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Longwood Green Line stop defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, Brookline says
By adamg on Fri, 04/05/2024 - 3:33pm
Select Board Chairman Bernard Greene says the MBTA quickly responded to a town request to erase the "Zionist Pigs" and peace symbol somebody sprayed on at least one signboard at the Longwood Green Line stop yesterday.
Greene added:
We don’t know whether the perpetrators are from Brookline or out of town, as we have found other instigators of such activity to be. We continue to work with the Transit Police to investigate the incident.
Greene then continued with a statement - which he acknowledged is not an official one from the select board, which requires a posted meeting to make, but:
This incident requires an immediate statement, so I as Chair of the Select Board am issuing this message on my own behalf. I am confident that its sentiments are shared by the other members of the Select Board, Town staff, and indeed all members of our community.
I have always said that hatred is indivisible. This attack on our Jewish community is an attack on our community as a whole. Hate, in any form, is unacceptable.
Brookline has been a welcoming bastion of inclusion for our Jewish community members for over 100 years, as a home to multiple diverse congregations of numerous denominations. This vandalism, and any other attacks on the Jewish community’s safety and sense of belonging in this town, will not be tolerated.
The pernicious and false tropes of antisemitism are anathema to Brookline’s values. Whenever there are threats or instances of hate, our first responders are always ready to ensure the community’s safety and security.
He said that people who spot similar vandalism can use BrookOnline to report it. Anybody with info about the specific incident can contact Brookline Police at 617-730-2222.
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Comments
Context
Was it put over a Zionist ad? If so how is that antisemitic? Anti-Zionism is not inherently antisemitism.
No
It was sprayed on those large white boards that tell you the name of the station and show T maps.
Sigh.
Zionism is at base simply the belief in the state of Israel as a Jewish homeland. Describing people who hold that belief as "pigs" is to any reasonable person an expression of anti-Jewish hatred. But you knew that.
Judaism =/= Zionism
But you already knew that.
I used to believe that.
The last 7 months of anti-Zionism being used as a fig leaf for overt anti-Semitism has proven otherwise - and proven to many doubters the necessity of Israel as the Jewish state.
I don’t think that being anti
I don’t think that being anti zionist equates with being antisemitic.
The people of the Levant are semetic. Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Israelis.
Zionism is only a movement with one group of people. And It’s not a religious movement it’s a nationalist movement
Using the word "pigs" ...
On signs in a heavily Jewish town, though.
Considering how few Jews keep kosher …
… I think that’s a stretch.
To a person who hates Jews because Jews are, well Jews
It is not a stretch to see a sick glee in puning in the use of the word pigs in this context. Folks who are anti-Jewish are not going to spend much time finessing the particulars of how different Jews are, well, Jews. Just as a person who hates Muslims is probably not going to spend much energy in understanding the varieties of Muslim, or for that matter the varieties of being Catholic, for any folks who still see Catholics as Popists, whether Irish, French or Italian Catholic.
Kosher and Jewish identity do sort of go hand in hand in stereotypical projections of Jewish identity. As in Jew means kosher, kosher means no pigs which means how to insult Jews with one word?
I see your point.
But a lot of bigots are also very ignorant.
Apparently they caught the perpetrator. We shall what her level of intelligence is.
Of course, even if her use of pig was only from the general insult category, it doesn’t excuse her use of it as it is perceived as anti Jewish abuse by many.
No "Semitic" people
The term "Semitic Languages" - from "Shem" (שֵׁם) the son of Noah - was coined by German lingual academic August Ludwig von Schlözer in 1781. The term "Semitic" in general is no longer widely used in academia as it is considered inaccurate to describe the topic of its study. Harvard, for instance, has changed the name of its "Semitic Museum" to "Museum of the Ancient Near East." You will not readily find Lebanese or Syrian people in history or today who identify as "Semitic."
Anti-Semitism is a term which "came by a circuitous route to refer more narrowly to anyone who was hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular" and not all peoples of the Near East or Levant. Anti-Semitism does not refer to bias against Syrians (etc) but against Jews specifically, which can be a bias held by people formerly identified by Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries by the term "Semitic."
P.S.
I think it's insanely uninformed and reductionist to say:
To fully address that, you could write a novel in reply covering 15 or 30 different points in full chapters, ranging from why the Israeli flag looks like it does, the history of the pre-WWII Zionist movement, why alternatives to Judea were not seriously considered, what direction Jews pray towards, what they said at the end of the Passover Haggadah and why, and so on. Here's a starting point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zion#Judaism:_religion_and_Zionism
Ultimately, being Jewish is a superposition of a race, ethnicity, and religion that predates most of our modern conceptions of any of those three concepts. You can convert to Judaism, but you're also born into it. You can be Jewish and not practice Judaism. Most Jews are Zionist, even if they're atheist. Many non-Jews are Zionist for their own reasons.
“ Most Jews are Zionist ”
Huh? Where are you getting that?
Simple:
Every single survey done on the topic in every place in the world at any time shows - at minimum - that Zionism is a majority view among Jews. Often overwhelmingly so.
One example comes from Pew, polling Jewish Americans, in 2020: "Eight-in-ten U.S. Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them."
Caring about Israel is one thing.
Zionism is a political movement.
What are you talking about?
Zionism is a political movement to... have... what? Where do you think Zion is?
It’s possible to care about the welfare of …
… Israelis and an established nation and at the same time regret the colonizing forces that created that nation.
So you think
So you think it's a realistic interpretation of that poll that 80% of American Jews regret the foundation of the modern State of Israel in 1948, and instead think that caring about Israeli people (and wishing they didn't have a country) is an important part of their religion?
How about this November 2023 National Survey Of Jewish Voters by the Jewish Electorate Institute: "82% of Jewish voters feel emotional attachment to Israel"
"Colonizing forces" is also not an accurate description of a dispossessed, genocided diasporic people returning to their ancestral homeland. Someone using 2024 left-wing activist terminology might call it "an indigenous-led land-back revolution."
Science has shown us that….
…. the ancestral “homeland” of all humans is equatorial Africa.
Technically correct, but meaningless
The "out of Africa" hypothesis is "just" a very well-supported scientific theory with some detractors; it's not a conclusive fact. But I think it's almost certainly the historical case!
Having said that, when Native Americans talk about their indigenous status, nobody serious suggests that they should pack up and walk back over the Bering land bridge to Siberia where they came from. Or that they go back to Africa. Because that's not how indigenous humans work.
Suggestion of one modification to the definition of being Jewish
Race is not part of the definition. There is no such thing as Jewish race. But then the word as used to categorize human beings into groups if false. There are no human races.
There is not even a human race. There is humanity; but to use the term human race is a meaningless term.
True, but meaningless
If there are no races of humans, Jews certainly couldn't be one. Neither could white, black, Asian etc people. Racism would be impossible if no races exist, as would racial diversity. In our reality, however, Jews are often treated as a distinct race regardless of their specific backgrounds or personal practices. Which is why I said it's got elements of all those things, but also predates modern definitions of those terms.
Race is a social concept.
Agreed, it is not biological.
Same as dog, cat and other domestic animal breeds.
“" You will not readily find
“" You will not readily find Lebanese or Syrian people in history or today who identify as "Semitic."
Oh? What about Syrian Jews, the Mizrahi, and the Jews of Lebanon? If Semite equals Jewish, as you claim, how do these Jews fit into your definition?
Very straightforward:
Jews identify as Jewish, not "Semitic." Did you read the origin of the term "antisemitic" that I linked?
OMG I found a guy...
...who thinks you can use a series of narrow, decontextualized dictionary definitions to prove that "zionist pigs" is not anti-Jewish language. Incredible.
She also spraypainted Kenmore
Kudos to the Transit Police detectives they arrested her today.
Whether being a Zionist is equal to …
… being a genuine Jew or not is truly one of the most dead-end arguments going.
No one ever changes their mind.
How can anti-Zionist beliefs not be anti-Jewish?
Zionism was about the existence of a Jewish nation. An attack against Zionism is an attack against the existence of a nation that is ostensibly Jewish.
Who attacks Iran because it is also a Persian nation? Who attacks Saudi Arabia because it is a Muslim nation?
Claiming Zionism is somehow bad is to claim that the desire of people with a significant commonality (history, religion) that is ostensibly, even officially Jewish, is bad. If the claim is made then morally the person has to apply the same belief to any other nation that claims identity based on ethnicity, history, religion, etc.
By that logic you are saying …
.. those conservative and orthodox branches of Judaism who opposed Zionism when it emerged and still oppose it are also anti Jewish.
Fine. But they might be offended by that.
Not to mention the many other Jews and Jewish groups religious or secular who opposed and currently oppose Zionism.
If you're talking about the Neturi Karta
They're a few thousand people at most (a few dozen participate in anti Israel rallies) and are actually one of the few Jewish groups to be "excommunicated" from the global Jewish community due to their participation in an Iranian Holocaust denial conference several years ago. No Jews care about if the NK are offended. They're the Westboro Baptist Church of Judaism.
Also, fun fact: they're not anti Zionist. They believe in the importance of the formation of the Jewish state in the land of Israel. They just believe Jews are supposed to wait for the return of the messiah to do so. If he were to come, they'd be the most ardent Zionists in history.
You seem to think you are the spokesperson…
… for all Jews.
And you believe what you want to believe. The world is more complicated that you realize.
Didn't this all start
Didn't this all start because you thought that the outdated German language category "Semitic" made it impossible for people from the Levant to be bigoted against Jews? The world is indeed complicated. You should learn some more about it before making extremely false statements.
No.
But not worth my time trying to explain anything to you.