This isn’t surprising to me. Outside of Christian Zionists and Jewish supremacists “support” for Israel was always extremely shallow. The American public largely supported Israel due to some vague understanding that they were our “ally”, and most had absolutely no idea of the Palestinian struggle at all. The ongoing genocide has been so evil that all these people with very unexamined, light support for Israel have been like “wait wtf”, and have switched positions as they have learned a bit more about the situation.
their understanding was shallow because everyone kind of implicitly knew the issue was a landmine and just generally avoided looking deeper into it. It was very clear that your career would be absolutely destroyed if you ever voiced any support for Palestine whatsoever, so people just generally avoided touching the hot wire.
Yeeaaaah, this was me, up until around 2023. I totally ate up the “it’s complicated”, “ancient religious conflict”, “they’ve been fighting forever” bullshit. Now I’m one of those annoying people who talks about Israel and Palestine to my partner every chance I get. You can tell it still makes people uncomfortable to talk about, probably because some actually think it’s antisemitic to talk about, but way more people nod and agree with me then before. Even people my parents age, you know the low-key Islamaphobic af libs type, are saying, “I don’t know why we’re so ride or die for Israel. What do they do for us?” when I bring some up insane act they did or war they randomly stated.
I might even test this change of opinion by mentioning anti-Israel stuff in my most moderate-lib-filled group chats that I dare didn’t bring it up before and see what happens.
This isn’t surprising to me. Outside of Christian Zionists and Jewish supremacists “support” for Israel was always extremely shallow. The American public largely supported Israel due to some vague understanding that they were our “ally”, and most had absolutely no idea of the Palestinian struggle at all. The ongoing genocide has been so evil that all these people with very unexamined, light support for Israel have been like “wait wtf”, and have switched positions as they have learned a bit more about the situation.
their understanding was shallow because everyone kind of implicitly knew the issue was a landmine and just generally avoided looking deeper into it. It was very clear that your career would be absolutely destroyed if you ever voiced any support for Palestine whatsoever, so people just generally avoided touching the hot wire.
The Israelis were happy to stoke the “it’s an ancient conflict - so complicated” narrative that people used as an excuse to ignore it
Removed by mod
Really don’t think it’s a good idea to compare Jews to goblins, come on now.
Yeeaaaah, this was me, up until around 2023. I totally ate up the “it’s complicated”, “ancient religious conflict”, “they’ve been fighting forever” bullshit. Now I’m one of those annoying people who talks about Israel and Palestine to my partner every chance I get. You can tell it still makes people uncomfortable to talk about, probably because some actually think it’s antisemitic to talk about, but way more people nod and agree with me then before. Even people my parents age, you know the low-key Islamaphobic af libs type, are saying, “I don’t know why we’re so ride or die for Israel. What do they do for us?” when I bring some up insane act they did or war they randomly stated.
I might even test this change of opinion by mentioning anti-Israel stuff in my most moderate-lib-filled group chats that I dare didn’t bring it up before and see what happens.