I want to add my voice in support of the sentiment (if not the way it was expressed).mèþru wrote: ↑Thu Oct 17, 2024 6:38 pm I am glad I left this site years ago and am ashamed I have never been banned. Not surprised to see it become an antisemitic cesspool, but am surprised to see the degree to which zompist and linguoboy outright support and encourage it - until late 2023 I have always thought them to be wonderful people. Having my old mèþru identity recorded for posterity as the one who started so many of the daily used threads here fills me revulsion, both from the dysphoria of having abandoned that name and associating it with dark times of my life and what this place has become.
Signed a proud Israeli secular Jew. A left-winger, someone nonbinary and disabled who has found every hobby sphere, every political space, every LGBT alliance I used to participate in to champion the attempted genocide of my people. Am Yisrael Chai motherfuckers.
On October 7 last year, I woke up to a nightmare. Men murdered, women raped, people kidnapped. On one of the happiest days of the Jewish calendar. One of the only bright spots was seeing how sympathetic the members of this forum appeared to be. This was one of the few places online which was, or so I thought.
I see now that that was an illusion. Reading back over those initial posts, I see a tiny amount of obligatory sympathy, mixed in with a large dose of pontificating on ‘hmm, let’s try to work out what kind of brilliant four-dimensional chess move this was’. Apparently, wholesale murder and rape is not the kind of thing which can be condemned without taking care to sympathise with the perpetrators.
Israel’s defense, on the other hand? Oh, clearly we can’t have that. People were very much willing to condemn that unequivocally. And that was merely the start: the twisted morality applied to Israel soon began to show its face, here as elsewhere. The victim became the perpetrator, and justified defense became ‘genocide’. And the victims of October 7? How conveniently and how quickly they were forgotten.
I will say it bluntly: this is antisemitism. It is the taking of Israel’s worst as being representative of the entire country, if not the Jewish people. It is the systemic downplaying of any action opposed to Israel, while magnifying Israel’s faults. And it exists in this forum as much as it does everywhere else.
Honestly, I am lucky here. I am in a position to ignore these things. When I stick to conlanging I find the people here nice enough. On the other hand, Ori (who I will not insult by using their deadname) is not in this position. I have remained in contact with them since they left this forum, and they are suffering. Every online community they belonged to has turned against them. Why is this antisemitism tolerated — nay, actively endorsed by people here? I do not understand it.
(It goes without saying that I will not respond to any replies to this post. Feel free to say whatever you want about me and my views; I no longer care.)
