Jews are not white Europeans

As Isaac de Castro has observed , Europeans viewed Jewish people as non-white. European Jews were made out to have the opposite of the white beauty standards. Their distorted caricaturization of Jewish features were used to incite genocidal hatred.

Yet now when liberal society says that evil pinnacles at “whiteness,” Jews are suddenly portrayed as the archetypal white model once used against us.

In fact some Europeans viewed Jews as Arab/African.

“And don’t forget this either: Less than 100 years ago, antisemites deemed us Arab/African hybrids who needed to be sent back to Palestine, and now they claim we’re people of European descent who need to be sent back to the shtetls.”

Judean Bruiser, an Irish + Judean-American commentator on Twitter.

Who are the Jews, in reality? Jews are an ethno-religious people from the land of Israel. Due to the Roman occupation of Israel, most Jews were exiled. Some were forced to live in exile in the Arab nations of the middle east. They became known as Mizrahi Jews. Others migrated to Europe. The Jews of Eastern and Central Europe became known as Ashkenazim, and Jews of the Iberian Peninsula became known as Sephardim.

Over the last decade antisemitism has increased dramatically in the United States. An increasing number of students in public schools and colleges report being made to feel unwelcome or unsafe; violent attacks and death threats have been on the rise.

While Jews account for less than 2% of the American population, the new FBI Hate Crimes Statistics report found that more than 60% of religious-based hate crimes in 2019 targeted Jews, an increase of 14% over 2018. The FBI report shows a total of 7,314 hate crime incidents in 2019, up by nearly 3% from the 7,120 incidents reported in 2018. Incidents targeting Jews were up 14 percent, 953 in 2019, compared to 835 in 2018. Moreover, in 2019, Jews were the victims in six of the 12 religious-bias murders reported in 2019.

An important point in being an anti-racist is listening to voices. Make space to learn from the lived experiences of Jewish people

Antisemitism Stories,

Jewish On Campus

Antisemitism Today,

Perspectives of Jewish students in schools

“You Don’t Look Jewish”,

ChallahBackGirls – perspective from Jewish teens

Being anti-racist includes being an anti-antisemite.

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