My friend Mets102 has posted a couple of diaries recently about Mormons converting dead Jews to their faith, including Daniel Pearl, who was murdered for no reason other than that he was a Jew, and survivors and victims of the Holocaust, including such notables as Anne Frank and the families of Elie Wiesel and Simon Wiesenthal.
All four of my grandparents were posthumously converted too. They were all Holocaust survivors, each of whom had a very large extended family before the Holocaust. Between them, they had but a single living relative after the Holocaust.
And repeatedly, Mets102 and I and several other Jews who have a problem with this have been told we're whining, or "feigning anger," or crying over something that doesn't matter, or complaining for the sake of complaining, or otherwise making a big deal about nothing.
So first, a brief message to many (if not all) of those people who have said some version of this:
Go. Fuck. Yourself. Preferably with a rusty metal implement.
Yes, I know saying that will turn some of you off. I couldn't care less if that bothers you, though, not if you're going to side with the folks saying this doesn't matter.
My grandparents, as I said, were all Holocaust survivors whose entire families were wiped out. My grandparents lived as Jews, they were proud to be Jews, and they went to their graves as Jews. Their relatives who died in the Holocaust were murdered for no reason other than that they were Jews. And indeed, we Jews have a long history of being sent to our deaths for no reason other than that we are Jews and someone else gets it into their head that their religion makes it ok to wipe us off the face of the earth.
We Jews also have a long history of being forced by members of other faiths to abandon our Jewish identity and convert to their faith. They think they're doing us a favor, that they're saving our souls. Because, of course, all Jews are condemned to burn in hell for all eternity. (I can't tell you how many times I've heard that from people who can only be described as "Christian-of-a-certain-variety." Never mind that Jesus was a Jew, and if you insist that all Jews are condemned to burn in hell for all eternity, well, I can't imagine condemning your savior to eternal hellfire would score you any points in the afterlife. But I digress.)
There's something these oppressors of Jews have in common, whether they prefer to murder us all for no reason other than that we are Jews or whether they prefer to harass us or even force us to convert to their faiths when we would not choose to do so on our own. Both groups have decided that there is something so superior about their ideology that makes it not only acceptable but even a moral imperative to wipe any semblance of Jewish identity off the face of the earth.
It really doesn't take a genius to see this for the antisemitism that it is.
And now we have this specific group of assholes who have decided that it's not only acceptable but even a moral imperative to wipe any semblance of Jewish identity even among dead Jews off the face of the earth via this forced conversion of the dead. (Do you want to dispute my characterization of this naarishkeit as "forced conversion"? Hate to break it to you, but when you convert someone who didn't give their consent, that's forced.)
And yet we Jews who voice our displeasure at this are told we're whining. We're feigning anger. We're crying over something that doesn't matter. We're complaining for the sake of complaining. We're making a big deal about nothing.
Which is why I suggest to those of you who say such things that you go fuck yourself with a rusty metal implement.
All too frequently, Jews on this site who complain about antisemitism are told that we're making a big deal about something that doesn't matter, or that the antisemitism we're complaining about isn't antisemitism at all, so we should just sit down and shut the fuck up about it already.
Who the fuck decided that converting Jews to another faith without their permission isn't antisemitic? Who the fuck decided that imposing your faith on another group of people just because you believe your faith is superior isn't a big deal? (Or is it only not a big deal when we're just talking about Jewish victims, living or dead?)
And on a personal level, who the fuck gave you the right to decide that the forcible conversion of my grandparents -- something that they never would have acceded to under any circumstances -- is no big deal, or that complaining about it is just so much faux outrage?
What gives you the right to decide what we as Jews find offensive to us? What gives you the right to tell me that my grandparents' names and legacies aren't threatened when someone substitutes their parochial religious ideology for what my grandparents wanted and lived?
I don't know, maybe you simply don't get it. Maybe you don't understand that, like any other group, there are certain things that are just sacred to Jews, and that attacking those things the way the Mormons who are posthumously and forcibly converting our people to their faith are doing isn't acceptable under any circumstances -- and so much more so when they've admitted wrongdoing for this exact same behavior in the past, they're repeatedly apologized for it, and yet they keep doing the exact same behavior for which they so falsely apologized in the first place.
Maybe this doesn't hurt you, but there are plenty of us who are hurt by it. Just because you aren't hurt doesn't make it ok. And when you so dickishly claim that we are whining, feigning anger, crying over something that doesn't matter, complaining for the sake of complaining, or otherwise making a big deal about nothing, at best you're being an ignorant twit. But you're also defending antisemitism, and there is simply no excuse for that.
So if it's just a matter of ignorance, try learning something instead of insulting us for having the audacity to complain about antisemitism to which you were blind. Ask us why it bothers us rather than imposing your uninformed and obnoxious judgment upon us.
But if it's not just ignorance? Find yourself a rusty implement, putz, and get to work.
Excellent job. Thanks for taking them on over there at that place. Again. For the...
ReplyDelete...oh fuck, I don't even know how many times it's been now. Won't be anywhere near the last either, that's for sure. Or I guess at least until you get tossed off by the country club bigots who run that place, like a number of the rest of us.
An absolutely righteous rant. It's a sad reminder of how many people over at that site are willing to tell any minority that stands up for himself or herself to go shut up and sit down.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah. If you've been fortunate enough to have never been to that site in the first place, do yourself a favor and stay far, far away.
DeleteReply fail! That was odd, heh. Anyway. The above comment was to Makabit, of course...
DeleteI knew I didn't want to read a site whose denizens style themselves "Kossacks". For some reason.
ReplyDeleteApparently I was right.
What is WRONG with people?
You know, it didn't used to be that way over there. To be sure, there's always been a substantial number of antisemites over there. But it used to be that when someone decided they were going to denigrate Jews, they'd get smacked down for it pretty quickly. It's not like that anymore, and no matter how much evidence we stack up to show how serious a problem it is, kos doesn't want to hear it.
DeleteSo, for instance, there is a "trusted user" who libeled me the second she appeared in my post over there by saying my use of the phrase "the Mormons" unfairly generalized all Mormons. Note, of course, that the only place where "the Mormons" appears in my post clearly designates the specific Mormons who are responsible for this outrage -- so she lied about me. (I say she lied because if you go through the whole thread there, it's clear this was no "honest mistake" -- her intention was to hijack the diary.) And now she complains that I've unfairly tarred her as a troll because I refuse to answer her question as to whether I know any Mormons in real life. In context, it's plenty clear that her intention is to smear me no matter what I answer -- if I do know Mormons and still posted this, that just proves I'm bigoted against Mormons, a la "some of my best friends are (fill-in-the-blank)"; if I don't know any Mormons, then that proves I'm bigoted against Mormons because I ignorant of them.
Now, I'm from Wisconsin. It's not Utah, but there's a good-sized Mormon population there, and I've known Mormons for most of my life. And just like any other group, I don't have any problem separating the individuals from the religious body. Never mind any of that -- it's irrelevant. And so just as it was an obvious lie to say I was effectively accusing all Mormons of this egregious conduct, it's also obvious that the point here is simply to make a nasty accusation intended to distract from the real issue. And although most of the folks over there called her for it, and although she was reported for violating the "don't be a dick in other people's diaries" rule, I don't hold out much hope that kos will do a damn thing about it -- he has a decidedly mixed track record about dealing with the trolls who show up to harass Jews, by which I mean he occasionally can be bothered to remove his head from his ass long enough to do something if we complain loudly enough, but in general he doesn't give a shit.
So long story short, it's really not most of the folks over there. It's the administration that's the problem, because they can't be bothered to enforce their own policies over shit like this and, because of that, they've let enough of the assholes spew whatever bullshit they want that the good folks just can't drown it out. And like any vicious cycle, that means more and more of the good folks just can't be bothered to deal with the site anymore.
Which is why sites like this exist. And about a dozen others I could name off the top of my head, where former "kossacks" would rather hang out instead of dkos.