My immediate thought when I see this is “a legitimate pro-Palestinian person didn’t do this. More than likely a right winger trying to stir shit.” It’s happened many times.

But in regards to antisemitism, I would say it’s too close to the line where optics does matter. Everyone who has looked into the evil of Israel understands the underlying intent this has (if it wasn’t a right winger being provocative on purpose). You could interpret it as “and Gaza” or something like “never again? Look at Gaza.” It’s possible a well meaning person did it and meant that. I’d have to know who did it and their previous opinions because yes those are relevant.

It’s also possible someone is spitefully sending a message of “fuck your memorials, you don’t get to have them while Israel does genocide.” Maybe it’s a message against the Holocaust industrial complex or weaponization of the Holocaust by Israel (as Finkelstein has written about).

The problem is, I don’t know who did this, which means I can’t read their opinions on Israel/Palestine and parse out if they’re a rabid antisemite, rabid anti-Palestinian/Muslim, or just a full on dumbass.

So, I can’t really say anything one way or another. I will say even if it’s “just a statue” or whatever, yeah, that’s true. But if anyone thinks that doing this will be a net positive for anyone, I will inform you that you’re very wrong. Not because I’m hand wringing over a statue, I genuinely don’t care. Is it kinda weird? Yeah. But i don’t care about symbols and statues. The idea and memory of Anne Frank as a victim of genocide is what matters, not the statue. But considering the subject, and considering many people DO care a lot, too much, about gravestones, etc… it’s not gonna force some pro Israel psycho to change their mind. It’s just gonna make everyone else go 🤦‍♂️ “Why? Just why?”

And yes optics does matter sometimes, before anyone comes in hot with “lol optics!” Yeah we laugh at the “but what about the optics???” weirdos (the drawn horse porn enjoyer… you know the one). But there is a point between literally disregarding all optics and overreacting to ANYTHING that COULD appear bad to one person. And both of those extremes are bad. Everyone has to have a built in sort of pro/con for any action along with a tolerance for “they were just pissed, don’t take it so seriously.”

It’s complicated, basically, and it’s a difficultly of having disorganized causes (or people might share a cause but disregard pleas from others to not do certain things) because now people are wasting time trying to blame this on “hating the Jews” which has absolutely nothing to do with condemning Israel’s actions. And people who are against genocide have to waste time explaining to the dingdong dipshits on Reddit that even if the person who did this was pro-Palestinian and did this with full intention of saying “I hope we do another holocaust on Jews!” it quite literally didn’t matter. One confused asshole has never mattered and will never matter- but it sure does make a great distraction from the genocide Redditors support!

And that’s ultimately why I just say “whoever did this is dumb as hell and not working towards anything positive for the people in Gaza even if they thought they were.” And then I move on because pro genociders would LOVE to keep me talking about it and trying to wrap the image around my neck like a noose to hang me too. So I just say “nah that’s kinda dumb and unproductive” then that’s it. I don’t know how else to deal with the conversations like this.