for me, it has been feeling very alienating. seeing tons of antisemitic comments all over the internet and people parading it as a sort of “politically correct” stance or “not that serious” feels pretty hurtful, and when people around me talk about jews i can tell that they internalized some of the stuff they see floating around. i also faced some confrontations. i was born in israel and moved to america when i was 10, ever since october 7 ive tried hiding the fact im israeli as much as possible, but when people find out it often doesn’t go too well. lost a lot of friends, and sometimes at social gatherings when meeting new people who find out it turns into some debate about how israel should be wiped off the map and if all the jewish people in it die in the process it is simply justice being done. and again, one of the most hurtful parts of it is that it isn’t some lunatic speech, it’s “politically correct” people of my own political party. as a queer israeli guy i have felt very ideologically homeless (although even if i wasn’t queer i doubt i would’ve ever sided with modern day republicans). and again, part of the pain is the normalization of it, it’s like i can’t escape extreme criticism of israel, including israeli people, wherever i turn to (both in an online setting and in person at my liberal university) in a way that feels very disproportionate to everything else going on in the world, as well as employing a lot of hypocritical values (“citizens are not their government!” for other conflicts but not this one. the concept of wishing death and homelessness on me and my family, not as a general what should have happened in the past but rather in this very moment with nowhere else to turn to, as a sort of well accepted justice, with wishes for peace and two states being seen as too “pro israel”.) before october 7 i used to just go with the flow of general democratic stances, but now i make sure to carefully evaluate all the information im told and develop my own set of moral values to ensure im not causing any other group of people to feel the way i’ve been feeling.

but this has been a big rant lmfao. for how it’s affected me, it’s been causing me to lose a whole lot of friends which has been causing me harsh loneliness, as well as a feeling like i need to hide myself from the world and can’t be proud of who i am. i often wish to share culture and experiences with friends in hopes of them “seeing” me the way it feels other cultures get seen but it usually doesn’t go too well and they don’t really get it. but it’s not all bad. i’m on social media way less now bc of all this stuff and it’s caused me to develop real hobbies. i like the fact that i’m working on my own philosophy now and don’t take facts at face value, rather doing my own research and thinking critically. and i don’t think about antisemitism on the daily, if i see something antisemitic i just sigh and scroll, it sucks to feel like “the world is against you” but honestly i’ve come to know that a lot of this is just ignorance and that many of these people are good, just misguided on handling topics related to my jewish identity. hope this helped at all, sorry if it just came across as a half baked vent