And the irony is that in the very tweet people are quoting, SA *is* talking about people getting exterminated—the Palestinians! Palestinians are the ones who are being exterminated right now, literally, at the hands of Israelis.

If someone says, “I did not feel safe today,” that objectively does not mean, “I got killed” or “I got exterminated.” So that is what I was talking about. This is textbook projection. And there are other examples as well of people misreading and twisting the words of her tweets.

Ok, what you are saying is, by definition, “projecting” your own meaning onto her words. She says “Israelis should not feel safe.” A plain text reading of that is precisely what it says: Israelis should not feel safe. She is talking about feelings, and feelings are not the same thing as bodily harm.

Can you point to where SA said with her actual words that “all Jews” should be “killed” or “exterminated,” which several folks in this thread have accused her of saying?

… When the Star of David is emblazoned on the uniforms of the IDF soldiers who humiliate, torture and murder Palestinians?”

Israel and its allies should stop making these conflations if they want others to make distinctions. But having any expectation of Palestinians, specifically, is absurd.

Louise Adler’s words seem relevant: “Why should Palestinians respect a distinction between Jewishness and Zionism when [Israel] is founded on—and its continued existence justified by—precisely this conflation? …

She has agency in everything she says.

I think victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide are allowed to hate the people that kill their families, and are not responsible for making distinctions among categories that the genocidal state intentionally conflates (in this case, Israelis/Zionists/Jews).

Why would I address this? At no point have I defended her views, and I am not going to indulge your whataboutism that has nothing to do with anything I have said.

I responded initially to say, she posted a video response about all of this on Twitter. If you genuinely want to know what she means, you can listen to her explain. If folks would prefer to project their own meaning onto her tweets, that’s their prerogative, but she answers your questions directly.

To the extent that folks are concerned about stemming the tide of antisemitism, it seems to me that white supremacists — people who actually harbor religious/racial hatred, who have access to institutional power, whose feelings are not borne of state-inflicted trauma — are the real threat.

My position is that Palestinians should not be attacked for their feelings about Israelis and Jews. When Israel steals your home and kills your people while flying the Star of David, I think any animosity you might feel as a result is your prerogative. Who has the right to judge her??

And to be clear, I never said “SA isn’t that bad.” Nor have I defended what SA has said about Israelis/Jews/Zionists. I have pointed out that the “examples” folks are providing here twist and misrepresent the words she put on the page.

If a country claiming to represent all Black folks was actively carrying out a genocide of David Duke’s people, then your analogy would make sense.

A Palestinian doesn’t hold power over Jews the way that Duke/white supremacists hold power over Black people.

I’m not lying. It is a lie to say SA has called for the extermination of Jews. She has not. Her anger is with the Israelis who harm her people and anyone who supports Israeli war crimes.

It’s bad to call for the extermination of Jews. Obviously.

Good thing SA didn’t do that.

Can you say that “apartheid and genocide are bad” without qualification? If so, it should not offend you when someone calls for ending a political entity that is actively doing those things.

You are likening the perpetrators of genocide to the victims of genocide. One side has power. The other does not. Horrifying, indeed.

Palestinians simply do not owe anything to their genociders, or to the people their genociders claim to represent.

Describing that experience of real-time oppression and victimization as “having a marginalized identity” really, really misses the point.

Israel is slaughtering Palestinians and forcing them from their homes literally right now. As you type from the safety of your home or office, Susan’s family and community is being *literally* ethnically cleansed. The trauma is ongoing, occurring in real time.

That’s my point. It’s wild to attack a Palestinian, specifically, for her words/tweets, given the material suffering Palestinians experience at the hands of the self-proclaimed Jewish state. Other people should differentiate. But expecting Palestinians to do so suggests a real loss of perspective.

She said she doesn’t care if people collapse the difference. But why should she? When Israel conflates itself with Jews and Zionists all day long—when it mass murders Palestinian civilians under the banner of the Star of David—it is not and will never be the job of *Palestinians* to differentiate.

She was alluding to the discourse around Israelis feeling unsafe—meaning *uncomfortable*—when they travel abroad and people are protesting Israeli policy. She was rejecting the premise that Israelis have the right to commit a genocide and then never face criticism for it.

I agree, it would be worth policing her if she said all Israelis should be murdered, but she literally didn’t say that.

My apologies, I was confusing you with the tweet I initially responded to up the thread.

She simply did not say that “they” need to be wiped from the earth. She did not call “you” a cancer. She was talking about a colonial apartheid *entity* that—in its present form—has been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing for over 2.5 years. Apartheid South Africa had to “excised” too.

Right, she didn’t say either of the things you suggested she said. I realize that engaging further here is not a good use of our time, but I’ll just say, I think it’s useful to deal with the actual words she wrote.

Where does she say that? Where does she say that Jews and Zionists are the same? Where does she say anything about wiping “us” (people) from the earth? She says none of those things, and it’s curious you feel the need to twist her words.

She absolutely did not say that Israelis all around the world “deserve to be exterminated.” If you have to misrepresent her words to prove your point…

Policing how Susan talks about Israelis is no different from policing how a Holocaust survivor talks about Germans. If you wouldn’t do the latter, why is it okay to do the former? Susan posted an amazing video on Twitter in response to all of this and I would highly recommend that people watch it.

I would also nominate the genocidal sociopath Netanyahu who dragged Trump into this. The two together: Terrifying.