Is it bad that I don’t hate Israelis?
Is it bad that I don’t hate Israelis?
I was raised reform Jewish and am half Jewish by family history. I have ancestors who were victims of the pogroms in the Russian pale of settlement – specifically, all four of my great-grandparents on my father’s side, along with their parents (my great-great-grandparents). When they were children their families fled and eventually resettled in the USA.
There is another place that they could have gone instead: Palestine. At that time it was still part of the Ottoman Empire, and some of the displaced Jews of that time did elect to go to Palestine. As it happens, my ancestors chose the US, but they could have gone to Palestine if they’d wanted to.
The fashionable posture on the left to take towards Israeli Jews recently has basically been a combination of glibness and vitriolic hatred, often reaching the point of wishing death upon them (examples: 1 2). I don’t know… I just can’t really feel good about stuff like that. The fact that my family ended up in the US and not Palestine is really just a quirk of fate. I don’t think that my ancestors were, like, morally better people for choosing the US over Ottoman-era Palestine. (And given the recent uptick in “Turtle Island” discourse, it seems like a fair number of leftists believe my ancestors shouldn’t have been allowed to resettle in the US either.)
I think that Zionism (with the possible exception of cultural Zionism) has generally been a noxious idea throughout its history. I don’t think the state of Israel should continue to exist as it is currently constituted, and I think the near-ubiquitous racism among Israelis is shameful. But I also don't think that every Jewish person who moved to Palestine in the last 150 years was a bad person for doing that, and I’m not prepared to circle-jerk over the deaths of people that I have a fair amount in common with historically.
Am I missing something? Have I been hoodwinked by Zionist propaganda?
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Kinda. This is gonna be super simplistic but like. To be good or moral or ethical or whatever you want to call it. It is not enough to love and support things that are good. You must hate and oppose things that are evil. If you are not capable of hating oppressors with the same conviction as the people who are oppressed, what are you even standing on? Do you think the parents of all the dead Palestinian kids have anything but hate for anyone and everything that claims the title of "Israeli"? Would you stand with them or not? Do you not tremble with indignation at the injustice, as Che said? Really think about whether or not you do.
This doesn't mean you necessarily have to go out and find Israeli nationals to harass and you don't have to send money to Hamas. But you do have to not go online and make weepy posts about "But but but what if they had really good reasons to be colonizers 🥺"