Noted Good Wife and zealous Zionist Julianna Margulies recently appeared on “The Back Room with Andy Ostroy,” a podcast in which a man speaks to famous people about stuff, and oh boy did Julianna Marguiles have some stuff to say. Most curious to all of us here at this website, she at one point introduced her right to speak about her disdain for anti-Zionism in LGBTQ+ communities like so: “As someone who plays a lesbian journalist on The Morning Show, I am more offended by it as a lesbian than I am as a Jew.” First of all, no she isn’t. Second of all — why is she speaking on behalf of lesbian Jewish journalists when the option existed and continues to exist for her to not speak at all?
As an actual lesbian Jewish journalist, listening to her share her bigoted ideas on this 50-minute podcast was excruciating. Julianna displays appalling racism and manages to endorse every single illogical and frustrating point made on behalf of these identities in recent months by alleged allies and community members, after opening the dialogue with: “I hate religion by the way, I think it’s fucked up the entire world, so I’m not a religious person.”
An initial attempt to discuss her character on The Morning Show quickly derails into something else altogether, as she recalls wishing she’d advocated for her character to wear a Star of David necklace rather than a cross. (This is a good point, we need more queer Jewish representation on television, but not on Julianna’s neck, thank you.) She then proposes the following storyline for Season Four:
“I would love in season four for Laura Peterson to go to Columbia and teach a class to the LGBTQ filmmakers there, or journalists, and teach a class and give them an earful about Hamas. That’s what I would love.”
It’s difficult to imagine anything worse than The Morning Show’s actual Season Three lesbian storylines, but Margulies dares to dream! She’s very upset at the LGBTQ+ community, who she so valiantly represented on television through her character Laura Peterson (a lady with a big house in Montana who dumps her hot girlfriend for, essentially, not calling the cops). Margulies continues:
“It’s those kids who are spewing this antisemitic hate, that have no idea if they stepped foot in an Islamic country — these people who want us to call them they/them, or whatever they want us to call them, which I have respectfully made a point of doing — it’s those people that will be the first people beheaded and their heads played with like a soccer ball. And that’s who they’re supporting? Terrorists who don’t want women to have their rights? LGBTQ people get executed.”
Kayla has written recently about what’s wrong with that way of thinking, and it’s safe to say any allegedly “respectful” utilization of they/them pronouns has been negated by this contextualization, and then she plows forward with an inaccurate anecdote about a “No Jews Allowed” sign at a screening hosted by a “Black lesbian group” at Columbia (it was actually a QPOC-lead group for queer women and non-binary people, and there were no “No Jews Allowed” signs), in which she shows her ass once again with repulsive, unabashed racism:
“Because I wanna say to them, ‘You f—ing idiots. You don’t exist. You’re even lower than the Jews. A. You’re Black, and B. You’re gay and you’re turning your back against the people who support you?’ Because Jews, they rally around everybody.”
The host and Juliana pontificate extensively about why it is that young people “endorse Hamas.” This is a consistent error throughout Juliana’s discourse — 1) Conflating Jews with Zionists and 2) conflating Palestinians with Hamas.
She expresses disdain for people who are tearing down signs for hostages kidnapped by Hamas, which is a valid action to feel disdain towards. But everything else she says on this podcast is completely bonkers. Her and Andy assert, with unearned confidence, that the U.S. would never stand for Black people to be treated how Jews are being treated right now (this is very very objectively false) and that people on a college campus would be persecuted for using the wrong pronouns but applauded for hating Jews.
This is a full hour of two grown adults with full access to the internet and the library asking each other “why do the kids support Hamas?” and answering it, over and over, with “because they hate Jews.”
Here’s a better question: Why do the kids support the people of Palestine?
Here’s a better answer: Because they hate genocide.
Look, Juliana saw a documentary. She thinks it’s okay for IDF to bomb hospitals because Hamas is operating out of hospitals. (Although, as someone who played a nurse on television, maybe she is qualified to speak on behalf of hospitals.) Here’s the thing: it’s never okay to bomb hospitals. Literally never! It is literally never okay to kill innocent civilians. Nothing that has ever happened to anyone, including everything that has ever happened to us the Jewish people, makes that okay. Despite centuries of oppression and expulsion and extermination, despite the Spanish Inquisition and the Russian Pogroms and the Holocaust and the October 7 attack — literally nothing, absolutely nothing at all, justifies indiscriminately killing of over 15,000 innocent Palestinians and continuing to create endless loops of intergenerational trauma and piling wrongs on wrongs and never getting to a right. It is far more coherent to condemn both Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7 and Israel’s occupation and carpet-bombing of Palestine than it is to condemn the former but not the latter. Never again means never again for anyone.
Susan Sarandon was dropped by UTA last week for saying a sentence in a Free Palestine rally that could’ve been interpreted in a variety of ways because someone decided there was in fact only one objective way to hear it, and that way was “anti-semitic rant.” (UTA represents a lot of great people, but they also represent Megan McCain, a handful of Fox News anchors, and didn’t dump Bill O’Reily until after his big sexual harassment settlement was revealed.)
But on this podcast, Julianna Marguiles says objectively bigoted things about Black people, queer people, Palestinian people and Islamic people. She So far, she’s still on the client list at CAA and was given a chance to issue an apology. If she’s feeling persecuted presently I suspect it’s not because she’s Jewish, but because she is saying hateful, bigoted things on a regular basis. USA Today gave her a whole-ass column last week to share her little ideas. Meanwhile, the United States stands firmly with Israel and in 2022, funnelled $3 billion dollars into Israel’s massively powerful military. Actors and journalists are losing their jobs, and artists are losing their funding and jobs and artistic freedom, for supporting Palestine.
Like Amy Schumer, Margulies takes time to present a very mercenary vision of activism:
“The fact that the entire Black community isn’t standing with us, to me, says that they’re just ig-ig [word fumbles] -—they just don’t know, or they’ve been brainwashed to hate Jews. But when you’ve been marginalized so much as a community, the way I feel we have, isn’t that when you step up?”
There’s so much to unpack here. Her repeated insistence that various groups are only advocating for Palestine because they are brainwashed idiots is offensive as fuck, and in this specific case, dangerously racist. She also doesn’t seem to know that Black Jewish people exist? Finally, as perhaps most clearly articulated by the levels of Tzedakah (the Hebrew term for charitable giving that is integral to the Jewish faith), it is best to give without expecting anything in return, not even a “thank you,” not even anybody even knowing you helped at all. If you’re only giving in hopes of getting something in return, you’re better off not doing giving in the first place.
Which brings me to Margulies’ next bit, in which she wants us all to know that she herself did activism and in fact she was right on top of that instagram black square thing! Also, she threw the first brick at Black Lives Matter:
“I’m the first person to march in Black Lives Matter. When that happened to George Floyd I put a black screen on my instagram, like I ran to support my Black brothers and sisters. When lgbtq+ people are being attacked, I run, I made a commercial for same-sex marriages with my husband in 2012.”
She is right that the Jewish people have a long, storied history in social justice communities — in fact, a great deal of anti-semitism in this country is because of Jewish ties to various civil rights movements. In line with that tradition, Jewish Voice For Peace is one of the primary activist organizations supporting the movement for a free Palestine, a movement that has welcomed Jewish supporters. Jewish queer people are turning out to call for a ceasefire and support a free Palestine, not out of ignorance or a lack of education, but its opposite.
We also don’t have to deny that antisemitism is on the rise or stop advocating for Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza in order to put energy towards Palestinian liberation and fight for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Zionism also benefits anti-semites, including historically the American and European leaders who supported anti-semitic policy, refused Jewish immigrants and either participated in or looked away from the Holocaust. Now they can support Israel instead of actually supporting Jewish people, and conveniently enough this approach also provides them with a political ally in the Middle East.
What’s actually shocking is that anyone who can do basic math or understand the tragedy of death, displacement, torture and starvation can look at what’s been happening in Gaza and rather than use their platform to advocate for a ceasefire and an end to apartheid and occupation, to instead use it, as Jullianna does, to complain about the WGA’s failure to immediately issue a statement condemning Hamas, because statements fix everything I guess. Zionism is not reflective of core Jewish values or traditions, and the virulent, unchecked racism we’ve seen from Zionist Jewish celebrities like Julianna makes that even clearer.
Aligning with Zionism doesn’t make Julianna Margulies more closely aligned with Jewish values, and Margulies using her experience playing a lesbian on television as an entry point to saying the most racist batshit stuff ever is disgraceful.
So. In between all of the social media posts about Margulies Big Podcast Adventure, I saw a reel from nonbinary model/activist Rain Dove that I wanted to share here because I think this story is better than anything else I could say about Julianna Margulies.
After being inundated with DMs from followers telling Rain Dove, who’d been working to funnel money towards various humanitarian causes in the region, that they’d be killed if they set foot in Palestine, Dove assembled a team of locals and others and went to Palestine to distribute cash and physical aid to Gazan Palestinians in need. Dove survived, they felt welcome, they met and worked with loads of other LGBTQ+ people, they were shocked by the horrifying conditions in the region. “This propaganda that LGBTQ+ people must not call for humanitarian aid or rights for Palestinian people simply because of conservative values is unethical and wrong,” wrote Dove upon their return. “Every human — EVERY HUMAN deserves the right to food shelter water physical safety and freedom of movement. And I mean EVERY. So don’t get it twisted.”
Celebs are truly going out sad in 2023. You hate to see it. For two months Its been nothing but insane racist memes, propaganda and misinformation about black people, Muslims and Palestinians(who are not all Muslim BTW) from various people who should know better on their social media accounts. These are people with hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of followers. And trust that I WILL NOT be forgetting. I don’t care if and when they play a LGBTQ character. I’m so good babe. You can keep your representation.
Also Black Jews exist. Black Muslims exist. Regardless, I really wish these people would keep “The Blacks” ™ out of their mouths permanently. We don’t even be bothering anybody for them to be this mad at us collectively about anything. You would think we invented antisemitism the way they have been on our necks lately. Honestly, it was a wrap when Schumer posted that MLK video to try to shame black people into supporting Israel and his daughter very politely took her to task for it. She should be embarrassed. But I doubt any of these actresses will suffer any real consequences for their words. It took a week for this podcast for this to come to anybody’s attention but Margulies has BEEN talking like this since October 7th.
Wow this is wild shit. Thank you so much for covering and for including your nuanced comments that break down her racist rambles.
!!!
Riese I ask you to always look deeper and at the original source—-https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2023/10/27/lionlez-president-comes-under-fire-for-viral-email/
It clearly states in a leaked email the”white Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people,”
In the article several Jewish queers expressed not feeling safe at the events. One quote is “The email] made me feel barred from the space that I previously been a part of, not just from a Zionist perspective, but like to be a Jew in that space.”
A queer Jew said”The email] made me feel barred from the space that I previously been a part of, not just from a Zionist perspective, but like to be a Jew in that space.”
So please be careful about what you report without digging deeper.
As a non religious Jew I was very offended by her words. I imagine I’m not alone. The horror that Hamas has done on Israel is disgusting. This is not to say what Palestine is going through is tragic too. But please report more carefully of the facts.
“The horror that Hamas has done on Israel is disgusting. This is not to say what Palestine is going through is tragic too.”
Who is doing this to Palestine?
You’re simply disgusting for the dismissive language you’re using to refer to Palestinians being carpet bombed in Gaza. Thousands of children are dead. I assume you meant to say “isn’t” instead of “is” but regardless, the diminishing tone of genocide committed by Israel shines through. You clearly don’t view Palestinian death and suffering as equal. I genuinely think you are a sick person. I would recommend you get evaluated by a psychiatrist.
“you’re simply disgusting […] I genuinely think you are a sick person. I would recommend you get evaluated […]”
Moderators???
Thank you for standing up for me
Yes, that comment should be removed. Moderators?
Oh well, in that case, I guess Margulies’ racist rants are entirely justified!
“This is not to say what Palestine is going through is tragic too.”
Hamas, an unsanctioned terrorist group that the majority of Palestinians did not vote for, murdered 1,400 people.
The Israeli government, an official entity supposedly answerable to international law, have since murdered over 11,000 people, including over 4,000 children.
You are describing an utterly horrific, obscene, *deliberate* war crime as though it were a natural disaster for which no one was at fault.
Actually I did read that article on Thursday, when I was doing research for this piece, and I found much of the contents of that email (which i read on twitter) deeply unsettling. But it didn’t change my perspective on Julianna’s hateful bigotry and racism.
I had to provide context for Julianna’s quote so I had to share the anecdote that she had shared about there being “No Jews Allowed” signs up outside a Black lesbian group film screening. This was inaccurate, there were no such signs, and it wasn’t a Black lesbian group specifically. There were flyers that indicated Zionists were “not invited.” I don’t think Julianna is aware of the leaked email or its contents, I’m pretty sure she would’ve mentioned it if so. I think she just read the New York Post headline about a university allowing No Jews Allowed signs to exist on its campus and ran with it. It’s a very specific image, you know? It has very little to do with the people on the ground going through all of this. That incident has become a specific symbol to Zionists, entirely separate from reality.
Julianna is a public figure deliberately seeking a platform for her ideas, and speaking on behalf of identities that I share, so I felt like speaking to it was important and something I feel qualified to do. But I don’t feel like a group of students at Columbia benefit from national press or anybody who isn’t a part of that group or its larger community weighing in or amping up the spotlight on that story. I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t know them, I can’t understand the context, I’m always wary of stories like that about people who didn’t ask for this spotlight and should have space to mess up sometimes. I did feel conflicted about whether or not i should figure out a way to add a reference to that email — i didn’t want to seem like I was cherry-picking facts to bolster my argument, i want to be aware of all the factors here… it just didn’t feel like it was any of my business, beyond correcting the two pieces of information that Julianna had shared. I don’t know if I made the right choice with that or not.
In the end — as others have pointed out, the language you’re using to talk about Israel’s indiscriminate mass murder of Palestinians as “what the Palestinians are going through” does undermine the point you’re making about my dedication to finding the facts.
These Zionists celebrities are pissed off that every other group is finding solidarity with the oppressed than they are the oppressors and they’re lashing out. They’ve realised their words cannot scare us into towing their line, into turning our backs on this injustice.
However,once again, it’s the Black community that’s the easiest target for attack. Once this is all over, I hope to beyond hope that there’s some sort of reevaluatation of some of these people who are allowed to exert power in the public sphere (because yes, being able to write “apology” statements and have it published by big media outlets without any hard hitting commentary from those publicatilns IS a sign of personal power) who have ZERO AUTHORITY to do so. And that their words are replayed to them in every context for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, 15 years later and JM is still pissed that we’d all walk to the ends of the Earth for Kalinda. Now I wonder if her recent actions provide any context to that…
zionist lesbian proud of brave people like Juliana speaking out against the ignorant and hateful like Autostraddle tbqh
surprised at the amount of hateful and wrong coverage on this website
Thank you for the support 🙏🙏🙏🙏
Proud of someone urging for the mass killing of civilians and children and being racist while she’s at it? where is your humanity, this is disturbing. thank you Autostraddle for your coverage and clear stand against genocide, unlike this coward of a commenter
Direct quote from the vile, transphobic Margulies – “kids [who] use pronouns” are “spewing this antisemitic hate”.
Perhaps you’d be more comfortable at After Ellen.
Could it maybe be more along the lines of “disagreeing with my subjective world view” and “uncomfortable for me to consider” rather than “hateful and wrong”?
Hi! Fyi I’ve also been using the moniker “s” to post comments on a lot of these articles.
Just wanted to let you know that by choosing “s” you are linking yourself to a bunch of comments you might or might not agree with (prob goes without saying). If that matters to you, probably the best bet is just to switch to a more unique name moving forward. That is what I am planning to do, since it does matter to me. (Also very likely that tens of other posters have used the same moniker in the past on this forum, obvi.)
I would encourage everyone to read the original email sent out by LionLez. I feel uncomfortable placing too much weight on the words of a literal child (I believed some crazy shit when I was in college), I do think that it provides some useful context for understanding Juliana’s outrage, however poorly worded or narrow-minded it may be. I personally find Juliana’s interview to be about on par with the autostraddle posters and half of the autostraddle articles in its overconfidence in its own “righteous anger.” I am guilty of the same, and I am trying to listen more and learn more and talk less. It’s hard.
Isn’t she 23? I understand giving leeway to young adults, but she’s not a literal child.
Saying you’re offended “as a lesbian” as a cis straight woman and calling LGBT people and black people as an entire community are ignorant and hateful and you want to side with her on this?
She has no business calling herself an ally ever again. Her comments were ahistorical and divorced from all the LEGITIMATE REASONS LGBT and black people have to oppose the Israeli apartheid regime
And I thought I couldn’t be shocked by the news any longer. But ???? fucking hell?!?????
great coverage. thank you.
Thank you for this thorough response, Riese. I hope someone sends it to her.
Mods needed – https://develop.autostraddle.com/julianna-margulies-delivers-hateful-racist-rant-played-a-lesbian-on-tv/#comment-2428822
Blast. Meant to submit this to the A+ chat, not actually comment.
Thank you for protecting me
Mods needed to evaluate this one (I don’t agree with the comment they’re replying to and I don’t like the venom in this) https://develop.autostraddle.com/julianna-margulies-delivers-hateful-racist-rant-played-a-lesbian-on-tv/#comment-2428609
I think she completely lost the plot but we also can’t defend the student groups who have become feral in their antisemitism, we can criticize both. So many young people think white Jews don’t go through discrimination, aren’t othered by society but they are, and these student groups excluding white Jews is revolting.
“So many young people think white Jews don’t go through discrimination… these student groups excluding white Jews is revolting.”
Which young people? Do you have any evidence of that? Which student groups are excluding white Jews? I’ve looked for evidence and I can’t find any. The article linked above explicitly says that *Zionists* were excluded, not Jewish people.
George-Griffin’s other comments were offensive and unacceptable.
But Zionist does not equal Jewish, and objecting to the disgusting behaviour of Israel’s government does not make a person anti-semitic.
Did you… Actually read the email in your exhaustive search for evidence?
“white Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people” -> direct quote from the email. Note that she does not use the word “Zionists” here. She is not criticizing Israel for war crimes (if she were, I would agree with her!). This is antisemitism pure and simple. And I can understand why that would cause grief and outrage for Julianna Marguiles to hear. Obviously, that does not justify Julianna’s poor expression of this outrage.
But she’s a celebrity, not an expert on anything political so… Not sure why we’re giving her opinion so much weight. Had a similar feeling when Kanye went on his antisemitic rant, like… Okay, but he’s literally a RAPPER. Do we need him to also be a dispassionate expert in history and ethics? Aren’t celebrities allowed to be a little crazy? I don’t understand our collective infatuation with them. They’re just people expressing emotional, uninformed opinions. These aren’t our policy-makers. These aren’t people who hold actual power.
@autostraddle Want to try to play a role in stopping the war crime unfolding in Palestine? Report on actual politicians. Don’t go for low-hanging fruit on celebrities that’s just going to cause more outrage and more hate and lead to this collective anger-fest instead of actually SOLVING anything. What is that good for? Getting eyeballs on pages? $$$?
well said. Thank you for addressing her hateful comments
I don’t understand the issue with what she’s saying about religion? Queer person don’t have to be pro-religion just because anti-Arab racism often involves scaremongering about Islam. It’s important to do your research, check yourself to make sure you’re applying consistent standards, and treat people as individuals, but people who do that can still end up against organized religion of all kinds.
Julianna Margulies is behaving awfully, and it’s completely unfair that pro-Palestine speech is being held to a much stricter standard than pro-Israel speech. I don’t have a lot to say about this specifically, but that’s because you’ve summed it up pretty well.
Lizzie George-Griffin is also behaving awfully, although with less of a public platform. It isn’t antisemitic to be pro-Palestine, but it’s antisemitic to express that by saying “white Jewish people are today and always have been the oppressors of all brown people,” “WHEN I SAY THE HOLOCAUST WASN’T SPECIAL, I MEAN THAT,” and “Israelites are the Nazis.”
LionLez as an organization did not do anything, it was just one board member acting without approval from the others, some of whom find her behavior to be inappropriate.
I don’t think it’s necessarily productive to act like aiming at “Zionists” is always the same OR different to aiming at Jews, because nobody can fucking agree on what, exactly, “Zionism” is. Coming from some people, “Zionism” means “this person supports the Israeli government’s violence toward Palestinians.” Coming from other people, “Zionism” means “this person thinks the best outcome is a two-state solution”, “this person is Israeli/has connections to Israel (regardless of their position on the war)”, or “this person doesn’t agree with everything someone is saying about decolonization.” There are also people who ARE using the term for all Jewish people. I’ve seen all of these, so I don’t really know how people are supposed to know what’s being said. I don’t know the solution because it’s completely reasonable to want to ban actual pro-Likud sentiments and the like from your private event without having to sort through every guest individually, but it’s important to remember that not everyone is going to be able to look at that and magically know exactly which kinds of “Zionists” are being talked about.
This commentary frames itself around a false narrative that the Jewish community has ever supported Black or LGBTQ people in their struggles for human rights. There are individuals within the Jewish community who have supported Black struggle. Ironically these are the same type of people presently supporting the Palestinians in Gaza at this moment against the decidedly right wing Zionists- like Marguiles.
It is patently false to assert that Jewish support has ever been particularly ardent or universal and was instrumental to any aspect of Black people’s fight for civil and human rights. The support has come from leftist elements of the Jewish community- not Zionists. To assume such a bigoted and subjective opinion as fact is an egregious error.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2018/06/04/613683819/exploding-myths-about-black-power-jewish-politics
https://www.jta.org/archive/martin-luther-kings-relationship-with-jews-detailed-in-a-new-book
I think the awesome (writer & journalist) Monisha Rajesh said it best; “It takes skills to pack anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and transphobia so deftly into 90 seconds. Julianna Margulies, take a bow.”
This is some sharp journalism I did not expect when I clicked on a Julianna Margulies article.
Very well crafted.
Hi, I think your coverage of Palestine/Israel lacks nuance and is quite alienating to a lot of your Jewish readers (myself included.) To many of us, Zionism means supporting the right to a Jewish homeland within Israel – as one of the indigenous peoples of the land, along with Palestinians – while also supporting peace, human rights and a two-state solution. Zionism is not a monolith, and many of us care deeply about all innocent lives involved in the conflict, and wish for peaceful solutions.
I support a one state solution, for palestinians, the ones that were forced out and palestinians currently on palestinian land.
Justice doesn’t come with peace with an apartheid supremacist imperial army planted by western empires that think they can have a say on foreign land without consulting it’s inhabitants
jews are indigenous to JUDEA the land of Israel-even ashkenazi jews that are white passing
arabs are colonizers to the levant please read history
arab palestinians massacred jews,druze bahai, amazigh, ya ido people….read history please
yazidi people
google yadizi genocide
and yazidi women taken as sexual slaves
please know who and what you support
also KURDISH PEOPLE
I did a search on Yazidi Genocide and it doesn’t mention Palestine/Israel or Palestinians as perpetrators at all. A genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State was carried out in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq in the mid-2010s. The UN also believes this to be true.
Is it possible your searches are tailored to your bias against Palestinians?
I am not sure if you only read one narrative or purposefully being deceptive. I am alarmed at your usage of “arab” as a blanket term and trying to blame Palestinians for every wrong done by someone else in the region. It reads as “They are all the same.”
While Arab does describe a group of people across the Middle East, out of racist/xenophobic Zionist mouths – it becomes other-ing. “Those Arabs” coupled with fill in the blank stereotype. I guess I should be grateful you are not calling them sand n—–s.
PS I can read all 2000+ years of history and possibly find some wrongdoing, but at the end of the day genocide is genocide. Hitler felt justified, but he wasn’t. He was just a genocidal mass murderer.
Attacking a hospital is a war crime. There is absolutely no excuse to attack a hospital. The most vulnerable deserve to receive care in peace. Babies in incubators can’t easily be transported in normal situations, let alone with the checkpoints, bombs, and shootings. People on dialysis need regular care. These are just two examples.
In particular, the Israeli forces bombed housing, shelters, and a few hospitals. Hence injured people who managed to get to the hospital were then faced with another assault.
Palestinians in North Gaza were told to evacuate to the South. The same people who dropped those leaflets also decided to kill some of the people fleeing to the South.
Israeli forces kidnapped Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha along with others as they were attempting to flee the violence. He thought he was safeguarding his family just to be “detained.” Luckily he was famous enough and there was enough uproar to have him released. However the others have not been released.
The focus is rightfully so on Gaza. However, Israeli forces have escalated their murders in the West Bank. In less than 2 months, 200 Palestinians have been killed there.
Thanks for breaking all of this down. Also, what a WILD choice to position herself as a lesbian to start it all off.
“As someone who plays a lesbian journalist…” is one of those sentences that I simply cannot fathom anyone saying with a straight face, yet here we are.
I am incredibly late to this but thank you for this, Riese. Everything about this is fucking bat shit.
Probably no one will see this, but to the Zionists in the comments, I would ask yourself: why do my views align with publications like Autostraddle on other issues except this? As a proud Jew who was raised Zionist, with beloved family members in Israel, confronting Israel’s violence & colonization was deeply uncomfortable. It is not a coincidence that the same people leading the Black Lives Matter and other liberation movements are fighting for Palestinian liberation. For me, unlearning the falsehoods I was taught started with this question to myself.
signed, a self loving anti Zionist Jew.
i think you should educate yourself on the black lives matter organization & why there has been such an effort to remove the phrase from the organization. It has a LONG history of antisemitism that you can find articles about that go back YEARS and not to mention the money laundering shit with the leaders. Black people have workedtoo hard to separate the phrase from the organzation for y’all to suddenly forget that they stole money from countless black people and have a history of antisemitism
i hope y’all realize most of us lesbian jews agree with her. was it her place to say? no. but she’s extremely right about antisemitism in the queer community and this is not a new thing. i don’t think i’ve ever seen y’all mention the countless pride parades that have banned pride flags with the star of david on them. I face constant harassment from other queer people as a lesbian jew. Literally constant. i can’t tell you how many women i’ve slept with then made an antisemitic comment to me in the morning. Focus on weeding out the antisemitism in the queer community before you scream at a jew for pointing it out.
so stop screaming about her speaking for lesbian jews when we’ve been saying this for a LONG time