[Transcript]
My American Jewish friends are crumbling. We desperately need allies and empathy.

Yesterday my friend got way too drunk (35 year old man) and told me he truly believes a second Holocaust is coming. He was almost crying.

We live in a chronically online world, but online spaces are completely hostile to Jews. No disrespect to my AA brothers, but I imagine it’s similar to what walking around as a Black person in the South must have felt like 50 years ago (specifically I am comparing to being Jews being online. it’s absolutely unsafe). At least half of my Jewish friends have shown a severe downturn in mental/emotional health in the past year.

I know two people who broke off their engagement because their non-Jewish partner did not support them emotionally and downplayed anti-semitism or became a “devil’s advocate” on Israel. One person who had a rough childhood became a rabid pro-pal protester and has begun spiraling into some really crazy “Jews control everything” ramblings, but at least he has “friends” now. Several of my friends post a constant stream of antisemitic awareness stuff (like StandWithUs, etc) instead of happy pictures with their dog or a slice of pizza or whatever we did before this. Friends who are parents now have constant anxiety through the roof about their kids being at or near any Jewish location.

It feels like there’s been a war declared on us and they’re just waiting on us to break. How the hell are we supposed to live like this?

UPDATE: to all those who say “just spend less time online” -we ARE all online reading and posting this. We are online all the time. It’s what life is like for most people, especially those under 40. Most of us probably can’t even take a shit without our phone in our hand lol. Also I’m not willing to let people on the Internet just win and kick me out of a shared space.

The same way our ancestors did, by leaning on each other. Nobody else understands, but we all get it. We are all scared and stressed and angry and we are all here for you 💙

Agreed! I think we have to appreciate the fact that we went through part of our lives without a very high level of antisemitism, accept that it is back now, try to fight it as best we can in our immediate surroundings, keep our fellow Jews close and what allies we have left even closer.

(Source. Note that ‘AA’ in this context is short for ‘African-American’.)

These people need serious help. I don’t want to take my cynicism too far by officially declaring antisemitism a dead issue (it isn’t), but it is clear that a huge portion of the panicking is driven by Herzlians’ ignorant view of what antisemitism is and their redefinition thereof to include any criticism of their gimmicky ideology (which was never ‘Jewish’, by the way).

It’s unhealthy. Someone has conditioned them to interpret innocent phenomena like watermelons and the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ in the worst ways imaginable. They slam the door in the faces of anybody who opposes the occupation of Palestine, and it does not matter how much good you have done for the Jewish community. A Zionist ruler who has caused the Jews under his reign so much suffering that all of them choose suicide, would still be far more preferable to a philosemitic anti-Zionist who generously covers temple membership fees, educates others in Jewish subjects, volunteers for Hatzalah, and in general has been the greatest gift to Jewry since Cyrus II.

I can promise you that this toxic mindset—that of seeing antisemitism around every corner and believing that Jews can depend on no-one but theirselves—I can promise you that that is going to drive away more Jewish readers than any antisemite could.