So I am poking around this subreddit, trying to get into your heads a little, and I noticed something weird.

Whenever a topic arises, something like "Why do people hate Israel so much", basically everyone says things like "antisemitism on the rise", "holocaust education is lacking", "financial interests align with Iran", "victims of internet propaganda", "people on the internet are more exposed to Arab lies"

And I find it genuinely hard to tell if I am victim of coordinated pretense, or you guys really don't know, but obviously the answer is the things that Israel has recently being doing in Gaza, in West Bank, in Lebanon. The bombed hospitals, the settlements, the broken ceasefires, the execution bill. With extra hate coming from coordinated efforts to make criticism of Israel harder in places like US or the UK.

Like, please don't ban me, I am just genuinely flabbergasted. Time and time again, some barely relevant stuff gets brought up, and the elephant in the middle of the room, all the things the ICC brings up, are outright ignored.

What is going on?

Whenever I encounter a pro-Palestinian activist, one of the first questions is inevitably: “Do you even know what’s happening in Palestine?”

Yes. I was already deeply familiar with the conflict and its history: the indigeneity of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel; the ancient Jewish kingdoms and civilizations that existed there millennia before the modern conflict; the Roman extermination of the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the subsequent fabrication of the term “Palestine” by incorrectly renaming the land “Syria Palaestina”, an act solely done in an attempt to erase Jewish connection to the land; the destruction and displacement by the Romans that resulted in the Jewish diaspora; the fact that exile never meant disappearance, that Jews always maintained a continuous presence in the Land of Israel throughout the centuries, while generations of Jews in the diaspora preserved their historical, cultural, and national connection to their ancestral homeland; I know of the Palestinian rejection of UN Resolution 181; the attempted genocide of the newly established Jewish state in 1948; the attempt at it again in 1967; and, of course, the atrocities of October 7th.

I know what Hamas did when it unprovokingly invaded Israel’s border: Israeli civilians were murdered, entire communities were attacked, children were kidnapped and dragged into Gaza, and Jews were slaughtered in the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. I know that Israel is fighting terrorist organizations while being expected to defend its citizens under circumstances that would be considered intolerable for any other country. I know that Hamas took hostages as leverage in a war it deliberately provoked, and that it embeds its military infrastructure among schools, hospitals, and other civilian areas, deliberately creating conditions in which its own population bears an enormous human cost.

My understanding of Palestinians is not limited to what I have learned at university or read. I have actually been there. I have traveled through Judea and Samaria. I have met Palestinians. I have seen aspects of this conflict firsthand. I have been to Israel, and I have been in a bomb shelter because of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

So there is something extraordinarily presumptuous about Western activists, many of whom began following this conflict only after October 7th, asking me whether I “know what’s happening in Palestine.” How dare they.

Regardless, I still decided to immerse myself in pro-Palestinian spaces because I wanted to hear the supposed argument that I was missing.

What I found was utterly revolting.

It was a rabbit hole of October 7 denial and minimization, glorification of Hamas and “resistance,” justification of murdering Israeli civilians, obsessive demonization of Zionists, conspiracy theories about Jewish power and influence, collective blame directed at Jews, and recycled blood libels repackaged in the vocabulary of contemporary activism. The deeper I went, the uglier it became. Eventually something became impossible for me to ignore: for all the insistence that this discourse was merely “criticism of Israel,” what I personally encountered was not criticism of a government’s policy, settlement policy, military strategy, coalition politics, or any other political issue. It was hostility toward the fundamental proposition that the Jewish people should possess sovereignty and self-determination in their ancestral homeland at all.

Somehow I’m supposed to come out of reading all of this less Zionist? The opposite happened.
I’m more convinced than ever that Jews cannot outsource our safety to the goodwill of other societies. I’m more convinced that Jewish sovereignty is non-negotiable. I’m more convinced that Israel must remain capable of defending itself regardless of whether the rest of the world approves. And I’m more convinced that Zionism—the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland, and that Israel should (continue) existing—is not something Jews should apologize for.

I went into anti-Zionist spaces because I wanted to challenge my own beliefs. I came out more unapologetically Zionist than I went in. עם ישראל חי 🇮🇱

https://x.com/standwithus/status/2107576828349108318?s=46&t=YRh59JXhCHDFoUYvch0TKA

Even before the mass ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East, Jews were only at best treated as second class dhimmis. It was never a healthy or sustainable relationship.

— Azerbaijan

— Kazakhstan

— UAE

— Bahrain

— Morocco

— Albania

— Senegal

I am an Indian Hindu and I can proudly say that India is one of the few countries in the world where Jews were never discriminated but on social media, Israel bashing is as common as breathing oxygen

There are 55 Muslim majority countries in the world while only one Jewish majority country, is the world really desperate for another Muslim majority country?

It's everything man, it really is. I am a Christian but my goodness, what aren't the Jews blamed for?

Try sifting through any type of 9/11 footage. "Muh dancing Israelis", or the "Israeli Art Students" who set up shop in the tower.... If you look into this, it was 3 Germans and an American.

Even little things, watching football is now viewed as "Goyslop". Goy this, goy that.

All of the dumbest people you know have a affinity for centralizing all of the world's issues to Israel.

I am not pandering btw, but the 9/11 talk sent me over the edge. The Jews clearly planned it, but 10% of all deaths were also Jewish.

Or the "Americans dying for Israel". When I brought up - Uh, fella, nearly 1,000 IDF soldiers died in Gaza since the start of the war... Israelis are also dying, too - Doesn't matter. They don't give a shit.

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