Funny story. I criticize this bigot poet for his new campaign to delegitimize the fundamental symbols of Judaism and rewrite the story of those symbols - because it is his right, he believes, to rewrite our story. And of course, his little People’s Crusade of supporters comes out in droves in the comments. And I suddenly realize that I stand at a huge disadvantage, because these self-righteous bigots don’t actually know anything about what’s happening in the Middle East. Because none of the sense-making elites of the West actually care about Arab lives. I suggest that arguing that a religion’s or a people’s symbols can be delegitimized by the misdeeds of its adherents is a fundamentally racist argument, and that that would be obvious if you applied this standard to Islam. They argue in return, at Mohammed’s behest, that there are no comparable Islamic crimes. Mohammad tells them that Muslims fought against ISIS, and therefore there’s nothing to see here and they can stick to focusing on the Jews and their evil symbols. But I wasn’t talking about ISIS. ISIS was small potatoes in terms of even the most recent atrocities in the Arab Muslim world. Just along the Sunni-Shia divide you have a quarter-million Yemenis starved to death, including 85,000 children, as recently as 2018. Syria was 10% Christian 13 years ago and is less than 2% Christian today. The tragedy of the Yazidis, the brutal assaults on the Kurds, the catastrophe of FGM in Egypt, the slave markets of Libya and Mauritania. Mohammed wants us to only look at ISIS, because if we lifted our gaze just a little, and accepted his standard for the delegitimization of a people, identity or religion, what would we make of Islam or Arabs? Why, dear allies of this noble poet-cum-racist, is nobody flooding your feeds with the horrors now underway in Sudan? Isn’t that an even slightly interesting question? And all of this is true - and your bigotry is manifest - even if we are precisely the monsters you claim we are. The horrific brutalities and multiple simultaneous outright genocides now underway in the Muslim world do not - and should not - delegitimize Islam or its symbols. (Yes, really. For deep and important reasons that are not my subject here.) And that’s how we know this is all fake and antisemitic, a self-righteous hatred rather than real righteousness. The campaign to destroy us cannot advance, cannot survive even for a moment, without your ignorance. And that’s why a great deal of effort is invested in keeping you ignorant: Because when the ignorance is punctured, it becomes impossible not to see this campaign for what it is. And all of that is true if we’re as bad as these liars claim. If we’re not, it’s worse. https://bird.makeup/@m7mdkurd/1852079489926246636
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