Friday, September 02, 2022
A pro-Palestinian YouTuber tried trolling Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Here’s what happened
A video of a self-described comedian approaching Hasidic Jews on the streets of Brooklyn and asking them their thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has gone viral on Orthodox Jewish twitter.
That's not because observant Jews are happy about the video, which has been reshared thousands of times and has had more than 250,000 views on YouTube since it was posted by Abdullah Almasmari, also known as Dulla Mulla, on Aug. 26.
Rather, it's because many have deemed the video — in which Almasmari asks Orthodox passersby to, among other things, "justify Israel's actions toward Palestine" — deeply offensive.
"It's antisemitic to just go up to random US Jews and hold them accountable for Israel's actions," wrote Elad Nehorai, a writer who calls himself ex-Hasidic, after sharing a clip that was first put up on a Twitter profile called Hasidic. "Gross." He shared a clip on Twitter, which led others in the Orthodox online world to take notice.
In the video, Almasmari approaches traditionally garbed men on the streets of Crown Heights and Borough Park on a Friday afternoon, as Shabbat approaches. One patron gives him a rabbinical and thoughtful response to a question about what he thinks about "the conflict," but most outright ignore him or politely tell him to "have a good day."
Rabbi David Bashevkin, a Jewish educator with a notable online presence, told the New York Jewish Week that Amasmari is "doing something very wrong."
"It's right on the foul line of almost overt antisemitism," said Bashevkin, who is director of education for NCSY, the Orthodox youth movement. "Because I have a beard and payos I have to weigh in on Israel and Palestine for your Youtube content? I don't think that's fair."
Attitudes toward Israel in the haredi Orthodox community are more diverse than some outside of the community might suspect. While Modern Orthodox Jews tend to consider themselves Zionists and have strong personal and political ties with the Jewish state, some haredi and Hasidic movements are indifferent to the country's secular government on spiritual grounds or are even actively anti-Zionist.
This is not Almasmari's first targeted prank videos aimed at the Jewish community. In March 2021, Almasmari, who appears to live in Detroit, went to a kosher shop in Michigan and recorded reactions from Jewish people after showing them a Palestinian flag with the words, "Free Palestine." In another video, he goes into a grocery store and douses visibly Orthodox Jews with water from a spray bottle.
Comments:
Post a Comment
