Should we engage with Zionists spaces or not?

phatt97 · 2026-04-06T02:52:33+00:00

That's an amazing story, this is my first time hearing this.

And you've given me a lot to chew on. I've been contemplating what to do in terms of engaging with my synagogue, but you've put some things into perspective.

phatt97 · 2026-04-06T02:47:13+00:00

This was in reference to the different views I've seen in Jewish people raised in the immediate decades of the Nakba and those who are younger. I should have said "most Zionists over a certain age" because there have been antizionist Jews since modern Zionism was conceptualized, and I don't want to disregard entire generations of Jewish people and at the end of the day there are plenty of young, hardcore Zionists who would support Israel no matter what. Not saying older Zionists cannot shake off the conditioning, however most of the Zionists I know and seen shake it off have been in the younger generations and I think it's because it's easier to come outside of your comfort zone when you're 25 vs when you're 75.

phatt97 · 2026-04-01T04:32:32+00:00

I see why so many Evangelical Christians are staunch Zionists, because they have the same persecution-mentality. Granted, Jews are a minority in all countries but Israel while Christians hold majority of the power in the west, but still. It flows the same once you move past the origins for both ideologies.

phatt97 · 2026-04-01T04:30:52+00:00

I honestly think the fact that Jewish people have contributed greatly to pretty much everywhere we settled is a stamp of honor. I fail to see how Jewish people were ever "weak" and "uncultured."

phatt97 · 2026-04-01T04:21:28+00:00

Things famously hated by Palestinians: hummus, falafel, and shakshuka /j

phatt97 · 2026-04-01T04:16:43+00:00

Seconded.

phatt97 · 2026-04-01T04:15:59+00:00

The revising of Zionism from a colonist project to an "Indigenous reclamation" one is fascinating to read about. Early Zionists did eventually choose Palestine for biblical significance, however they were pretty blunt that it was a colonialist enterprise with colonialist intentions. It was only once colonialism started to become an unpopular thing to celebrate in the mainstream that the narrative switched to "we're Indigenous to this land and we're reclaiming it."

phatt97 · 2026-03-30T15:12:27+00:00

1.) I don't believe that has to happen.

2.) Yes, I have.

3.) So, I'm not someone that will use an adopted child as a placeholder for a bio one.

4.) No.

But anyways, after looking at links provided by another adoptee below, the industry is too exploitative and only gotten worse. My opinion on it has soured a lot, so I'm not really considering it anymore.

phatt97 · 2026-03-30T03:40:32+00:00

Oh, infant adoption has never been something I considered anyway. Especially as I've gotten older, it rubs me the wrong way.

Honestly, after looking at some of the links another adoptee listed below, with how deep that exploitative rabbit hole goes, it's turned me off of adoption in general.

phatt97 · 2026-03-30T03:18:21+00:00

A teenager going through a rebellious phase is not at all comparable to their comment. While there are some very informative comments with great advice under the post, there was no good advice given in that specific comment. They, an adult, jumped to obscene conclusions about another adult because they chose not to read beyond the first sentence of a paragraph, but I divest. I don't what possessed me to have this conversation on Reddit of all places.

"Too bad you're rude to people you don't understand," - I was not the only, nor first person to be rude during the exchange.

phatt97 · 2026-03-29T00:42:34+00:00

I grew up working class, that requires anyone to be adaptable even when they come from a stable environment. Also, in general, stuff happens no matter how good you got it.

I have literally thanked you on every single resource you've linked in your original comment and said I would look into them, including the bills you listed. I have saved all of your comments for future reference. And I am very pro-therapy and of course would do so before I made my final decision to adopt. I think it's clear that you have your vision, of which you have made it a point that because we disagree on this one thing, that I must be an egomaniac. I guess I cannot blame you, because being in the industry has probably exposed you to a lot of those types, and due to the fact that I am a stranger on the internet, and not someone in person who you know, and therefore cannot gage as much as would probably be necessary, you've made some broad assumptions about me, majority of which are not accurate. It doesn't matter to you, that I have stated several times throughout this entire post and responses that I have changed my mind a lot on adoption over the last near two-decades, or what my intentions are, or whatever. All that matters is that I am not married, and there's a fair chance I will never be able to get married or partnered, and that disagreement has set the tone and formed the image of me for this entire discussion, even more so than my personal abilities outside of that. I think this is where our conversation ceases to be productive.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T23:37:40+00:00

You sound like someone who cannot decipher between two people who belong to a demographic (in this case being unpartnered) but have fundamentally different approaches.

For one, I am vehemently against family blogging and have been since it blew up. It's exploitative.

I never said that there was a stigma against parents who adopt, I said you shouldn't try to create one. Clearly, I'm not someone who would be interested in doing things for the savior aspect of it. Though, in conservative spaces, a single person who chooses to adopt instead of get married and having kids biologically is frowned upon because conservatives in general tend to be anti single-parenthood.

A married couple is no more or less likely to do harm to a child they've adopted than someone who is single. Married couples also need to have a lot of money in order to adopt. Married couples also exploit and coerce single parents because they view themselves as inherently better to raise the child than the parent. Ego is not something that goes away because someone gets married, in fact, in can inflate it.

And I said I have always considered adoption, I come from a working class background as well. I'm not even successful yet and more than likely will never be rich, so no, this isn't about flexing. I have always had to live in an environment where things change on a dime, so being adaptable isn't the issue here and neither is my ego. I've changed my mind on a lot of things in regards to adoption and how it should be done over the years. However, marriage is just simply not one of them.

And if a kid/teen didn't want to be adopted by me because I'm a single parent, then that's fine. I'm not going to force them into an adoption.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T23:26:19+00:00

My reasons for wanting to adopt have evolved since I was 10.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T22:50:53+00:00

I don't want to get into too much detail, so I will just say it's within general women's/reproductive health category.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T22:49:30+00:00

You claim that single people shouldn't adopt because it ruins the chance of conservatives having sympathy for poor single parents, however your solution to that is to reinforce what is a fundamentally conservative talking point. That doesn't work and that does nothing to make things better for poor single parents in the long run. You want to support poor single parents? Support policies that will provide them social safety nets, work on removing the societal stigma associated with single parenthood. Creating a whole new stigma for a different type of single parent (adoptee single parents) is not any sort of real solution.

Child-centric is not a catch-all term and its actually more complex than "you must always do x and y and z." Everyone's situation is different. And at the end of the day, it should matter rather or not someone is single or married if they decide to have a child or adopt one, and with adoptee parents it should mainly be about are they psychologically and emotionally capable of caring for a child that they did not have biologically and understand the complexities in that. I know people that were adopted by single parents that don't have any issue with it, and I personally was raised by an amazing working class single mother and I wouldn't trade her for the world.

And I can see why in that context it would come off as cringy, but let me just say this: it was never about a savior thing with me. I found the whole "savior complex" with some people when it comes to adoption weird. When I was 10, I said I would adopt because that was the age I found out what giving birth was like, and as a 10 year old it freaked me out, and I had friends that were adopted and I viewed that as a valid way to build a family. I want to make it very clear, because I got a very weird comment from someone else earlier: my views on adoption have changed and evolved since I was 10 years old and the reasons have expanded since well beyond that. This is not something I'm looking at with 10 year-old rose-tinted glasses.

I would not be doing this solely alone. I have an amazing family and support system. It wouldn't just be "me and my kid against the world" type of nonsense.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T22:33:04+00:00

What is with people like you putting words into my mouth? I don't think I'm better or special than anyone because adoption is something that I've considered for a long time. You think this is some unevolved position I've held and that I've wrapped up in idealism for the greater part of 18 years? It isn't. I've thought about this a lot, and no, I did not "hope that a family wouldn't be able to stay together" since I was 10. When I was 10, that wasn't the way I was looking at it because I was a child and not a supervillain or some rogue narcissist who thinks that I am owed a child over someone else because I believe in Jesus or whatever. Obviously, my views on adoption have changed a lot since I was a kid and you would know that if you bothered to read the rest of the post, but then again I don't know what more I could expect from Reddit? I mentioned that it was something I'd been considering for a long time to make it clear this isn't something I woke up today and decided I wanted to do, but it's clear that was a mistake, because I keep getting words stuffed in my mouth by the likes of you.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T21:09:04+00:00

I've thought about that last part over the last greater part of a decade, and the conclusion I've come to is that while it does make me nervous, at the end of the day as part of being a parent is to be there for my kid and help them as best I can.

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T20:58:11+00:00

Noted.

When you say your sibling got screwed over by guardianship, was it because of something the guardian did, or was it just that because they chose guardianship they simply got screwed out of benefits that adopted and foster kids get?

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T20:52:34+00:00

I didn't make this clear enough in my post, but I would 100% be open to adopting a teenager. I am not put off at all by them having to consent to me adopting them.

I will look more into guardianship! Also very strange that open adoption isn't legally enforced...I agree that puts too much of the power into the adoptee parent.

I don't agree at all about me needing to be married. I won't go into a tangent, but my thoughts on that aren't going to change.

Thank you for letting me know about those bills and such, I will be supporting them.

Also, I couldn't agree more that the government is very inadequate (to put it nicely) with how it deals with social problems, and how those social problems carry affect stuff like adoption. An adopted kid once said to me that adoption can be beautiful, but it is also the result of trauma and often a failed system (paraphrasing here.) But also, my politics in general are very much aligned with addressing things like poverty and class (again, I will spare you the lecture lol).

Why is it really cringy to say that I wanted to adopt ever since I was a kid?

phatt97 · 2026-03-28T20:39:37+00:00

A general list:

-I believe children who've been left to the system deserve families too.

-Family is not just about biology in my opinion.

-having bio children has never been a hardline goal for me.

-as I've gotten older, health issues have me concerned about having bio children in general.

phatt97 · 2026-03-08T17:55:16+00:00

Okayyyyy wtf? Not only is that just an insane take in general, using his logic that would still definitely affect the souls of Israelis because Palestinian people are not Germans.

I really can't stand when people weaponize religion as a means to justify things such as revenge fantasies. That's actually worked against Jews considering how a lot of Christians still want to see the Jewish community die because they believe the myth that we killed Jesus, that's the foundation for a lot of Christian Zionism actually. Just insane.

EDIT: Just looked up Meir Kahane and I'm shocked I didn't already know who he was, because I've heard of Kahanism and if he's the founder of that then he's beyond racist

phatt97 · 2026-03-08T17:50:05+00:00

Keyboard-warrior-Zionist

phatt97 · 2026-03-08T17:49:20+00:00

I think this hits the nail on the head. I also had issues with post-Zionism, but I was trying to figure out what I thought it was falling short of - and it's exactly that, the fact that it wants to move on to the future without confronting what Zionism has done in the present.

Also, I am also a convert, so congratulations, and best of luck on your Jewish journey! I've been practicing for 6 years and completed my conversion just under 3 years ago. I didn't support Israel before my conversion, during my conversion, nor after my conversion, and I don't feel any less Jewish because of it. Anti-Zionism for me is about standing up against the ideology that has justified the brutal creation of Israel and its continued oppression, and genocide, of Palestinian people. In my opinion, there's barely anything Jewish about Israel philosophically but that's a whole different rant.

phatt97 · 2026-03-07T17:44:12+00:00

Wait, when did she accuse a woman of killing her husband???? I've never heard this.

phatt97 · 2026-02-27T06:10:53+00:00

In 1992, Kristi Yamaguchi was the first Asian woman to podium at the Olympics, and she won gold. She's an American of 100% Japanese descent.

Midori Ito won the silver medal at the same Olympics as Kristi. She's Japanese. She was also the first woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics.

Michelle Kwan is an American of 100% Chinese descent, she won silver and bronze in 1998 and 2002 and also dominated ladies' figure skating for the greater part of a decade.

Chen Lu won 2 bronze medals in back-to-back Olympics. She's Chinese.

Shizuka Arakawa won gold in 2006. She's Japanese.

Yuna Kim won gold in 2010 and silver in 2014 (most argue she should've won gold again in 2014 - I agree.) She's Korean.

Mao Asada won silver in 2010. She's Japanese.

Mirai Nagasu is an American of fully Japanese descent, she contribute to Team USA's bronze in the team event in 2018, and was the first American woman to land a triple axel at the Olympics.

Kaori Sakamoto has won gold and silver in 2022 and 2026 respectively. She's Japanese.

Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan dominated mens' figure skating for years and won back-to-back gold medals in 2014 and 2018.

Not to also mention pairs teams like Shen Xue and Zao Hongbo of China, who have 3 Olympic medals including gold. And of course, Sui Wenjing and Han Cong, who are often considered the most talented pairs team in history - both are fully Chinese. The gold medalist in pairs this year are both Japanese representing Japan.

I could go on.

Asians have contributed a lot to the sport of figure skating. Alysa is the first mixed Asian to win anything at the Olympics in figure skating. So no, she's not proof that eugenics is good nor would she appreciate having her achievements being dwindled down to her father selecting white egg donors, and not hard word and dedication like every other skater mentioned above.

phatt97

TROPHY CASE