was offended by it” I told her I was, I didn’t reveal my religion though as I didn’t want it to go down that road. I wanted it to be that it was just wrong regardless.. I am ashamed to say that I never took it further, mainly because I was young and naive and didn’t know where to go with it.

Matthew is your man for biblical blaming of the Jews for the death of Jesus

24 When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.”
25 And all the people answered and said, “His blood be on us and on our children.”

So because the early Christians wanted to not have beef with the Romans because that was politically risky, they rewrote the trial of Jesus to include a bit where it wasn't Pilate's fault at all and the Jews said happily to the Romans that responsibility for Jesus's death would be on them and on their descendants.

I don’t think the Jesus thing really explains antisemitism all that well. It’s just that’s how it manifested itself in Europe for a few centuries. How would it explain antisemitism in Persia (the Purim story), or the farhud, etc.? And hitler yemach shemo really didn’t care about Jesus. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explained at as a mutating virus, and I think that’s what we see so clearly now with the white colonial settler narrative .

I think that’s part of the reason why I have somewhat given up challenging this and just accept it, because it’s so clearly to me the new viral twist in Jew hate. It completely ignores all logic as it always has done. Lhttps://rabbisacks.org/videos/the-mutation-of-antisemitism/. The blood in the Matza pesach libel for example also very clearly ignored all logic and reasoning. Jewish law goes to exceptional lengths to ensure we don’t eat blood, for example that is why kosher meat is salted (to extract the blood), and why I have to check every egg for blood spots ( a blood spot renders the egg tried ie not kosher). But we would murder non Jewish children to get their blood to bake matzas? It didn’t make sense then it doesn’t make sense now.

we say in the Pesach Seder as part of Vehi Sheamda
אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר, עוֹמְדִים עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנו…

… rather in every generation they try to destroy us.

and this is the ‘mutating virus’ of antisemitism.

On to fridges, verity your post reminded me that I did have two fridges at one point in the UK and it was in the garage 🤣 it was just not plugged in the majority of the time, except occasionally for yom tov . We moved and had no room for a full sized fridge and freezer in the kitchen as it was small, so we put them in the garage and someone kindly gave us a small combined fridge freezer second hand which fit in the kitchen! I just didn’t plug it in most of the time, as the garage was pretty hard to access

@EllaDisenchanted I have just googled yemach shemo thanks to your post!

May his name be wiped out.

I wish that MN would moderate thread titles before allowing them. There is a new one asking whether a certain country is civilised!

I've seen it. Clearly goading and trolling, I hope they delete it.

To add - I think the humanitarian situation in Gaza is awful and appalling. My heart breaks for those children and their parents. But where are the threads asking whether the UK is a civilised country? Or the US? Or any nation that has gone into war and children have suffered there? It's the microscopic lens through which Israel is judged compared with other countries that don't come under the same level of scrutiny that makes it antisemitic. Obviously I won't be posting this over there as I don't fancy a pile on.

@noblegiraffe, I'm sure that was one of many passages added to the NT long after the books were originally written. Before the printing press, religious scribes and monks copied the books of the NT by hand. Changes happened. Some were simple mistakes, and others were deliberately made to support a particular point of view. We have proof that many were done deliberately because earlier Greek text versions don't contain them. Others are strongly suspected, as in the passage in 1st Corinthians that says women should be silent in church, while Paul says elsewhere in the same letter that women should offer prophecy in Church. Here are more examples:

18 Alterations Made to the Bible and its Consequences

As you can see, I am not a Biblical literalist.

@EllaDisenchanted, I'm sure you're correct. The theological differences between Judaism and Christianity are not a complete explanation for the origins of antisemitism, just one piece of the puzzle. I think the mutating virus analogy is spot on.

I am genuinely grateful for all that I have learned by being on this thread and hearing the voices of Jewish women.

Ps I just watched that video. It's really good. I will show it to my children as they have been asking some related questions recently.

That awful thread has gone now.

You are correct. Like I keep repeating time and time again on here, the outrage over Gaza and the protests are actually more to do with anti semitism than anything else.

The 2 fridge conspiracy evidence is mounting!