FYI - The Mapping Project

[gingicat]

Hi all. A few weeks ago I got an email from Combined Jewish Philanthropies pointing to the Mapping Project. It seems to be advertised by a lot of people who - like me - are against the unequal treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank.

However, it is absolutely indiscriminate. Yes, there are Jewish organizations in Boston that support Israel unquestioningly and do not hold the government accountable. There are plenty of organizations and individuals that do hold the government responsible and work as hard on that as they do on, say, signing petitions to support Indigenous Americans.

The link to the Mapping Project showed up again in a SURJ (Standing Up for Racial Justice) email and I wanted to cry. I wrote back:

I am very sad to see that you are supporting the Mapping Project. There are better ways to get Israel out of Palestine than to lump schoolchildren and unions in with organizations actively working to harm Palestinians.

This list endangers my American Jewish community. We are lucky to be able to pass for White. I get reminded about once a year that we're not.

Please consider ways to help Palestinians without endangering Jews, and do not condone the work of anti-Semites.

Thank you.

Edit: I should also have said "and the people who wrote this think all Jews are White and that it's a White vs Arab thing."

Please, if you are involved in organizations that support Palestinians, keep in mind that Jews are not a monolithic entity and that we're working to combat racism too... and that we encounter microaggressions all of the time. Blanket advertising of an anti-Israel group that also uses anti-Semitic language - and targets day schools - is not a nuanced response.

Thank you for listening.

Comments

[sathari]

Oh, ugh, that is awful and it sucks that you have to deal with that. But thank you for this post and for the information therein!

This blog post by a Jewish blogger suggests that the FBI is/may be actually looking into the people behind the Mapping Project (and also she is ON FIRE about tMP; I don't know where reading it would fall on your personal scale from "cathartic" to "triggering", so consider this a content advisory?), and when I was searching around about them, I saw an article on, of all places, the Daily freaking Caller, conservative bilge that it is, not only denouncing the Mapping Project but indicating that both Senators from MA (and four others Dem lawmakers) had done so as well. (I'm not linking to that one because I refuse to give conservative sites traffic or have them anywhere in my search history if I can avoid it.)

Also, I went over to the SPLC website to see if they had anything on these people, and, not finding anything, I sent them an inquiry asking them to look into tMP for possible inclusion in their list of hate groups. (For anyone who wants it, here's the link to send them an inquiry along those lines: https://www.splcenter.org/contact-us/general). I don't know if this will help, but... here it is.

[lavendertook]

Very good letter. Except it’s best to remember that not all Jews are white and many are POC who mustn’t be erased, and it’s important to make sure others know. POC Jews in Israel, as I think you know, are both on the receiving and enforcing ends of racism, and many are at the forefront of promoting settlements and oppressing Palestinians. But any “we” referring to Jews in the collective that does not include POC Jews is racist, and needs to be avoided. Nuancing is almost always hard work. <3

[sabotabby]

FWIW some younger lefties were asking about it and I explained why it was a terrible idea.

[redsixwing]

Oof. I'm sorry you had to deal with it, and thanks for the heads up.