“בוגד מסריח, אני מקווה שישברו לך את הפרצוף”
[Translation: “Stinking traitor, I hope they break your face.”]
Early last week, I skyped with my dear friend from the US, Andrew, who also has recently started a blog (about quite a different subject: Andrew has been blogging beautifully about his breathtaking journey walking across the entire United States, with the simple- and, of course, supercomplex- goal of listening. He started in Pennsylvania in October, and is now making his way into Arizona. Check out his blog. It is incredible, and I’m not just saying that because he is one of my best friends).
Our conversation meandered to the subject of hateful or angry comments, and Andrew asked me if I had received any.
“No, actually,” I responded. “It’s sort of surprising- I get plenty of hateful responses to pieces I write on the Huffington Post and +972, and of course in person… Maybe folks feel like it’s a step too far to write hateful things on my personal blog?”
As is the way of the world as related to such things, I opened my blog the next day to a (fairly clever, as far as such things go) hate-comment:
“YOu are pathetic, evil garbage. You exist for the sole purpose of trying to promote hate of Israel and hate of Jews.
If Adofl Hitler was alive, he’d want to take you out for lunch. And you’d probably give him a foot massage.”
Over the course of last week, as I posted more and more about Susya, the hate-mail increased. Perhaps my blog link was sent out to the “Vigilant Defenders of The Nation Via Calling Left Wing Dissenters ‘Gay Nazis'” google group.
I am using my power-as-blogger to reject these comments.
Asi, it’s like this: I’m thrilled to argue, to have commentors disagree, discuss these issues heatedly or even angrily, but when comments are hateful, there is no space for debate.
That said, I’d like to share the content of a few of these comments, as an example of what sort of comment I see as not-deserving of a response, and, on a more blog-writing-philosophical level, so that I won’t have to carry these comments alone. Once I post them, maybe then others can take a tiny sliver of their weight, and they will be de-fanged and un-poisoned.
And now, in the words of my new readers (all signing their comments with male first names only):
“You are actually a KAPO” -Naftali
From the same fellow, in Hebrew, in case the message wasn’t clear:
“בוגד מסריח, אני מקווה שישברו לך את הפרצוף”
[Translation: “Stinking traitor, I hope they break your face.”]
And this: “gayyyyy fuking gayy” -Matan
Also from Steve: “Go suck the d*ck of some islamic jihad members, scumbag”
(Huh. As a composite of these pieces, it’d seem that I am a sort of Gay Nazi. Kinky).
I forwarded the first comment, from “Steve,” to Andrew, whose response took the wind out of my stomach in its simple beauty. In its rightness:
“whoa. it must be hard for Steve to be Steve, being hateful must really weigh heavy.”
The Leftern Wall 