Elia Ayoub (he/him)My profile probably confuses a lot of people because I'm a Lebanon-raised Palestinian-Lebanese quasi-anarchist who learned some Hebrew and did my MA on the linguistic politics of Yiddish and Hebrew. A 🧵
I'm obsessed with Jewish history and consider radical Jewish thinkers as my primary influences (besides James Baldwin, naturally). Levi, Arendt, Goldman, Bookchin, Solotaroff, Walter Benjamin, Bauman, Graeber, Postone, Butler, Shohat and so many more.
Alex is always organizingI still have this poster in my flat and I have a Yiddish shirt that reads "down with the police". I take Doikayt very seriously. My MA thesis basically looked at Yiddish Doikayt/Here-ness versus Hebrew-oriented Zionism as the there-ness (this is a generalization)
One thing I'm proud of is that I predicted in my 2016 thesis that the resurgence of anti-Zionist Jewish politics is going to grow significantly in the coming decade as Israel becomes more fascist, and the gap between (esp) American Jews and Israel will only grow - and, well ...
But I want to emphasize that I do not see these Jewish thinkers as just influences. I've come to identify with Jewish history as the history of my kin. So when I say I'm not over the Holocaust, I mean it. I think about it almost every day. It still makes me angry.
This is why German pro-Israelism pisses me off so much as well. It's not just because it contributes to the suffering of my people, but because cowards piss me off and I find German politics to be the politics of moral cowards. Empty, mediocre, pathetic, deadly.
Their projection of moral superiority means nothing to me. You did the Holocaust and then hid behind Israeli settler colonialism and genocide. Nothing else fucking matters. You failed.
That's also why I don't believe at all that the Germans feel guilt about the Holocaust. Supporting Israel as their staatsräson is the coward's way out. And we pay the price for shitty German politics because apparently Germany just gonna Germany.
This sort of politics is broadly speaking how the West approaches the Holocaust as well. It doesn't deal with history seriously. It skips the critical work of memory entirely. It infantilizes and fetichizes Jews instead of taking seriously the work of critical Jewish thinkers.
Jews were not some passive observers of a horror that befell them. They fought. Zionists today seem particularly obsessed with denying that Jews fought back. They lost because the rest of the world failed to act on time. It's the West and the Soviets that failed the 20th century.
There's a reason Nazis were so worried about the influence of Jewish thinkers in Europe and that's because they were the most consistent voice for revolutionary change Europe had seen. What antisemites saw as 'rootlessness' was actually a desire to be rooted wherever you are.
While so much of Christian Europe was busy obsessing over the 'Jewish question' (which should be called 'we don't know how to deal with the Other because our conception of identity barely moved beyond the toddler stage of philosophy' but that's too long).
And because of the anarchist-y bits in me, I do not take the nation state for granted. This means that I have no problem learning how to make sense of my own Lebanese/Palestinian/Levantine family's history of displacement by reading Benjamin or Levi or Arendt etc.
I don't see them as the 'Other'. They're my kin. As Baldwin put it re the Black experience, I view those who create a negative 'Other' as revealing more of themselves than of the 'Other'. That's how I view so much of the past century of European history.
I'm not convinced with the European project and I don't see it going anywhere good unless they take seriously their Jewish heritage because to this day I don't believe most Europeans really understand what *they* lost with the Holocaust.
Ok that's enough - f- zionism and free palestine
Recent European Jews for #Palestine speech at the EU parliament. These are my kin.
The transcript to the episode on the Holocaust, the Nakba and Reparative Memory I did with Daniel Voskoboynik is available thanks to @antidotezine
https://thefirethesetimes.com/2024/09/20/the-holocaust-the-nakba-and-reparative-memory/
Alex / catileptic@ayoub this was an excellent read (thank you, @antidotezine, for the transcript!). i wonder what it's like for others, but, i need to read these kinds of conversation because, when listening, sometimes the overload or the emotional reaction is so intense that i stop being able to understand. so i am especially grateful to be able to read it in order to be fully present with Elia and Daniel's words
Angela Glansbury 🚽@ayoub
Jewish people made up the vanguard of so many successful movements worldwide and they're still doing it today. Nazi's better run!
Jewish people made up the vanguard of so many successful movements worldwide and they're still doing it today. Nazi's better run!
Dena@ayoub
Amen.
To ALL of that.
Talya (she/her) 🏳️⚧️✡️@Shunra @ayoub
ditto, excellently spoken.
I've said before and I'll say it again: people in Israel nowadays don't actually learn Jewish history in school. they are taught a semi-historical narrative in which the state of Israel was inevitable, and which washes over so much of actual Jewish history, because if people actually learned from the Jewish radicals of days past the Israeli state, especially in its latest fascist form, would not exist. it's such a shame.
ditto, excellently spoken.
I've said before and I'll say it again: people in Israel nowadays don't actually learn Jewish history in school. they are taught a semi-historical narrative in which the state of Israel was inevitable, and which washes over so much of actual Jewish history, because if people actually learned from the Jewish radicals of days past the Israeli state, especially in its latest fascist form, would not exist. it's such a shame.
Lulu 🍉 לולו
katzenberger 🇺🇦I favorited every post in your thread until here.
I'm worried about tying any hope for "fewer genocides" (a/my pathetic, minimal desire) to any awareness of a prior "loss" (or desire to avoid a future one).
Othering cannot be challenged by saying, e.g., "See? Hitler was completely wrong with respect to Jews, just look at the rich, diverse culture we have lost!".
We'd simply force the Othering to acknowledge that it made a mistake, allowing it to present itself as "more mature now".
Immediately after that, it sets its eyes on the next group that looks like a promising target, and challenges us back to "prove" the value of those it now intends to annihilate.
By seemingly acknowledging that any group first needs to prove its "value" to be permitted to survive, we perpetuate the circle.
Bilal Barakat 🍉See also the ludicrous recent (inversely antisemitic) statement by a German politician that may not have received international news coverage where he argued that if they were to set aside a part of Germany for purely Jewish immigration, he's convinced it would become a super-competitive model region. And of course the point was to shit on Germany's actual immigrants.
Marc Trius@ayoub
Thanks for all that
Thanks for all that
Tyler Cohen@ayoub I’m seeing Doikayt re-embraced in the US Jewish left/anti-zionist Jews. On tshirts, jewelry, in speeches and essays. And i am grateful for it. I am here for it (all puns intentional)
Wulfy—Speaker to the machines
kit 🌬️🌦️@ayoub you speak truly. I like to say, parallel to “imagine the other completely”, that we must imagine ourselves complexly. Here I am, Jewish, raised Quaker, with family who are Episcopalian and family who are Muslim. Without doikayt I can’t understand my own existence.
DanI'm essentially atheist. But I have Jewish heratage up to my grandparents generation.
But those were people who didn't make being Jewish their entire identity. Yes my great great grandparents were refuges from the eastern European Pogroms at the turn of the 19/20th century but they assimilated fairy fast into British culture
Ben Rosengart@ayoub This Jew doesn’t see you as ‘Other’ either. Your project, as described in this thread, is necessary and timely.
Nothing shows how poorly Germans have absorbed the lessons of the Holocaust, more than their support of Zionist aggression. They think they can expiate their history of murder and expropriation by enabling Jews to kill Arabs and take their land? This will not bring European Jewry back to life; nothing will; genocide is permanent. We are experiencing the deadly consequences of failure-to-mourn on a societal scale.
Wittgenstein's Poker 🇵🇸 ☮️@ayoub Doi'kayt - the Bundists.
Lorraine Lee@ayoub This thing they failed at, is it something they wanted to succeed at?
Colm Ó Donnchadha@ayoub the fact that Germany goes all in for Israel, but doesn't do anything for Roma, Nama or Herero people, shows they're still deeply racist
Phil M.@ayoub Might be an ignorant question but how important is Germany for the region right now? I got the impression that it is mostly a diplomatic nuisance to more or less everybody but influence is limited. Are disruptions in aid the issue?
@ragn they are Israel’s biggest weapons suppliers in Europe
Brett R@ayoub I have minimal historical awareness and have slowly shaken off the "we need to put the past behind us and heal" attitudes that led to the post U S. Civil War outcomes being poor. Post-WWII Germany seemed like a better model...but apparently not.
Do you recommend any other post-"people hated so much violence happened" situations that showed better results, or particular lessons (good or bad) we can learn from?
The current genocide needs to end, and it'd be nice to head off the next one.
Display Name@ayoub
I never saw that morality in that. They basically said "you are not safe living within our society. It is better for you if you pack up and leave. You'll never be equal or enjoy the same security, safety or acceptance as us if you stay here."
I never saw that morality in that. They basically said "you are not safe living within our society. It is better for you if you pack up and leave. You'll never be equal or enjoy the same security, safety or acceptance as us if you stay here."
Rachamim Farnworth@RachamimOnWheels @ayoub
Absolutely. What's amazing is that they refuse to see that they aren't safer after decades of listening to the people that manipulate that lizard brain.
European racists simply got rid of them. Sent them to a land so they kill each other with another other. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Absolutely. What's amazing is that they refuse to see that they aren't safer after decades of listening to the people that manipulate that lizard brain.
European racists simply got rid of them. Sent them to a land so they kill each other with another other. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
danimo 🏳️🌈@ayoub your comment implies that your expectations used to be higher. why do you have moral expectations of the inventors of the gas chamber?
refraction 
@ayoub Germans suffer from cultural cowardice. this is something that strikes us more and more. and unfortunately this affects us too 😔
Austrians are the same.
Austrians are the same.
Three LLMs in a Trenchcoat@ayoub yyep, can confirm, our politicians are afraid of doing anything at all because whatever they may do, some people (probably no more than three) will be pissed off
Lugnut@ayoub Same. I included this image as part of a linocut series on antifascism. Absolutely crucial to understand the legacy of radical Jewish thought and action in relation to fascism and the experience of the Other in European history.
