'A Critical Mass of U.S. Jews Is Now Disgusted With Israel'

There was a report I saw yesterday of a toddler, returned to his mother, who had been captured with his father in Gaza by the IDF. The little boy had cigarette burns on his body, and had had his nails removed. His father had “confessed” to being a member of Hamas. This isn’t about religion. Isn’t about anti-semitism. Isn’t about anything other than a country that has been co-opted by the darkest parts of the human heart. I fear America is starting down the same path - to that extent we need to see the Israeli government for what it is - corrupt, evil, “might-makes-right” and recognize that is the path to worst of humanity.

I completely agree with you as a Jew on my dad's side and a German Christian on my mom's side. I always tell people that I am a Jew and not a Zionist. I'm tired of the actions of Israel being what people think of when they think of modern Jews.

We must always stand up, with our very lives if necessary, for minorities and the vulnerable everywhere.

Very concise and articulate, thank you.

Yes absolutely, what a great way of putting it. Israel is like an adult that was traumatized as a child and now reacts to every perceived threat with aggression and violence. Only now they're an adult and they are capable of wielding deadly violence indiscriminantly. It breaks my heart because I grew up around elderly Holocaust survivors. People learned different things from that tragedy and I never realized my view of it wasn't the prevailing one. When people said "Never Again" I always thought that meant "never again should such cruelty and inhumanity be done by human beings against other human beings." What I was horrified to find out was how many people turned out to actually believe "Never Again" just means "Never again.. to US." It's perfectly okay somehow if it's some other group of humans? It's so disturbing to discover that about people you love. Still, I understand I don't have their lived experiences. I feel like what some people learned from the war was that Jews can't trust non-Jews. They stopped believing we could all live together in tolerance and harmony when their neighbours turned on them. None of this excuses what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people and the Iranian people at all. They don't care about them as human beings at all. It is like their souls are dead. How can you not see the common humanity in another person, even a bad one? They truly believe that what was done to their ancestors was done because they didn't have a land of their own and that having Israel means there can never be another Holocaust. I think it is the opposite. Israel's actions have put the entire Jewish population of the world in danger. If there is a nuclear attack I think I know where it would take place. And half the Jewish population of the world lives there now which is very scary. They are making it more likely, not less that a huge group of Jews will be wiped out and they don't even realize. They have certainly made terrorist attacks against Jews outside Israel much more common. The Israeli government is making the world more dangerous for all of us and making people hate us. The whole Israeli overly-militarized attitude is "rise and strike first"-- because if you let people be they'll just come and kill you. The government fosters this whole paranoid ideology that the world outside the country is unsafe for Jews, meanwhile the reverse is true-- Jews are far more likely to meet violent ends in Israel. I have tried explaining the statistics and facts to people I know from Israel, but they don't believe it. They equate the uncomfortable feeling they get seeing student protesters at universities wearing keffiyeh and waving signs with danger and try to ban it. Meanwhile I find people walking around openly carrying guns like the IDF does at Israeli airports far more terrifying.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang

People thinking this started in 1948 would be an absolutely massive improvement

Yeah it's hilarious that people think once netanyahu is gone this will suddenly solve itself, his governments full of people who want greater israel, the israeli jewish public has an approval rating of the iran war as 78%. 78% is f****** insane for war approval. That's not even getting into the settler issue where they regularly murder palestinians and steal their land, the public that marched in protest at the arrest of the israeli soldiers that gang raped a Palestinian man, and those same soldiers getting off scot free in the israeli justice system. When are liberals going to wake up and realize the state of israel has been built to be a genocidal expansionist war machine built on US funding.

Fair, but it would be a start. And frankly it’s the only way to start to move forward. Even if he’s not in charge, if Bibi is allowed to hang out as a retiree and honored former PM then nothing can change.

"Former terrorist turned prime minister" is putting it kindly. Look up why he left his first paramilitary and founded his second.

Netanyahu was involved inciting his followers to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin. He's done things to take other legitimate opposition candidates out of the equation, (through corruption charges, etc.). He has been in power for nearly 30 years now. He's like Putin in Russia now. Young people don't even remember a time before him. They just see him as someone who has always been in power and always will.

Sub? Try universities and professors with tenures.

Yep. Not to mention every major sub following in line and deleting almost every israel thread a few hours after it's submitted. They wait until the mass of comments and such happen, then quietly delete it. There's also site-wide word filters that auto-ban anyone who mentions israel and other words, like comparing them to a famous fascist state in the mid 40's.

> Unless 70%+ of Israel is far-right. Well...

Correct. 70+% of the apartheid ethnostate is far-right

Existence of settler violence and support they get from IDF should tell you something about extremist people stats in Israel

>Unless 70% of Israel is far right Unfortunately yes, they are. Like, from the beginning Israel was always an ethno-nationalist, colonialist project to some degree. However there was always some degree of Liberals and leftist Israelis to balance it out at least a little. **BUT** in the past few decades the political culture there has continued to deteriorate and turn further and further right. In the US, 20% of people are MAGA nutcases but they have an over-size influence due to the bad voting system and very low overall voter turnout. In Israel it seems like 50% of the country are their equivalent of MAGA. And a further 20% or so are still fairly right wing, ethno-nationalist and militaristic. Noting that Israel's Parliament uses proportional representation. And even the Labour Party Israeli President (supposedly centre left) was promoting genocide.

I have a good Israeli friend who is very much left wing and he think it's antisemitic to call the gaza genocide a genocide. He also supported the last strikes on Iran. I haven't talked to him about this new war yet, but I suspect he supports it too. And those conversations come with all the usual talking points and history lessons to justify it. It's not just the right wing. Also, I doubt it's all of them supporting it, but I was very surprised and disappointed at where some of the support is coming from.

Oh buddy, I have some bad news on those extremists views. Huge majority supports war against Iran and genociding the Palestinians. All three major groups, while having varying and sometimes opposing views of what Israel should be, agree on the idea that they need to protect the state by being aggressive towards its neighbours. 

Yes 70% of Israel is far right if not more

Yeah! And according to over 90% of Russian voters, Putin is doing a great job!

His main opposition is led by Yair Lapid who has essentially the same views on Palestine, settlements, and the Israeli actions in the entire region.

As evil as Netanyahu is your right he is a moderate zionist in israel

Yes, I've seen horrible antisemitism from people against Israel and genocide. That doesn't mean that being against Israel and genocide is antisemitic in itself. But that unfortunately some people do start to combine the two, from both vantage points

>Unfortunately, in practice, a lot of criticism of Israel involves platforming antisemitic rhetoric I would still emphasize here that MOST criticisms of Israel or Zionism are not anti-semitic in nature. Even on the Right wing of American politics not everyone is Candace Owens. Plenty of Conservatives oppose Israel and its goals on the basis that allowing it to destabilize the Middle East and commit genocide doesn’t help America’s interests. 

Seems like a selection bias to me. You wouldnt go through all the trouble of working for Israeli citizenship or serving in the IDF if you weren't a zionist.

What does Zionist mean?

I like that idea and while we are at it can we save money by nationalizing healthcare?

4 billion a year agreed upon for an Egyptian and Israeli peace treaty that has held since the 70s. All that money gets spent in the US btw.

Wouldn't be an issue if you agreed to also cut all the military and development aid given to the rest of the counties there. Egypt gets almost as much, while Israel has already committed to completely phasing out American assistance because it's suffocating their domestic arms industry.

Not necessarily. Imo too much of the "right to exist" conversation comes at it from the completely wrong end. Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany both lost the right to exist--at least in those incarnations. I would say we're at or near that point for Israel. Nobody gets to pull shit like this and keep on goose stepping uninterrupted.

It seems you're just around crazy people because neither of those takes are healthy discourse.

>Whereas a huge percentage of over 50s seem convinced any criticism of Israel means you're a Hamas sleeper agent going after Jewish Americans next. Disagree.  I am in the age group you are referring to and many Americans my age are realizing we have been lied to and that the Israeli government is the problem.  Remember that before the internet was widespread, our only access was American media. The truth is much easier to find, for now at least. The only groups in my age group that I have come across that disagree are Christian zionist religious sects who's cannon is, "Israel is the chosen land and America will save Israel immediately before the second comming," and any criticism of Israel is therefore criticism of their God.

Here’s the thing though: you can’t have Israel without colonialism and ethnic cleansing. If they gave Palestinians the right of return, something they’re entitled to as indigenous people, then Jewish Israelis would be outnumbered. Hell, if Israel absorbed just the Palestinian Territories they’d be close to outnumbered (double check my math, but I think that’s correct.) Basically the two state solution is the least they could do and they’ve resisted it at every step. Even Rabin, who was assassinated for this stance, argued the Palestinians would have autonomy but not sovereignty. And camp David was “sovereignty” but no autonomy. Basically: I want the Jewish people to have a safe haven but like…where are they gonna do that without being colonizers?

>Just FYI, to us Jews, zionism means a safe haven for jews from persecution.   It does not mean militant colonialism or establishment of an empire Guess you are in disagreement with the actual founder of Zionism. Strange.........

It’s only become harder to differentiate between people with genuine criticisms of Zionism and people who use it as a dog whistle to mean “Judaism” in general. Part of that is because of people like Netanyahu and militant Zionists purposefully conflating the two, accusing anyone opposed to Zionism of being inherently antisemitic. I prefer Einstein’s vision of Zionism, always striving for general peace and cooperation between Jews and Arabs rather than conflict, always wary of the ultranationalists/fascists (like current Israeli leadership) that would damage the reputation of Zionism and Judaism as a whole with their hostility towards Palestinians and establishment of a militarized Jewish nation state. His criticisms of what would eventually turn into Likud were very prescient. The line is certainly very blurry.

"zionism means a safe haven for jews from persecution"  A couple of questions:  1. Why do so many American and Russian Jews deserve a safe haven in the West Bank, at the expense of those who have lived there for generations? 2. Don't all people deserve this, including Palestinians? Why isn't there a word for that?

That’s a nice story, but the reality is that Zionism is a settler colonial project and always has been. Zionism refers to a belief in a Jewish state in historical Palestine, and if you look at the writings of early Zionists, it is clear that it’s been a settler colonial project since the start, and was predicated upon the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. Even before Israel was founded, early Zionists openly admitted that in order to build a Jewish state in Palestine, the indigenous population would need to be forcibly removed from the territory (see Theodor Berzl and David Ben Gurion). They recognised it was impossible to achieve the Zionist goal of creating a Jewish state in historical Palestine, where the indigenous population was by and large, non-Jewish. And I point this out to make the point that it is impossible to separate Zionism from colonialism, and all the crimes that followed - apartheid, home demolitions, the Nakba, detention without trial, illegal settlements, ethnic cleansing and most recently, genocide. Zionism as a political project is and has always been dependent upon the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, and all the crimes that have went hand in hand with that. Without ethnic cleansing, there would be no Jewish state with a majority Jewish population and Jewish identity, in historical Palestine. ETA that not all Jews share your view of Zionism either; plenty, like the author of this piece no doubt and others, understand the reality of what the term actually means.

>It does not mean militant colonialism or establishment of an empire. I don't know why the zionist codeword as a derogatory term became mainstream. It came from how right wing Isrealies and more importantly the Isreali government has used the term. 

I am Jewish as well and feel similarly about the word Zionism. I wish more people had knowledge about the origins of the word. At one time and for many years, the term Zionism simply referred to the belief in the Jewish people's right to self-determination. A Zionist was someone who believed in the right of existence of a Jewish state. These days, the term has evolved to mean someone who believes in the expansion of settlements and the genocide of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately I think that the Israeli far-right party - literally called the Religious Zionist Party - is at least partly responsible for this shift in definition. People have come to associate Zionism with the political motivations of this particular political party.

Maybe trump could offer them New Jersey as an alternative to the historic land of Palestine.

I think the combo of Trump and this broke something inside of me.

Some are starting to switch to J Street now that AIPAC is becoming a dirty word.

israel has not made jews safe -- it has got them killed. jewish supremacy drives jewish hate. repeatedly killing children on a national stage ensures that jews will be less safe for generations to come. if you want to have a conversation about this you have to separate yourself from the indoctrination. people are people -- we are all separated from our ancestors homelands. i have no legal right or justification for land in scotland. it would be absurd to assume that i did. and very few people can claim direct lineage placing their ancestors in precise regions. every human breathing today is a mutt -- there is no supreme or chosen people. god is not real. land rights have nothing to do with genetic purity. there is no such thing as genetic purity.

agreed. i wish the jewish state would stop relying on us entirely. but again, if a jew doesn't want a rocket shot at them, the us, not israel - is where they want to be. a small ethno state of 10 million that is ideologically opposed to their billions of neighbors is a winning strategy for defense contractors. it is not a path to peace or human flourishing.

My understanding is Netanyahu’s support in Israel is very similar to Trumps support in the US. Public polling has him underwater but a coalition did vote to elect him.

This is VERY dangerous black-and-white thinking. Israelis have been mass protesting Netanyahu in the streets long before Oct 7. My rabbi flew to Israel to protest him like 5 years ago. He's unpopular af, corrupt af, and everyone knows it. So who knows if the polling is accurate or not. Secondly, no group is a monolith. Look up Combatants for Peace (Nobel peace prize nominees in 2017, 2018), Standing Together, the New Israel Fund, and other left-wing peace activist groups. There is opposition, you guys just somehow don't know about it.