I have included the entire text of this article.  It is worth reading the entire text here from Rabbi Aaron Brusso of Bet Torah of Mt.Kisco, New York’s beloved Armondo:

A week before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer told him he was going to a detention facility, Armando, our synagogue’s custodian for two decades, had come in to work on President’s Day to be there for my family as we held a small service to celebrate my son’s upcoming bar mitzvah.

Afterwards, as we ate lunch, Armando stood at a distance smiling. A week later, when I spoke to him in custody, he said through tears, “I have seen your son grow. I wanted to be there for the big celebration. ”My son, by happenstance of birth, is a United States citizen, and simply by reaching the age of 13 he becomes a full citizen of our religious community. Armando has worked and lived in this country more than twice as long as my son has been alive, has two boys of his own, no criminal record, steady employment and a community of hundreds of families who love him.

Yet in an instant, he was taken away.

Like my son, I did absolutely nothing to earn or deserve my citizenship, it was gifted to me at birth because of a decision my great-grandparents made. I didn’t have to work for it, sacrifice for it, travel for it. It was given to me before I knew to dream of it, before I knew what dreams were.

We enjoy tremendous privilege and access simply because we were born in the right place at the right time. Not so for Armando.

We got a call that Armando had been arrested over the weekend and was in the county jail. He was in a restaurant with family when a fight broke out. The police were called and they arrested a number of people, including Armando. Aside from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he was completely exonerated in court.

But during his time in the county jail, ICE was sent a list of inmates. An ICE officer came to the jail to let him know he was going to be brought into detention.

Armando came to this country nearly 30 years ago. In the 20 years he worked in our synagogue, he paid social security, Medicare, state and local taxes. As far as we were concerned he belonged in every way. But others apparently saw that differently.

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A Statue of Yehuda HaLevi (1075-1141)

— The Essential Kabbala - Daniel C Matt

The Palestine Reader

The following is a collection of articles, essays, and books on Palestine. These are not introduction texts to the question of Palestine or the Palestinain-Israeli “conflict”. If you need one read The Palestine-Israel Conflict by Gregory Harms and Todd Fery. Further, this is not an “unbiased” or “neutral” readng list. Everything listed below is counter-hegemonic. I feel absolutely no need to provide anything from the Zionist or Israeli point-of-view when that is the dominant narrative. With that said, I believe this provides a diverse, but in no means comprehensive, overview of the discourse on Palestine. A continuously updated page of this list can be found here.

On Theory

On History

On Being Palestinian

On Zionism

On the Holocaust

On Media

On Al Nakba

On Genocide

On BDS

On Solutions

Unfriendly reminder that OP is a well known antisemitic troll: X X and that anything they post should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.  Particularly noting their heavy use of Pappe, Finkelstein, and Said and their consistent denial of Jewish ethnic identity.  Go ahead and add them to your block lists.

“The Victimhood of the Powerful” I can’t believe someone wrote a fucking antisemitic masters thesis that’s fucking insane

That’s the abstract on that one.  It’s dedicated to the author’s grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.  I don’t have the energy to slog through 100 pages of this.

Oh for fuck's sake.

Ramadan Mubarak to all of my Muslim followers and friends !

In our world that unfortunately is filled with darkness, I pray that you find hope and light in your practice this year. And please know that the Jewish community loves you!

I love the biblical naming system. You got:

Seth, which means “G-d kinda fucked up that whole Cain and Abel thing so he gave me you as a do-over”

Isaac, which means “G-d told me my greatest desire would be granted and I would have a child so I laughed right in his face”

And of course Israel, “I supplexed G-d in a Denny’s parking lot”

There is real antisemitism on both the right and the left. It matters on both the right and the left. Using the other side’s antisemitism as a gotcha not only fails to fight antisemitism, it allows it to expand in your own backyard, unfought and ignored. Demanding that Jews shut up to join up a movement and not fight for our own lives, safety and dignity is an antisemitic and oppressive act in and of itself.  Never forget that antisemitism is an ancient hatred, deeply ingrained in many cultures with a documented body count in the millions.  I’m tired of people arguing over whether Farrakhan’s or Steve Bannon’s antisemitism is worse. Neither is acceptable. Both must be visibly stamped out, and we can’t do it on our own, especially when our “allies” are busy shouting “look over there!” when we tell people to stop demonizing us and promoting our demonizers. Enough is enough.

 A Colombian Jewish journalist was ordered to resign from her anchor post on a daily TV newscast after she refused to cross herself while she was on the air.

Amazing. In these terrifyingly dark times, is more more heart warming to see everyone be kind, helping one another out.

I’m sadly waiting for a particular crowd to say Reform is a heretic movement and cite this.

Then we need to remind them that the Torah says we were aliens and slaves in Mitzraim.

“You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  (Dt. 10:19)

“Looking up, he (Abraham) saw three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground” (Gn. 18:2)

“R. Judah said in the name of Rav’s name: Welcoming guests is greater than welcoming the presence of Shechinah (G-d)….There are six things, the fruit of which humans eat in this world, while the principal remains for them in the world to come: welcoming guests, visiting the sick, meditation in prayer, early attendance for study, rearing one’s children to the study of Torah, and judging one’s neighbor in the scale of merit.”  (BT Shabbat 127a)

LIFE IMITATING ART

There are many valid critiques of Israel, the way Israel was founded, and Zionism itself. But “Jews are European colonizers who are really from Poland and Russia,” isn’t one of them, for four reasons:

- Roughly half of Israeli Jews aren’t even European, at all. They’re Levantine, Persian, Iraqi, Indian, North African, Ethiopian, etc.

- You can’t be a colonizer if your “colony” doesn’t have a mother country.

- Ashkenazim did spend 1000 years in Eastern/Central Europe, but we were never really considered European. In fact, we consistently faced discrimination and violence *because* we were seen as foreigners from the Middle East. By saying we’re “really European” you are foisting on us the identity of our oppressors.

- Ethnic Ashkenazim are not genetically Eastern/Central European. Roughly half of our DNA is from the Levant (the area where Israel and Palestine are) and the other half is from Southern Europe (like, Northern Italy). We have next to no Eastern/Central European admixture.

You can’t assign us an ethnicity just because you don’t like us. You can’t rewrite history or ignore science just because you don’t like us.

Including Jews as “white folks” when specifically talking about things that “white folks” did that Jews specifically did not do (ie, voting for a certain president) is an act of anti-semitism.

Actual human scum!

These people are sick.

«Κόλαση με τόσο φως δεν το περίμενα.» Μίλτος Σαχτούρης

The silence of world is untolerable.

Please join in prayer for the 393,000 people trapped in Syria’s eastern Ghouta region where six days of airstrikes have killed more than 450 people, 99 of them children.

The area is being held by rebels, and there is no access in or out for medical evacuations, aid, food deliveries, etc. Living conditions are being described as “hell on earth.”