Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Episode #16 Advocacy, Activism and Algorithms with Accidental Influencer Marnie Perlstein
Should every Jewish person with a social media account be posting in support of Israel and the rise of anti-Jewish racism right now? Should every Jewish person with a social media account be acknowledging Palestinian civilian suffering in equal measure? In this episode, Tami and Dash bring these questions (and more) to "anti-anti-semitsm" advocate and accidental influencer Marnie Perlstein.
Special thanks to Optique Barangaroo for their support:
https://optiquebarangaroo.com.au/
Articles adjacent to the issues discussed:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/14-ways-to-fight-university-antisemitism
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/tji-series/how-has-october-7-2023-changed-your-life
Email your feedback, questions, show ideas etc: ashamed@thejewishindependent.com.au
(You can also email voice memos here).
Subscribe to The Jewish Independent's bi-weekly newsletter: jewishindependent.com.au
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I am ashamed to admit that I recently had a new cleaning lady in my home who I was trialling for the first time I know this is already sounding very privileged white female and when she asked me what school do my children go to, I said oh, just this little one up the road To which she asked is it like a Catholic school? And I said yeah, it's like a Catholic school. Shalom Aleichem is definitely not a Catholic school.
Speaker 2:I'm ashamed to admit that I tuck my Mug and David necklace in under my shirt because it's much easier than figuring out what every person's political or religious beliefs and stances are in every interaction I go into, especially in business.
Speaker 3:Dash Tammy. I have a terrible secret. I order stuff from Amazon. It's cheap, it arrives the next day. Temu has everything my heart could desire at a quarter of the price, but I know it's made in sweatshops. I am a terrible terrible person.
Speaker 4:Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia, the Middle East and the world at large? But a little bit ashamed of your insufficient prerequisite knowledge. A little bit ashamed of your insufficient prerequisite knowledge. I'm Tammy Sussman and in this podcast series I ask journalist, historian and TJI's executive director, dashiell Lawrence, all the ignorant questions that I and maybe you are too embarrassed to ask.
Speaker 5:I'm Dash Lawrence and I'm going to attempt to answer most of Tammy's questions. Sometimes I might have to bring in an expert and sometimes I might have a few questions of my own.
Speaker 4:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 5:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. A shame to admit. Hello Melbourne, hello Sydney, port Macquarie, san Diego and hello Ubud. You're listening to episode 16 of A Shame to Admit. I'm Dash Lawrence from the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 4:And I'm creative freelancer with years of broadcasting experience. You can always count on me for high quality content with excellent production value Will not let you down. Tammy Sussman, so happy to be here, really appreciate this opportunity, dash.
Speaker 5:What's all that about Tammy?
Speaker 4:You know how my audio quality hasn't been great the last few episodes.
Speaker 5:Yes, I'm aware of that.
Speaker 4:And I was racking my brain. I have a friend called Rob I won't mention his surname because he won't want to be associated with me after this confession but I went to his house he's a professional, he works in this space and we tried figuring out what is it. Is it my computer settings, my microphone settings? I was there for about half an hour. He was testing everything out and we were just we'd hit a brick wall. And then I said to him Rob, I dropped my microphone after my interview with Kylie Moore Gilbert because I was really flustered then. That's when I realized perhaps when I dropped the microphone onto the carpet the microphone head spun around the wrong way and so the past few episodes the microphone was actually not in front of my mouth. So I'm really sorry, but like credit to me for figuring it out right. Crucial discovery.
Speaker 5:Totally, totally. It did sound a little bit like you were stuck down. A well, tammy, welcome back up to the ground floor.
Speaker 4:Thank you, and you're not going to put me on a performance improvement plan.
Speaker 5:Not yet. No, we operate on a three strikes and you're our policy in this organization and podcast. So consider that your first warning.
Speaker 4:Thanks, dash. Something else I've discovered or solved since our last episode and I've heard this a lot over the past 11 months over the past 11 months that Israel is losing the social media war. I even recall reading an article back in April this year by Lorenzo Santucci in East West, and the article opens with the text the hashtag stand with Israel was used around 300,000 times, compared to almost 8 million for hashtag free Palestine and I thought like how could this be? So I did a bit of research. The first document I turned to Dash have a guess what it was.
Speaker 4:I'll give you a clue. It's 88 pages long.
Speaker 5:You turn to the JCA report that I gave you on the Australian census.
Speaker 4:You got it. Now. Why did I turn to that document? Because I thought this social media war which the Jews are losing, I feel, in Australia. I thought maybe has to do with demographics. And this is what I found in that 88-page document from the JCA, which is the Jewish Communal Appeal, based in New South Wales. I looked at a graph about the age structure of the Jewish and general population, and here's the accompanying text or explanation. Jews have an older age structure than the general population. This is shown in the population pyramid in figure 12. It shows that in all age groups, age 60 and above, there are proportionally more Jews than in the general population. In other words, the Jewish population has an older age profile than the general population. There were 8,279 more Jews aged 65 to 79 years in 2021 than there were in 2011, and there were 2,589 fewer Jews aged in their 20s and 30s.
Speaker 5:Okay, okay. That made like complete sense in my head this is not breaking news that the Australian Jewish population is an older population. The demographic is definitely above the Australian average in terms of age distribution. Yes, okay, go on each distribution.
Speaker 4:Yes, okay. Go on what. I'm getting at is that I think that because in Australia there are so few Jews proportionally in the age bracket of people who are really on TikTok and Instagram, that perhaps that is one reason why the Jewish community is losing the social media war.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's not just the Jewish community in Australia, it's really around the world. I didn't have access to the statistics you just cited before, but I'm not surprised to hear that the overwhelming number of posts on TikTok, Facebook X, what have you would be more of the pro-Palestinian end rather than the pro-Israeli end. I think there's something in the cultural zeitgeist, if you like, particularly for the under 30s, for the millennials, for the Gen Zs, where they're looking at Israel, looking at the war with Hamas, and are increasingly more likely to be pro-Palestinian in their sentiments and, you know, much more critical of Israel's war. I'm sure it's the same in the United States and I think it's just accelerated since October 7th, Social media being the main place where under 40s are receiving their news, communicating with each other, expressing their views. In some ways, it seems like it's a losing battle, I would say.
Speaker 4:I want to make it clear here that I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't be advocating for the Palestinian civilians, who are suffering enormously. I would just love to see the general Australian population just posting more about Hamas or Iran or jihadism's role in this catastrophe, instead of blaming the Jews, sorry, sorry. Blaming Israel, sorry, blaming the Zionists. So I thought we could solve the problem of antisemitism on Instagram and TikTok by teaching every Jewish boomer how to use TikTok and how to do raw, like two-camera stories about their experiences of antisemitism and why Israel is important to them. Then we could perhaps see some positive change, that's an interesting theory.
Speaker 5:If you were to arm all of the Australian Jewish boomers with TikTok accounts and access to cameras and to cut together reels and to post their views and to fight back on some of the perceived misinformation, would that change public opinion? I'm not sure that it would, but the guest on this week's episode is an interesting case study in an ordinary member of the Australian Jewish community who has decided to do that. Now, she's not a boomer, but she's also not Gen Z or Gen Y, so she's somewhere in between these two generations, and in a short space of time she's managed to gather quite a large following on Instagram.
Speaker 4:Before we introduce this week's guest, a bit of background as to why we chose this person, because this show is called A Shame to Admit. People sometimes send in suggestions for topics for us to cover and other people just choose to tell me things they're ashamed to admit in a Jewish context or just general confessions. We played some of them at the start of this week's ep and a few weeks ago one friend sent me a confessional text relating to, I suppose, the visibility of their Judaism, and I really felt that the content of this text needed to be unpacked on the show with someone who certainly isn't ashamed of their Judaism, who's not tucking away any necklace pendants and has been steadfast in their activism, and that person is.
Speaker 5:Marnie Perlstein, an Australian advocate who fights antisemitism online.
Speaker 4:Marnie's first career was in communications and corporate and consumer PR, but she then pivoted into Jewish education. She became the marketing manager at Mount Scopus College in Melbourne where you are Dash and many of our listeners and then worked with the Board of Jewish Education in Sydney.
Speaker 5:Marnie is a passionate member of Sydney's Jewish community and has been working to connect organisations, individuals and programs with the common goal of fighting anti-Semitism since 2001.
Speaker 4:Post-October 7, Marnie started talking online, accidentally growing from 1,000 personal followers to over 37,000 followers at the time of recording.
Speaker 5:So, without further ado, here's our wide-ranging conversation with this week's guest, Marnie Pearlstein.
Speaker 4:Marnie Pearlstein, thanks for joining us on A Shame to Admit, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5:Thanks for joining us on A Shame to Admit. Thanks for having me. Marnie, you'll be listeners of the podcast who don't currently follow you and haven't been aware of your advocacy since October 7th, so perhaps if you can start by giving us a bit of a sense of who you are, your biography and how it was that you came to be an Israel advocate.
Speaker 6:My story in a nutshell is that as a young kid, I was sent to a non-Jewish school where I was the recipient of anti-Semitism at a really young age, and then I spent two years sort of begging my parents to send me to a Jewish school, which they did, and I felt really at home and really that was the beginning of my advocacy journey, because I felt so comfortable being in a Jewish environment and I wanted to promote that.
Speaker 6:So that's how I ended up ultimately working as the marketing manager at my old school. But in terms of advocacy, in the last few years I was an advocate way before October the 7th. I've been in the advocacy space for about three or four years as I've seen a rise in anti-Semitism. There was a big rise online post the 2021 conflict and there was that whole time with Kanye West, where online anti-Semitism went through the roof. So I'd been working on programs and with organisations behind the scenes for quite a few years. I never wanted to be front-facing. I really thought I'm too old no one wants to hear from someone of my vintage but I was very, very involved in the advocacy space and then, after October 7, I just needed somewhere to vent. The online stuff started from there.
Speaker 4:Marnie, a few weeks ago, a friend texted me the following message. She said I'm ashamed to admit I haven't been posting anything about Israel or antisemitism because I'm worried it will freak out my NJF so that's my non-Jewish friends or ostracize me at work. I feel so weak and as soon as I received that text, I felt so seen, and I think this sentiment is shared by a lot of people in my circles. But then there's you, someone who has been a constant in advocacy, both in real life and online, and that's why I thought you'd be the perfect person to help us unpack this conundrum. So I guess I should start by asking you what advice would you give to that friend and then to all our listeners?
Speaker 6:Well, I want to start by saying that I had nothing to lose by posting online because I figured if my non-Jewish friends went away, that was okay. I didn't have a business where I could have lost clients. I didn't have a huge platform where I could have lost followers.
Speaker 6:I only had 1,000 followers on October 7. So I want to start with that premise, because I had nothing to lose For everyone. That has something to lose. It's a much bigger consideration, and I don't think posting publicly should be for everybody. I don't think people should have to feel that they have to be speaking out on a social media platform publicly. It's okay to not do that. It's okay to try and have a one-on-one conversation with someone that you think will be receptive to that, whether it be a work colleague or a friend, or the person cutting your hair or a person who asked you a question. If you're wearing something like that around your neck, so I would really tell people not to feel guilty. The guilt is not helpful, but what will be helpful is looking for some way to engage in this topic. That's not necessarily online.
Speaker 4:So you can just alleviate that guilt.
Speaker 6:Make the guilt out of it. You know we can all only do our best and I have said I have had a lot of people reach out with the very same question and same sentiment and a lot of them have been Jewish business owners who feel really guilty for not saying anything, and I've advised them not to say anything online because their businesses will be compromised and that's not necessary. That shouldn't have to happen. It shouldn't have to happen just because they want to advocate, but it will happen. So they have to find other ways to advocate. That could be donating to an organisation that promotes advocacy. It could just be having the one-on-one conversation. It could be doing something small in the workplace from a diversity perspective. There are lots of different ways to be a successful advocate, and online is pretty ugly space. It's not something people should be doing unless they're prepared for some serious backlash.
Speaker 4:That all makes sense. On the other hand, I also hear my friends, my Jewish colleagues, saying that they're ashamed to admit they don't post anymore because it feels like they're shouting into an echo chamber and that everyone who follows them feels the same way that they do. So they won't even reach the people who need it most. So, marnie, do you think there's still merit or benefits to posting into an echo chamber?
Speaker 6:For those people, even if they are speaking to the choir, talking to the converted and dealing with an echo chamber. There is so much merit because of the kind of comfort that it brings to know that you're in a community of like-minded people. But I think they would also be surprised at some of the people they might attract without realizing it. And that's been the biggest surprise for me, because I felt sure that I was constantly talking within an echo chamber and there were many times I questioned whether I should be bothering, using my energy to do this, because I thought people are going to see this in a million other places. Why do they need to hear it from me? But the biggest and most rewarding part of what I've been doing is that somehow I have picked up a really strong non-Jewish following and the messages of support are incredible. The messages of allegiance and understanding, support, admiration for Israel and for the Jewish people is really, really special.
Speaker 6:And you might say, well, they're also already converted. But I think everyone has so much to learn and with everything you're learning, well, they're also already converted. But I think everyone has so much to learn and with everything you're learning, even if you're already on the side of defending and appreciating Israel, you're still picking up so much information that you can impart. Should you ever end up having a conversation with a stranger or with someone who could do with a bit of what's the word, I guess like?
Speaker 4:Education, enlightenment.
Speaker 6:Just some education.
Speaker 4:And did you lose your non-Jewish followers? Or are you not keeping checks and balances on that?
Speaker 6:As you know, I'm not very technologically literate so I'm not keeping checks and balances on that. I would say that I mean in my personal life I have not lost any non-Jewish friends, but I also did exist very much in quite a strong Jewish bubble, because the work I've been doing for so many years is so much in the Jewish world. And if I did lose some non-Jewish followers I say bye, I don't care, because I've picked up so many new ones who are fantastic and who are learning every day and open to learning and who are advocating for us, and I think that's much more important than the few that I might've lost.
Speaker 5:I'm not sure if you're aware, marnie, but essentially this form of advocacy grassroots community driven advocacy, community member advocacy has a long history in Australia and it goes back, I think, into the mid-1950s when some of the, you know first efforts to advocate on behalf of Israel were first launched in the wake of the Suez Canal crisis.
Speaker 4:Is that the Hasbara word? Sorry, Dash, you taught me.
Speaker 5:Yes.
Speaker 4:And I'm ashamed to admit, I'd never heard that word until Dash, who is not Jewish, taught me that word. Hasbara is not Jewish, taught me that word. Hezbollah, not Hezbollah Two very different things, very different things.
Speaker 5:Thanks, Tammy. Like I just wondered, were you aware of that long tradition? Were you from a family of Israel advocates? Was this something that was introduced to you from an early age, the idea of speaking up on behalf of Israel? I mean, you gave that story about the antisemitism you experienced, but I'm just wondering if you'd had any exposure to Israel advocacy earlier in your life through your family, Not?
Speaker 6:formal advocacy, but I think, by virtue of being at a Jewish day school, where Israel is so important and it's such a central theme of your education, and I mean maybe it's a debate we shouldn't be getting into, but with the Hasbara work, some people see it as a completely positive thing. It's like PR for Israel, pr for Israel. Some people have seen it historically as a really negative term because a lot of people believe that Israel advocacy has traditionally painted Israel as being really perfect and that there are no flaws. And, of course, every country, every government, every society, everything is flawed. So what I was always aware of at school was that Israel was central to the whole being of the Jewish people. It's our ancestral homeland. Without Israel, we are less safe as Jewish people in the diaspora.
Speaker 6:But certainly at school there was very much a focus on how amazing and perfect Israel is. And what I think is great with Jewish education now and therefore with the next generation of advocates, is that they are really being taught how to think about Israel. They're really taught critical thinking skills and they're taught to ask a lot of questions and they're taught to be very realistic and that's a very different way to how we experienced Israel advocacy. Growing up in a Jewish day school system and I'm proud of how that's evolved. I wasn't involved in a formal sense but my family have always been involved with Jewish charitable organizations. I was very much one of those kids at school that was happy to be like the Ra Ra Mount Scopus Israel person, but it wasn't in a formal sense.
Speaker 4:You were Ruach girl.
Speaker 6:Ruach girl Max.
Speaker 4:It feels like it came from more of a place of Tikkun Olam rather than Hasbara.
Speaker 6:I think maybe it came from a place of me, just through my own experience. You know, as a 10-year-old kid, if you're at school and you're being called a bloody Jew and you're singing in a church choir, but then you're going to your grandparents for Shabbat dinner and they've escaped Poland to leave pre-war Germany and Europe, then there's a real dichotomy there. And when you end up in a place where you can understand your history and you can understand your entire identity, it did for me create a situation where I was really happy to try and pass that feeling on to other people.
Speaker 4:Dash. What's tikkun olam for our non-Jewish listeners?
Speaker 5:Repair the world.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that's great. So many Jewish people don't know these terms or understand these concepts, and they're beautiful concepts actually.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's why I quiz Dash.
Speaker 5:It's interesting, marnie, that you did mention the way that Israel advocacy has changed and the way that the Jewish day school education has helped to create a more realistic understanding and relationship with Israel. And you are from a different generation. You were raised much more in that notion of the perfect utopian Israel, but you've worked in a Jewish day school. In more recent years you've got a more nuanced understanding of the state and its flaws. So I'm just interested in how you have reckoned with the parts of Israel that you're perhaps not proud of and the parts of Israel that, the flaws that you see, and the things that many of us, I'm sure, struggle with and remaining committed to speaking up on behalf of Israel. How do you live with those two feelings, or tensions, if you like?
Speaker 6:I mean, the way I reconcile those two feelings is to say, first and foremost, when you're a tiny little country that's being bombed every day by your neighbours, you have no choice but to defend yourself and you have every right to defend yourself. So I start with that premise and that's what allows me to do the advocacy, because that is absolutely what I believe that no country, no human being, no individual, no society should have to live under the permanent threat of bombing, stabbings, carammings. But then I also acknowledge that every single country in the world, every government that exists, is not a perfect government. I personally don't like that. Israel right now has a very, very far right government. I don't like that at all.
Speaker 6:I really don't like anything about Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and it's okay for me not to respect their policies and their political stand. I don't like some of what's going on with the settler violence. I don't like that. There are not enough ramifications for that. But with all those things put to the side, I still believe that Israel has every right to be living in peace and to defend itself in an attempt to kind of achieve that peace.
Speaker 4:I wonder this is just me projecting would you not put that on your social media, because there's enough other people putting that on their social media?
Speaker 6:The reason I don't put that on my social media is because, during a time of war, where all that we should be focusing on is the safety of the country, it is not helpful for people to use their energy to criticise the current Israeli government. It's just not helpful. It just diverts the attention into a place that is not the most important thing, in my opinion, right now. In my opinion, right now, the most important way to use our energy is to look out for governments in the diaspora and how they're supporting Israel, to advocate for the return of the hostages, to support the population of Israel that has been absolutely destroyed, and after this period is finished, then we can focus on the current government and what should be happening with the current government.
Speaker 5:But I don't want to divert my attention right now Again, thinking about our listeners that don't either follow you on social media or even follow any other Israel advocates, and may not even be aware of this form of Israel advocacy on social media. Give us a little bit of an idea of what that work that you talked about looks like. I'm interested in how you use the platforms that you've got. As Tammy mentioned earlier, you've got a very big Instagram following. Not sure if you're on TikTok or Facebook as well.
Speaker 6:Not TikTok Facebook as well, but much less LinkedIn, but mainly Instagram.
Speaker 5:Yeah, so what's your approach to posting and to advocating on those two platforms?
Speaker 6:In terms of the content, I've sort of got two areas. Initially, my approach was to call out anything that was factually incorrect or that I felt was unjust. So a media report that may have skewed the truth, or an individual who was saying something that was not true, or numbers that were being quoted about the deaths of Palestinians that were not taking into account various factors or that were incorrect. That was the initial focus and in order to do that, it requires a lot of time and a lot of research, because there is so much misinformation out there and that's why there is so much anti-semitism out there, because the media and the public and our institutions are not doing a good enough job of disseminating the truth.
Speaker 6:But as time went on and as I started to feel so emotional about the expanding situation because in my opinion, october 7 was the tragedy and that's where it should have ended that should have been the tragedy, but actually the tragedy has been everything that's unfolded in the 340 days since, because it went from a tragedy on one day to a catastrophe for the Jewish people and really for Western democracy and for the whole world. So as that has sort of played out, and as I've become more tired, more emotional, more sad, more angry, more frustrated. I started sort of writing and using the written word more than reels and videos and it's become much more emotive and it's really tapped into, I think, some kind of emotion that other people are feeling and putting words to something that people feel but haven't necessarily been able to express themselves.
Speaker 4:I have a question related to that. This is always in my WhatsApp groups There'll be someone in someone's workplace or for me, it will be a colleague from my different industries that I work in posting something on their Instagram that's factually incorrect or extremely anti-Zionist kind of borderline accidentally anti-Semitic and I have on occasion taken those screenshots and edited them to make them factually correct and then just not hit send and my friends are saying, you know, do I take this work colleague, who I work closely with, do I take them to the side and say, listen, I've seen some of the things that you've been posting and I just think it's not quite factually correct. What do you suggest?
Speaker 6:It's so personal and it's so dependent upon how you want to exist subsequently in your workplace, because it's going to go one of two ways they're either going to listen and take it in and either believe you or not, and be okay that you've gone out of your way to explain that, or they're going to get offended and be pissed off with you, and then your workplace is not going to be the same again. So I think it's very much about what you're willing to deal with as a consequence of that. I same again. So I think it's very much about what you're willing to deal with as a consequence of that. I mean, obviously I think there's a natural instinct to want to reprogram reprogram for lack of a better term or just to give people factual information. And then there's a part of me that also knows a lot of these people really believe that what they're saying is the truth, and are you going to be able to convince them otherwise?
Speaker 6:and I can't give everyone a definitive answer of what they should do, because it's really personal if people have the courage and the conviction, then go for it this reminded me of what a therapist told me once.
Speaker 4:She was like Tammy, you need to ask yourself the question what can you live with like, like? Can you live with that? Because some of my friends are saying it's eating away at them or you know other people have said well, just unfollow them, mute them on social media so don't see what they post and we're like. But we need to know, I need to know the truth, and I suppose it's asking ourselves that question of what can you live with? Can you live with saying nothing?
Speaker 6:I mean for those who can live with saying nothing. If they are aware of who their enemy is, then maybe that's enough just to know. But if you can't live with saying nothing, then you should say something. But it's a matter of how to say it. So do you pull somebody up one on one and I think it's a very risky strategy because they may feel attacked and they may simply not believe you.
Speaker 6:Do you go to your HR person in your workplace and say I'm Jewish? Could we have a group conversation about some of what I'm seeing on social media, which could also go very badly? You know, that was another thing I wanted to do early on way, way before October 7,. I wanted to go into corporate spaces through a DEI lens and talk to people about Jewish Australians being half a percent of the Australian population but being the recipients of the majority of racial hatred in this country, because we are not perceived as a minority that has problems. We're white presenting. We're perceived in a very particular way.
Speaker 6:But I think one thing that may be helpful if people don't want to go and say sorry, your post was factually incorrect, what they could say instead, and what I find is a very, very strong message is.
Speaker 6:I saw your post and I just want you to understand what we live with as Jews in Australia and the effect that your post has on our community.
Speaker 6:And did you know that our schools have armed guards outside them and when we drop our kids to school, they're greeted in the morning by guns? Did you know that our places of worship have armed guards and on our high holidays we have the federal police come to protect us? Did you know that, even though we only make up half of one percent of our population, that we are the recipients of the majority of hate crime? Before October 7, we received 60 to 70 percent of all hate crime. Before October 7, we received 60 to 70% of all hate crime in this country, and that has increased in a crazy amount since October 7. So we are this tiny, tiny little group of people, but we receive all this hate. And even if you don't want to correct people about Israel, if they can just understand our lived experience in Australia, I think it's a very, very powerful message that they can relate to and that they won't feel attacked by.
Speaker 5:I think that what's really powerful about what you just said, marnie, is the attempt to describe the lived experience of an Australian Jew, and those are all things that if said to someone and that person hopefully had some empathy or some capacity to put themselves in the shoes of another they all factually incorrect statements of the other side, or of the media, where people take sides and they're just so resistant to changing that there's so limited capacity to sit in a space of grey and to rethink and to question their understanding of something. This is not so much a question, marnie, but just a reflection, I guess, of how difficult and, to some degree, how. I'm also wondering the effectiveness of Israel advocacy in an age of polarisation.
Speaker 6:Well, I'm not just an Israel advocate.
Speaker 6:I first and foremost started out as an anti-Semitism advocate and someone who advocates for the civil rights of Jewish people wherever they find themselves to be living. For me, that's in Australia. In the beginning, there was a very big conversation about whether we needed we as in any kind of anti-Semitism advocate needed to bring Israel into the equation. It became obvious in about two seconds that you cannot separate Judaism and Zionism and Judaism and Israel. But strictly speaking, I'm not purely an Israel advocate. I love advocating for Israel, I love Israel, but I think what people need to understand is that everything that's negative about Israel, everything that's said that's negative about Israel, comes back to anti-Semitism, because, at the end of the day, the people who want to destroy Israel want to destroy Israel because they don't like Jewish people and they don't want them to have an ancestral homeland. And that's just the bottom line. It's just all so interconnected In terms of it being difficult when there's no grey and when the world is so binary and so polarised.
Speaker 6:It is difficult, but it's like anything. It's like American politics right now. It's how Australian politics is headed. We are such a generation fed by algorithms and social media that we're not even presented with any grey matter. Even in our traditional media there's nothing grey anymore. It's either one side or the other, and I believe that the only way that we can really create understanding, empathy, truth and grey material is grassroots education and individual conversations, because it's never going to happen on social media. The algorithm will never allow that to happen, so we have to search for other ways.
Speaker 5:And yet it's so interesting because social media is a key tactic for you.
Speaker 6:It is Dash. It has been accidentally, but I said this on Sunday night at an event. The only reason I'm pursuing it? Because I don't enjoy it and I find it a very ugly space, but it has given me a platform to move into other things. So I'll do a lot of events with live audiences or I get to speak to a lot of individuals. I'm working on two programs that have nothing to do with social media, that have grassroots programs in the community ones with non-Jewish people, non-Jewish audiences, ones working with young Jewish students to encourage them to become advocates and give them the sort of motivation and confidence to do that. So I'm working at the moment with an amazing global Holocaust genocide expert on a memorial website for October 7, which is a global initiative. Without the social media profile, I wouldn't have got to do any of these things. So, as much as I don't love it, I'm very grateful for it.
Speaker 4:My next question is about non-Jewish allies and advocates. So I'm ashamed to admit that when I first heard Scott Morrison spoke at a rally in Sydney last year in support of the Jewish community, I cringed a little bit. I'm sorry if he's a friend of yours. So many of my friends who are like age 60 plus were overcome with gratitude and pride. I took my daughter to swimming lessons on the Monday after the event and the grannies were there with their grandchildren. Oh, scott Morrison nice guy, isn't he? Oh, I spoke at the event. I love him and I think, like many people in my younger circles, or maybe the more arty Jewish circles, were like, really, this guy, this is the guy we're getting to be our ally. Like he's not doing us any favours. So do you think that we're being ungrateful brats? Is any support good support?
Speaker 6:Any support's better than no support, that is for sure. I mean, without a voice at least trying to explain why support should be coming our way, we are totally screwed. But obviously Scott Morrison is not the perfect poster child for Israel or against anti-Semitism. He's not going to cut through all demographics, so that's why it's so important that we have more than one.
Speaker 6:But I used to ask this question when Donald Trump was the President of America and he was a real friend of Israel, and I would say to a lot of people you know, show me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are Like this could be worse for Israel to have someone that unhinged being our ally, and I guess you do have to question whether, at that point, I think I could make a comment like that, but at this point and where we're at right now, I think any support is good support.
Speaker 6:I really do, I do, I do, yeah, I do, yeah, I worry, yeah, I don't blame you for worrying, but if we can't, we're not able to pick and choose our allies, we're just not, and we have so few that we have no choice but to accept the ones who are willing to stand up for us.
Speaker 4:One of my more conservative friends was like well, who Tammy? Like who? Who is it? Who do you want? Who could cut through? Yeah, and who?
Speaker 6:would it be? Because you know that's a great question, because who would it be and who should it be? And who could it be? Maybe a Hemsworth? It goes back to Dash's point about people being polarised politically and basically, if you're an American democratic voter, you tend to be quite anti-Israel, and that's why we're not getting the celebrities and we're not getting Hollywood and that's why it's very, very tricky for us to find outspoken advocates and even the people that understand it are too scared to speak out because they're getting cancelled. So at this point, I know it sounds desperate and it sounds awful to say, but I would take it from wherever we can get it.
Speaker 4:So I'll take what I can get. Quote Marnie Pearlstein.
Speaker 6:Oh sorry, it wouldn't be my ideal choice either. Really like, really not. I know, but not so many people lining up to take on the job.
Speaker 4:Here we are, beggars, can't be choosers.
Speaker 5:Probably got time for a couple more questions, tammy. Something I wanted to ask, marnie, that is, anyone who's got a social media account, will completely hear you when you say that it's a pretty vile world, the social media world. But can you, as someone who has a very large following and who is posting this very political content which clearly has a very strong view and agenda, give us some idea of what you get back? I think it's important for people to understand just how toxic it is.
Speaker 6:It is toxic. It is toxic and it was much worse in the beginning. I was getting a lot of very ugly comments and that was probably because of my hashtags and because I was responding so much to them and they were ugly and they were from pro-Palestinian people, anti-israel, anti-zionist. I mean, I've been called all the typical names that you could imagine baby killer, zio, bitch. I won't even like horrible names and that's okay, that does not bother me. The death threats are concerning. That is never a fun thing but honestly, I can handle all of that.
Speaker 6:I then started to change my hashtags so that I am getting less and less of that. I think there are some real sick people out there. I would say the worst thing I've got, worse than death threats. People out there I would say the worst thing I've got worse than death threats are hideous photos from the Holocaust telling me that Hitler didn't finish the job or that Hitler is close to finishing the job. That, to me, is the most offensive and even that I can deal with.
Speaker 6:But what I found the hardest is hate messages from fellow Jewish people when, particularly with American Jewish people, they are so divided politically and if I have posted about something, for example, like Rachel Goldberg and John Pollan speaking at the Democratic National Convention, and I made a comment not to endorse any politician or any party, but just to say how amazing I thought it was that they were given that platform and how incredible I thought it was that there was so much support for the hostages, and the hatred I got from Jewish people who are Republican supporters was so ugly and disappointing, and from fellow content creators and well-known ones, it was vicious and vile.
Speaker 6:That upset me more than any of that other stuff. And then I said something else and ended up getting exactly the same type of hate from all the democratic supporters. So I've now actually made a decision between now and November the 5th, to be very, very careful with what I say about American politics, because you can't win, and one thing I really believe right now is that Jewish people have to be united online because we're on the back foot to a point where we can't afford to have two voices.
Speaker 6:So it's a very ugly space and people are twisted, and I actually think it makes people twisted. I mean, I've even tried to track my own personality changes in the last 11 months and I just don't think it's a healthy place to be.
Speaker 5:What do your family or friends, other people that are close to you, say to you about this? Do they worry about you?
Speaker 6:It's a big question. So I hope my husband and kids will not be listening to this podcast because they would worry and they would worry about themselves and I don't want that. But it is really interesting because I have a 19 year old and a 16 year old son, and my 19 year old son he's a very, very clear, sound, highly moral, gentle human and there are things that I put online that he doesn't like and it's really interesting. Today I posted about the Hamas guy who killed the six hostages last week has been taken out by the IDF, and I said that this is what this conflict has done to me. It's turned me into a person who would never have celebrated the death of an ant, let alone a human. But today I felt happy that this person was wiped off the face of the earth and I said that's what Hamas have done to me.
Speaker 6:They've turned me into a person who will feel some weird sense of joy over the murder of another human being, and my son was really offended by that post and I love that he will call me out on things. It doesn't mean I'll change them. Yeah, I think it's been very challenging and I think it's challenging for my family to all of a sudden have someone in their world who all of a sudden I go out, people know me or I've got my head buried in a phone 24-7 and things have changed very much for my family and I don't think it's always comfortable.
Speaker 4:But in some ways I'm thinking it's good for them to know that their mum's a bad bitch. It's good for them to know but they don't really.
Speaker 6:I mean one son probably is really happy to have a bad bitch of a mum, but the other one not so much. The thing is that they always knew I was an advocate. But yeah, I hope one day they do look back and go.
Speaker 4:She was a bad bitch when they ask you to do things for them, do you say do you know who I am?
Speaker 6:no, I'm like okay.
Speaker 4:Marnie, fucking Pearlstein, fold your own laundry. No, not quite, not yet. We'll be back with the rest of Marnie's interview after this short break.
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Speaker 4:Optique Barangaroo are also the sponsors of today's episode. You'll find their website in our show notes. Click on the link to see their range and book an eye test. So I'm ashamed to admit that sometimes I've gone to post about the hostages or Jewish suffering but I've frozen thinking about the Palestinian death toll. So I have this thought in my mind that I get concerned that people will think that I don't care about Palestinian suffering when I do, and I feel hurt when my non-Jewish colleagues don't post about Jewish suffering because it feels like to me anti-Israel stuff from their end. So with that logic, shouldn't I be making sure that I'm posting about both equally?
Speaker 6:Yes, not necessarily equally, but I think it is important at some point to be posting about both and certainly there's no equality in the sense of my posting about Palestinian death versus Israeli or Jewish issues. But I have definitely posted along the way not very often, but I have definitely made it known in writing on a video on my page that I am not happy about Palestinian suffering and Palestinian death.
Speaker 6:That's why it upsets me today when I feel happy that a terrorist was killed.
Speaker 6:It means that I'm losing some of my humanity, and at the beginning of this conflict my humanity was really intact and I was much more aware of Palestinian suffering, not to say I'm not aware of it now.
Speaker 6:But it's become so hard after 11 months of 24-7 Jewish suffering, not just in Israel but globally, and the lack of response from the non-Jewish world, it's become really hard to not get overwhelmed and overtaken with anger which can make you a little desensitized to global human suffering, and I don't want to be that person and I try really hard not to be that person.
Speaker 6:I think that I've seen on many, many Jewish accounts great empathy for Palestinian suffering and I think that's why so many of the advocates go to great lengths to say to the world this is on Hamas, this is Hamas's fault. They have used innocent Palestinians as human shields, those six hostages who were killed last week. The tunnel, the entry to the tunnel where they were kept, was through a child's bedroom. A few days ago ago the IDF showed that bedroom with paintings all over the walls a child's bedroom and there was a secret entry from the floor of that bedroom into the tunnel where those hostages were kept and murdered, and that is what everybody needs to be talking about is that Hamas are responsible for this whole mess, and I think we need to hold on to the fact that actually, anyone that's not a terrorist is an innocent player in this hideous situation.
Speaker 5:I want to look ahead, and we hope that this war will end sometime soon and that the suffering on both sides will cease and that there will be some solution that can bring about a lasting, sustainable peace, but the reality is that that prospect is not on the horizon at the moment. So, given that I'm just wondering, marnie, what you feel and think about the future and the prospect of continuing to be advocating for the foreseeable future, the way I see it, dash this current conflict.
Speaker 6:Even if it ended tomorrow and every hostage came home, this never ends. Because as long as you have radical Islamic regimes who want to wipe Jews and Western civilization off the map, this does not end. In the same way that there's been so many conflicts over 75 years of Israel's existence and two intifadas and other wars, the minute one stops they are just plotting how to create the next one. And what the world never talks about is the threat, daily threat to Israel every day, from multiple borders, from multiple enemies who are all linked to the same Iranian regime. It doesn't end. It doesn't end until their mindset changes. And if their mindset doesn't change and if their ideology doesn't change, this doesn't change. So that sounds like I feel hopeless. I just think I'm being realistic. I don't think it changes.
Speaker 5:Given that, how do you pace yourself? I'm a marathon runner, Marnie, so for me, I'm always thinking about how to live with and suffer through the pain as long as, and effectively as I can. What's your strategy?
Speaker 6:I've done a very bad job. I haven't had a strategy. I've done a very, very bad job because I kept thinking it's okay, because this will stop soon, like this can't keep going on, it can't keep unfolding. Soon I'll wake up and there'll be nothing to say online and there'll be nothing new to talk about and it will just fizzle out and my life will sort of somehow go somewhat back to normal. And that hasn't happened. So I don't have a good strategy of pacing myself.
Speaker 6:I haven't slept for 11 months. I don't see my friends very much. It's a choice that I'm making. I feel like we're all in a war and I'm a foot soldier in the diaspora who is fighting a war in the same way that anyone in the IDF is fighting a war. And I will sleep when I'm discharged from service, whenever that will be. I don't know when that will be, but it will happen. But again, I just want to say it's a choice. No one's forcing me to do it. It's a compulsion, it's a calling, it's a whatever.
Speaker 6:But what does keep me going is looking at the silver linings. The silver linings are that I've never seen the Jewish world In my 55 years on this planet. I've never seen the Jewish world more united and I've been involved in the Jewish world for a very long time I've never seen it like this, where people are as engaged as united. I've never seen people walk around actually as visibly and proudly Jewish as they have in the last 11 months. I've never met so many incredible, like-minded people, jewish and non-Jewish.
Speaker 6:I have a lot of lifelong new friends that I would never have met without this work, and I believe wholeheartedly that every 80 to 100 years or so in the passage of Jewish history, we face a challenge that's really big, and without such a challenge we would cease to exist, because what those challenges do are cause and force us to reconnect and to engage and to fight, and if not for that, we would not exist, we would have assimilated into oblivion. So while I wouldn't wish this period upon any of us, I know that it's periods like this that keep us going and I guess it's those thoughts that keep me going. That and coffee, wine and chocolate.
Speaker 5:Thanks, Marnie.
Speaker 6:Thanks so much for having me. I really really enjoyed that conversation Like really really interesting questions, and you've really having me. I really really enjoyed that conversation Like really really interesting questions, and you've really made me think about my position on things and you've challenged me a lot. So thanks both of you. It was a really great conversation.
Speaker 5:That's it for episode 16 of A Shame to Admit. With Tammy Sussman and me, dash Lawrence, this is a TJI podcast.
Speaker 4:Today's episode was mixed and edited by the very patient Nick King, with music by Donny Jenks.
Speaker 5:Links to any TJI adjacent articles to the issues discussed in the show are in the show notes.
Speaker 4:If you like the podcast, leave a positive review, tell all of your friends and family, or become a sponsor.
Speaker 5:And you can tell us what you're ashamed to admit via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website or by emailing ashamed at thejewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 4:As always, thanks for your support and look out for us next Tuesday day.