How Have You Changed since October 7th Terrorist Attack on Israel?

A post on Chabad's Facebook asking: 'How has your life changed since October 7th?' got me thinking 🤔.

I've changed. Less forgiving (not that I'm the forgiving sort to start with) and won't give people the benefit of the doubt. They'll have to prove to me they're not antisemitic or homophobic/ genderphobic.

For me, although I've always been a Zionist, Israel has now taken priority over as the country that I most closely identify with and feel passionately about. 🇮🇱

I feel closer and more attached to Judaism than before. It's also confirmed and strengthened my previous stance that all Jews need to be at one with each other, irrespective of their differences (be it denominations, feminist worship preferences (eg Women of the Wall), gender identity, sexual orientation). 🤗 

I'm deeply shocked just how extremely anti-Semitic so many people and institutions are, institutions, including Amnesty International and the UN, that should be trustworthy, empathetic, be free from corruption, bias, extremism and so should be ones people can rely on to ensure justice, equality and their human rights! I was completely shocked and horrified by some articles on so-called humanitarian aid and UNRWA that I unearthed during my research for my podcast (which slowed me up publishing some episodes). This was confirmed and compounded by the UN's total bias against Israel in the UN's recent statements eg harassing Israel with threats of using international law against them whilst ignoring that Hamas are prolifically breeching international law, including taking hostages. Hamas are the government for Gaza so the UN could go after them and insist on them returning all hostages, on pain of international law and war crimes, if they wanted to. But they refuse to. 

I now fully understand that what happened to me last July (and in 2014) was part of this extremist antisemitic sentiment as well as being homophobic/ LGBT+ hate. 

And I'm very angry! 😡 Angry that people and all institutions think they can be antisemitic and get away with it, even when it slides into extremism, ethnic cleansing, and support for genocidal terrorism, and this holds true no matter which country you're in. 

Angry that terrorism is taken very seriously unless it's against Jews. Angry that all this support for Holocaust education, Holocaust days, anti-Holocaust denial, anti-Nazis in developed countries means nothing - it's just re-labelled as anti-Israel pro-Palestine and carries on, hatred, swastikas and all. 

Hate awareness is yet another smokescreen. Look at how people and institutions behave following the terrorist attack on Israel and their attitude towards Jewish hostages. It's obscene.

Angry that Jews are the only religious group discriminated against. Angry that means you can persuade Jews to lock up and overdo security so Jews are put off going to synagogue which means less people which results in infringing Jews' freedom to feel free to worship (a human right) and means that Synagogues constantly shut down, merge so there's less and less of them or fall into total disuse or become a museum as if Judaism is a thing of the past. That makes me very angry because it's also a form of eradication and a covert way to prevent freedom of association and a thriving Jewish community.

I now fully appreciate what granny was trying to say to me during her final months, weeks, days. 

I'll never stop being angry and I'm never going to forgive the terrorism against Israel and her citizens but also I'm never going to forgive the antisemitism directed against me or/and my mother.  

I am an activist especially for Jews and the LGBT+ community but all Jews need to become activists and stamp on antisemitism and all irrational hatred towards Jews whoever they are, wherever they are.

Universities are notoriously anti-Semitic (and homophobic, gender phobic) and Jews need to band together and call-out all antisemitic incidents on campus and in their studies, for example, marking of essays, attitudes of staff, curriculum content etc. In particular, watch out on ethics courses (I received lower grades for ethics despite the essays being of the same standard as all my other essays) that there's no antisemitism whereby there's an insinuation, or declared blatantly, that Jews are less ethical than Christians no matter how badly the Christian behaves. And Stand Up for Jewish lecturers and, if there aren't any, pressure for representation. There's a tendency in unis to get around this by encouraging Asian and African philosophy/ philosophers at the expense of Jewish philosophy/ philosophers. 

And I'm angry that my suspicions about how some uni students receive higher grades were right (after I had to remove the section I had on Chomsky in order to gain a First for that political philosophy essay! And my Spinoza essay was never marked or returned by the tutor who wasn't even at my uni so had to come all the way from Oxford uni to do a few tutorials (out of his specialisation), which he failed to do anyway (he only went missing when it came to the Spinoza tutorial and essay) and who incidentally happens to be part Iranian which is relevant if he's going to start messing around with my UG course and grades and a Jewish philosopher.

Now it's indisputable that students get extra credit for expressing and supporting (eg protest marches) bigoted, far-right ideology and acting against minorities, especially Jews accordingly, instead of demonstrating academic ability! It is now apparent that Academia is dangerous and a threat to democracy. Institutions need a major overhaul if civilization and democracy is to progress. That includes universities, all universities. No exceptions. Universities must be neutral and objective if they're not they're a waste of space. 

I'm angry I couldn't use the student union when I had stalking problems, uni harassment including assault & battery etc at uni because the union was blatantly biased towards Palestine and anti Israel/Jews. At this stage, I didn't do or say anything Jewish at uni, so why were they so sure I'm Jewish? Why was I a target for anti-Semitism, and still am? Clearly institutions probe too much into students/people's lives disrespecting their right to privacy. I wish I'd known about Chabad back then and called on them for help! 

There's a pattern emerging here that we've seen before. First they went for the trans then they went for the Jews then...... Holocaust. We must not let the far right /Nazis (or far left /Communists) try to repeat history from 100 years ago, after the last pandemic 1918-1919/20.