Porochista Khakpour is an award-winning Iranian-American writer and novelist. No one can consider her a Zionist or a supporter of Israel.
When she recently pointed out Leftist antisemitism, her being a woman of color was no defense from the vitriol she experienced.
Last month she tweeted:
can i ask that we normalize hating on nations rather than people more accurately these days?
“fuck israel” is not ok with me. “fuck the israeli gov” fine. when i went to israel no israeli i met was into the occupation—it is jusf pure anti-semitism to be lazy with this expression. i would murder you if you said “fuck iran”
It was mostly ignored until this week, but then suddenly the “woke” Left discovered her quite reasonable comment and decided to attack her for being against stereotyping and bigotry.
Hey could you not call me antisemitic? I’m jewish and “fuck Israel”
"I went to South Africa in 1985 and all the White people there were really nice to me. I don't know what all the fuss is about."
This is insulting and gross.
Insisting hostility toward Israel is anti-semitism is itself anti-semitism.
She sounds like she is saying somethin' very philosophically sophisticated but all she is says is that she's pro colonialism..
Khakpour energetically defended herself:
And people who are mad at this tweet can absolutely fuck themselves. i love my Israeli & Palestinian brothers and sisters, every part of my heritage that is Jewish and Muslim! so comical this offends some very basic ass people. It’s literally the most grotesque white capitalist propaganda that creates these divisions but you all just don’t want to face you get played all the time! also you hate Iranians which is a whole other story! More than ever Muslims need to stand strong with our Jewish friends and fam. We are very much the same in too many ways. Some of you are flirting with anti-Semitism way too much on this site & I have seem wayyyy too many Jewish friends destroyed by this. It is ugly & dumb af.
And then:
I don’t give a fuck if you are of an oppressed group—i am too. Clearly some of my truth hurt you but i only responded. Still I have never received more violent, bigoted, incredibly disgusting DMs for asking we do not conflate Israelis with the awful Israeli gov.
These people want to use the name of their people to justify hate. They argue no, it’s not the Israeli gov, it’s the people too. So that, my friends, is the anti-Semitism I am talking about. Deciding that whole people are part of a murderous apartheid scheme.
You will absolutely not break me—I am a proud Iranian from people who ages of brutal conquests and rape and war and torture did not take down. The comments you are hurling at me are so fucking gross and disturbing that I wish we had hate laws but hey America calls hate freedom
The “Jewish Voice for Peace” actually defended the antisemitic position of saying that every Israeli (Jew, of course) is responsible for the actions of the government:
Conflating Israelis with their government is not anti-Semitism. You defer to Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish voices rather than wield accusations of anti-Semitism against Palestinians who rightly have vitriol for the people who vote enthusiastically for right-wing leadership.
Which means that by their logic, every member of Jewish Voice for Peace is a Trump supporter who should be spit on when they visit Europe!
Khakpour then demolished JVP and exposed their own white privileged hypocrisy as that group blocked her:
I am not anti-Palestinian, you disgusting toxic bigots. But I guess you enjoyed your nice ceremonial dinner with our evil Iranian anti-Semite old leader Ahmadinejad. You guys are a pretty fun Google, lots of skeletons in this closet under this pretty name!
Unreal, with friends like these who needs enemies!
One of my big issues & what I did not love about this group Jewish Voices For Peace (a hilarious name considering what they were doing) is that there are a ton of white orgs and white people even who benefit from Black and Brown people being angry & terrified all the time.
This is extremely unhealthy & it’s a way for them to play savior while keeping us in our place: the broken. They don’t actually love us. They don’t actually see us.
She then expanded it into a damning indictment of the entire woke Left:
the left has truly become a bunch of sad bloodthirsty cannibals dying to eat their own. so sad to realize the right is often so right about us. it’s a parody.
the funniest part is the most self-righteous fools come in & claim you have been problematic but just with 5 min of research you can see TONS of their very problematic views & associations. anyone, literally anyone, can get a good cancelling if you are up for it
in your heads you think you are so cool for fighting your little fights here but you end up the most miserable, loneliest people on earth. you are addicted to misery. bullying is the sport for the saddest losers, we all learn that in grade school.
So many of you love to harm woc, esp if they are smart and outspoken and fight back. You will do anything to harm us & break us to pieces. It’s sickening. You will work so hard to intentionally misunderstand us & twist us into your nightmares. It is so gross.
Porochista Khakpour gets it exactly right. I disagree strongly with her political opinions but she doesn’t cross the line into bigotry – and that is exactly what nearly all anti-Israel groups and tweeters do. Their reactions to a woman of color not toeing their line shows how their position is based on smug moral superiority, not facts, and their self-perception of being moral paragons is threatened by a non-white woman exposing their hate, eagerness to stereotype and antisemitism.
So they turn on her.