Okay. I initially was just going to scroll past this because it bothered me, but it bothered me so much that I can't stop thinking about it.
This post is insidious. It makes some good points but also has a very clear agenda by leaving out some very important information.
To preface: I am Jewish. I am the child of a Jew who's family (including her) fled the Soviet union to escape oppression, admittedly we aren't practicing religiously but take it seriously culturally. I havent been to synagogue since after my bat mitzvah for a multitude of reasons, and looking back on it I'm glad because my Sunday school stuff taught a LOT of zionist propaganda to grade schoolers.
Yes antisemitism is on the rise, but you're conflating anti zionist with antisemitism and I don't like that. A lot of anti zionists have fully branched over yes, its awful, both my brother and I have felt it somewhat, and yes leftist spaces love to make sweeping generalizations about people (all jews are zionists is an unfortunate thing I've seen before. For the love of whatever you hold dear, no we are not.) Leftists frequently swing so hard in one direction it becomes easy for them to circle around to the other. But that's not reallt what you're talking about here, is it?
I am not a zionist, and trying to conflate anti zionism with antisemitism is textbook propaganda, and I want no part of it.
Jews are not evil for wanting their own state, its not the WHAT, its the HOW. Of COURSE it's a nice idea after everything we've been through, but it should NEVER, CAN never be at the expense of another people, can never be achieved properly by subjecting another group the same atrocities our ancestors have been through.
A lot of jews are very comfortable to sit behind their screens and cry about the "selfish lying Palestinians" when they themselves are only alive because they're LUCKY, majority of modern jews, myself included, are descendants of those who survived the many attempts to wipe us out, why on earth would you ever want to subject another people to that. How could you have already forgotten? How could you possibly believe the news that lies about the people being mass murdered?
People love to say "Never Again" about the holocaust, but they're pretty damn bad at following through. Never again isn't just about jews, Jews were absolutely the main target of the holocaust but even without being Jewish (and again - you didn't have to be a practicing jew, just being born Jewish was a condemnation, sound familiar? Even children were hunted down, famously.) I myself likely would Still have been a target due to my queerness and neurodivergence. Never Again is about genocide as a whole. About finding an "acceptable" target and saying it's okay to kill them. That will never be okay, and its the fact that it's ISRAEL doing this, when the horrors of the holocaust and other atrocities are still more or less in living memory, is hypocritical at best and outright pathetic.
I admittedly have lived a very comfortable life myself thanks to my parents, but I live in a state that was hit hard by the ICE raids last winter (doesn't take a lot of scrolling to figure out where), I have friends who were personally impacted - an uncle, neighbors, a family members student. The people targeted weren't Jewish. It was by the color of their skin. That didn't stop my mom saying she was almost glad my Babushka was dead so she didn't have to witness this after she worked so hard to bring her family to a country where she thought this could never happen again. It would have broke her.
Why is Israel exempt from these standards? Why are the Palestinians somehow singly deserving of this kind of nightmare?
People don't burn statues of Netanyahu because he's Jewish, they burn him because he's a fascist colonizer that justifies the mass killing of civilians and children. The problem has never been the idea of a Jewish state. The problem is that that Jewish state is a colonizer fascist regime.
I really can't blame Palestinians for hating us when so many of them act and sound like you. If you wouldn't defend the white man for killing the native Americans and justifying it with manifest destiny and Christianity and the Bible, why would you defend Israel for doing this under the justification of the Torah. Times change. Society changes. Being Jewish doesn't have to mean following the Torah word for word, it has good teachings, mitzvah is good deeds, bombing civilians is not a good deed. Its an embarrassment to Judaism to justify it with the Torah. Yes Gaza fought back, yes Hamas made things worse, but that does not condemn the full people. To do so is following the same thought process that has Americans killing Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11. The fact Israel can get away with bombing hospitals (a war crime) by claiming there Maybe was Hamas in there is abominable. Regardless of the governing body, majority of Palestinians just want to live their lives same as any other human. They want to go to school and eat good meals and have good company, because they are human, same as you and I.
Never again is about genocide and targeted atrocities, not about jews feelings. Of course it Felt bad when I realized how much propaganda id been fed as a child, my mother feels even worse, she believed so much of it for so long, she doesn't anymore but it disgusts and horrifies her so much she doesn't even want to talk about anything in relation to Israel anymore. She took down the photos she had up of her birthright trip to Israel she had decades ago.
Our bad feelings do not matter. Our bad feelings are nothing compared to what the people of Gaza have been suffering. I don't have a lot of money but I donate to PCRF when I can. The fact this is still happening breaks my heart every day.
I will not be debating on this by the way, I do not want to hear your zionist excuses or explanations. Sure I read into the post more than was there but reading between the lines is pretty clear cut here. I like being Jewish, I do not like Israel, and I will never be a zionist. If there was a way for jews to have their own state without violence, without displacement, then that would be lovely. But as it stands, this cannot last.
