Daniel Sieradski

Recent Activity

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  Daniel commented on the petition | 3 months ago

  Tell Amazon.com To Permanently Ban The Sale Of Whale, Dolphin, and Porpoise Meat

  I am a Prime customer who has spent hundreds of dollars with Amazon in the last year. I am also a Sea Shepherd supporter, and had I known that Amazon was profiting from the sale of whale meat, I would have never given them my business in the first place. I will not make any more purchases from Amazon until they outright ban the sale of illegal cetacean food products through their website.

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  Daniel signed the petition | 3 months ago

  Tell Amazon.com To Permanently Ban The Sale Of Whale, Dolphin, and Porpoise Meat
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  Daniel signed the petition | over 1 year ago

  End JNF complicity in displacing Israel's Negev Bedouin!
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  Daniel signed the petition | almost 2 years ago

  End the destruction of Bedouin villages in Israel
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  Daniel commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Jewish Peace Activism Reemerges in U.S. and Europe

  J Street is a Jewish organization seeking to grow its Jewish membership. I am not concerned about the way that left-wing non-Jews perceive of J Street. I am concerned about the way J Street's right-wing enemies within the Jewish community portray J Street to other Jews, whereas they latch on to content like this article to demonstrate that J Street is somehow in cahoots with or is otherwise providing fooder to forces that seek to deligitimize Israel. In so doing, they are able to damage the credibility of the organization and undermine the very important work that it is doing.

  
  

  Like it or not, the majority of American Jews, including J Street, do not share the belief that Israel is an apartheid state, nor that it is a big evil empire, nor that it bears full culpability for the situation in the Middle East. To suggest that disagreeing with the left-wing orthodoxy that Israel is all of the above somehow makes one an emotional nationalist and tribal loyalist just affirms the increasingly popular view within the progressive Jewish community that left-wing anti-Zionism shares far too many contours with classic antisemitism.

  
  

  To that end, I highly recommend downloading and reading this pamphlet: http://thepast.info.

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  Daniel commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Jewish Peace Activism Reemerges in U.S. and Europe

  Antony, either I failed to explain myself properly or your reading comprehension is subpar.  Either way, your reaction has only further evidenced your own ignorance and bigotries.

  
  

  So, to bring you up to speed: A. I am a member of the J Street NYC steering committee (though I do not speak for J Street here in an official capacity).  B. I voted for Barack Obama.  C.  My work shepherding the online progressive Jewish community over the last decade has been cited by Jewish sociologists and journalists as a significant contributing factor to the American Jewish community's increasing tolerance for internal dissent. D. Try Googling me.

  
  

  While you may feel comfortable mainstreaming the apartheid analogy, to invoke it is, essentially, to pick a fight, whereas the mainstream Jewish community does not regard the analogy as apt. In particular, J Street does not use nor condone the use of the apartheid analogy. Invoking J Street's dissent as a tacit endorsement of your own views creates a false impression that J Street shares your analysis that the Israel occupation is equivalent to apartheid, which it does not. However, by creating that impression, you give fuel to right-wingers who wish to portray J Street as an anti-Israel group that is looking to undermine the existence of the state of Israel.  The same goes for using a picture of Neturei Karta on an article about J Street:  You create the impression that the two are somehow related.  But they're not.  They're on opposite sides of the issue.

  
  

  Your entire second paragraph, which is essentialist in that it invokes numerous stereotypes to presume my thinking, is indicative only of your bigotry towards Jews. And so the alarms continue to go off.

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  Daniel commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Jewish Peace Activism Reemerges in U.S. and Europe

  I think it's very problematic to have a picture of the very fringey and contentious right-wing religious extremist group Neturei Karta shown alongside an article about J Call, which represents center-left mainstream (and predominantly secular) Jews. 

  
  

  Also, J Call is not an organization nor a counterpart to J Street. It's an open letter, no more, no less. 

  
  

  Furthermore, invoking J Street and J Call's criticism of Israel in order to legitimate your own criticism of Israel, which you make a point of saying "is not necessarily anti-Semitic" (which sets off whole nother set of alarms), is extremely problematic when it is followed by the use an apartheid analogy, which neither J Street nor J Call would condone.

  
  

  J Street and the signers of J Call have clearly made an effort to distinguish themselves from the anti-Israel left by being particularly careful with their choice of words.  By inserting your opinion regarding the likeness of the Israeli occupation to the apartheid system in South Africa, you have done a disservice and failed to adequately represent the positions of both.

  
  

  Frankly, the last thing that's going to help bring about a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more online commentators espousing misinformation in loaded language. Especially those who, not ironically, share a name with a man whose lust for Jewish blood precipitated the defensive position in which the Jews have been entrenched for 60 some-odd years. 

  
  

  Shit, if I was named Adolf, I would be going out of my way to avoid picking fights with Jews.