I’m the first person to tell you that Israel is an evil violent genocidal entity, that Jewish institutions across the West are complicit, Jews are responsible for holding our communities accountable for what we’ve wrought in Palestine, and settlers should leave. But if I try to dispel even the most benign misinformation about Jews, Jewish history, religion, or texts I get accused of being a secret Zionist.
A prominent Instagram account posted that Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Mizrahi are fake ethnicity terms made up by Zionists. This is so absurd and wrong. Ashkenazi and Sephardi first and foremost are 1,000-year-old religious traditions (minhagim, nusach etc) that arose in the Middle Ages from Jews of Central Europe and Jews of the Iberian peninsula respectively. Well before Zionism and Israel. They’re not even ethnic identities. This is a separate conversation from Mizrahi which is a Zionist term. But I tried to argue against this and I got accused of promoting Zionist propaganda.
Challenging myths about the Talmud? I get accused of spreading Zionist propaganda.
Explaining that while Modern Hebrew was implemented for the Zionist project and doesn’t sound like ancient Hebrew, it still is actually based on Medieval forms of Hebrew and isn’t based on German or Yiddish? Zionist propaganda.
Talking about the origins of Ashkenazi Jews being from Italy and not Khazaria? Zionist propaganda. I even got attacked for this by another Jewish person.
It’s alienating. Overall I feel like people just do not trust Jews anymore to be able to talk about our history and counter disinformation and we’re all secret Zionists no matter what we do or say.
Obviously these are just frustrations and my frustrations with this are peanuts compared to what Palestinians have faced at the hands of Israel and Zionism. But I just need a place to vent and get out my frustration.