We have lived 4,000 years, and we will live 4,000 more.

Documenting my personal experience with antisemitism in NYC since October 7th, 2023 through May of 2024.

It goes without saying that this archive may be difficult for some to look at. In that, I caution you. Take care of yourself. Click away. Cry if you need to. Scream if you need to. I know I did when putting this together. I cried openly in cafés, listened to loud music at home, and HaShem knows I cried when some of these things happened to me.

This is an archive of as many of my experiences as I can stand to document. There are a lot of photos of posters and other bullshit I’ve seen. If I can get it to work, I have audio clips and videos. There will be angry posts. If I can manage it, I’ll add some of my text messages here and emails I’ve received. I’ll blur faces and blah blah blah–a right to privacy the Palestinian protesters have not so afforded me. All the media here presented is my own. You’ll see some of my graff–which, if you pal around Williamsburg or Midtown Manhattan you might’ve spotted me prior to this.

On October 7th, I was in Finland. I didn’t even know the war had started until the next day. At this point, most Jews–but especially Israelis–are quite incredulous about wars. We’ve lived war our whole lives. We’ve never not had war. This war didn’t “start,” it was just an attack–at least, that’s what we thought at the time.

Turned out I picked a great time to pick up smoking.

This attack was unlike anything I’d seen since I was born into the Second Intifada. I felt lucky that I was in Finland, where most people likely didn’t care enough about a war so far from them or any identities they held. Further, I had deleted TikTok just a few weeks prior for my own mental health (doomscroll prevention). I was fairly isolated from everything that was happening. Thank God.

That wouldn’t last long.

I came home to the US to many “protests.” Protests in which they shouted “final solution.” In which they said October 7th was only the beginning. In which they said “globalize the intifada.” I couldn’t avoid it. They were at school. They were online. They were on the train. They were screaming at Haredi children on that train–“How are you allowed to live while our children die?” How is a ten-year-old American Jewish child allowed to live. What a wonder.

It wasn’t until the 1st of November when I received a text from someone I consider adoptive family, who told me that some of her family had been murdered. I read the text in pure shock. I don’t think I’ve processed it even still. I sat in my classes in a daze. My family had been murdered. My family had been murdered. A cousin. My family had been murdered. My family had been murdered.

On New Year’s, I drunk cried for the first time. I’d had too much Arak, and I don’t remember how I got here, but I broke down at the loss of my family in my friend’s kitchen. She held me as I cried and said, “You can cry here, but when you get out there, when you go outside,” she looked at me seriously, hands on my shoulders, “you stand tall, you look them in the eyes, and you do not back down. You do not cry. You are strong. You have to be.”

I just couldn’t–and still can’t–comprehend how this so-called Palestinian resistance movement started in the West with people cheering for the brutal murder and rape of Jews. Oh, wait, that reminds me of something! Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised after all. I will never let people forget that that is how the “pro-Palestine” movement started in America. While Hamas paraded the bodies of our dead women around and violated their corpses, this was called “resistance.” I don’t give a fuck what you’re resisting, I’m not fucking cheering for that.

Many of my friends have said they’re sitting on suitcases. Israel, somehow, is safer right now than America. It is in America where we are subject to abuse–Jewish students being stabbed in the fucking eye–not in Israel. In Israel, there has always been the threat of war. We’d rather die there, anyway.

Those months ago, I spent a lot of time “undercover.” I’m Lebanese. I can just say I’m Lebanese. Nothing else. Sometimes I have to hide. Not anymore. I’m sick of hiding. I have to leave my house everyday and be confronted with posters begging for the return of the Israeli kidnapped being defaced with “Free Palestine.” Nope. Not on my watch.

I started doing small acts of resistance–I began wearing my magen David daily. I began saying Kaddish on Shabbat. I became the liaison to Jewish students at the Graduate Center to facilitate alternative egress points during protests. I joined the small, largely Christian (thank you for your solidarity; I know we’ll have beef with each other after all this is over, but I hope we can eventually be friends) counter-protests outside the university. I took surveys, made phone calls, wrote posts, voted with the Graduate Student Council, took photos of the ridiculous signs I saw. As you can see it progressing–I started postering. I started taking signs and stickers down. Then I started doing graffiti, carrying a Sharpie on my dykey carabiner, loaded like a clip–or the literal clip of my knife to my dykey cargo pants. I started going to unnamed political group meetings literally undercover (remember, I’m Lebanese!) to understand the threat to Jews. I started asking “Can I take your picture?” and the naïve kids let me. I hung my Israeli and Jewish symbols all throughout my house.

I’ve been protesting my whole life. In high school, I was mute for a day in protest of my school not allowing us to talk about the 2016 election. I’ve been taking a knee during the national anthem since I was 11. I got in trouble for not saying the pledge starting in middle school. I spray painted the Humana building in Louisville with anarchists during the 99% protests in 2010. I grew up on a government watchlist, my mother getting calls from homeland security for our affiliation with CPUSA. During the 2020 BLM protests, I had broken my leg and was forced to watch from my window as my friend was arrested, and another blinded in one eye by a rubber bullet. I published all the protest tips I had as a the daughter of a protest medic. This is no different. I am no stranger to this threat. But this time? They are out for MY blood, not the blood of those I stand on the frontlines for. I cannot defend Palestinians, genocide or not–I have to save myself first.

I don’t wanna hear shit from people with no dog in this fight (that means you, Macklemore). There are ways to support Palestinian people and not Hamas; donate to the GoFundMe pages of Palestinians who are trying to escape to anywhere but there, and furthermore, avoid donating to large organizations and NGOs, as their aid is frequently stopped on its way into Gaza by both the IDF and Hamas.

To my surprise, my friends are in agreement with me. Some of them are kind of funny–they think they’re pro-Palestine, but I don’t think they understand what the pro-Palestinian protesters are. Here’s a post I wrote about the semantics of these words. But overall, everyone, Israeli, Palestinian, and otherwise say: This war is fucking stupid. Hamas is a terrorist group. Everyone needs to put their fucking guns down. All death is bad death. No one wins here.

So how is it that I’m the bad guy, the evil Jew asking for my people to not be murdered along with the people in Gaza? How is it so evil to say I don’t support a terrorist group, that I want Palestinians to be free from their chains both from Israel and Hamas? How is it evil to not want my family fucking murdered in the name of some war they never asked for? When will the Western Left stop demonizing Jews for just existing? Why is that I’m required to have a nuanced opinion, and that when I’m protesting against the murder of my family, I’m a Zionist (derogatory), and in the wrong? How is a CUNY professor allowed to publicly berate me in front of my peers for questioning her anti-Zionist stance? Let me remind you: on October 7th, Israel was attacked FIRST. How are the hell are we expected to not attack back?

If you call me a Zionist, don’t say it as a slur. Say it as a fact, and I will say it with my fucking chest: I’m a Zionist. I have spent my entire life having to hold contradictions in my heart. I have spent my entire life being taught to be proud while being so fucking afraid. I have Arab family, and I have family with numbers on their arms. I have spent my entire life being shown the dead bodies of my people and listening to the speeches of their murderer in my history class and still showing up proud, proud, proud. I have spent years being called a kike, Jew (derogatory), getting my kippah tossed off my head, spat at on the train. I have had to hold in my heart the constant irritation with Netanyahu, sympathy for the Palestinians, while also wanting our fucking land back. We ceded some of that home to Egypt in the 60s so they’d quit bombing us. I want our fucking land back. You know what I want more, Bibi? I WANT MY FAMILY BACK. But this idiot decided to invade Rafah instead of giving us back our hostages. I am against this warmonger. That doesn’t mean I’m not a Zionist. Zionist is not a bad word. Zionist, to me, means I love my country. You would think Americans, of all people, could understand loving what their country stands for, loving its people, wanting to work to better the government they hate. This, of course, does not apply to Jews. We are not allowed to be complicated. I am a Zionist, and I am proud.

I write this on Shabbat:

I am not fucking afraid of you.

This is my resistance. I’m done. I don’t wanna hear shit from people with no dog in this fight (that means you, Macklemore).

I realize this site is going to be disparaged (on the literal) left, right, and center. I know my name will end up on the academic blacklist of Zionists that the pro-Palestinians have created. And I don’t care anymore. I will not apologize for being Jewish.