I had a similar experience last semester with one of my closer classmates. He basically asked something like “How am I not supposed to be antisemitic?” I just explained to him that there are Jewish antizionists and that he only sees otherwise because the mainstream media amplifies only one side. And that was sufficient for him, but I also have a lot of credibility on this because I’ve been openly Pro Palestine.
Thing is that I can’t blame him at all for coming to this conclusion, every and I mean every single Jewish org in our area is Zionist. So when they see mainstream media, politicians, and Israel conflate the two why wouldn’t they believe them?
Yeah, how many synagogues are organizing against the genocide? How many jewish groups are actively advocating for an end to israel? Compared to how many are actively advocating for the genocide and deepening ties to israel
It’s not just the media, the quantity of genuninely antizionist jewish organizations is vanishingly small and mostly located within Iran if I had to guess
Also there’s definitely a decent amount of jewish anti-zionist orgs in the US. Jewish Voice for Peace (you might’ve seen their “Not In Our Name” slogan) alone is gigantic and probably the largest or most recognizable pro-Palestine protest group in the country. The name sounds lib, but they’re very clear that they’re firmly anti-zionist, pro-BDS, and have been calling Israel a settler-colonial, genocidal apartheid state for years. Liberal and conservative zionists alike claim they’re infiltrated by Hezbollah
Salience bias. Like half of ethnic Jews in the US are secular; either non-religious or vaguely spiritual but never actually attending synagogues. Zionist Jews tend to be the most religious, loud/ outspoken about their Jewishness, and conflate their ethnicity with their core identity as a person; and thus are way more likely to be involved in synagogues or Jewish orgs. (Also, I’d bet the average Evangelical Christian is even more likely zionist than the average religious Jew.) Meanwhile antizionist Jews tend to blend in with non-Jewish people/ groups and generally don’t feel the need to congregate into Jewish identity groups
I have a Jewish friend at my uni who’s been fervently pro-Palestine for years. If you saw him at a protest, you’d probably assume he’s mediterranean or middle eastern. And he obviously doesn’t go around telling people he’s an anti-zionist Jew, nor should he have any special obligations that differ from non-Jewish antizionists on the basis that he was born with similar phenotypes to the people committing horrific atrocities
Ethnicity, like race, is a social construct lumping people into blurry categories from a spectrum of superficial appearances. Fun fact: despite diversity in appearance and culture, humans are by far among the least genetically diverse mammals to exist, with phenotypes for appearance making up <0.1% of our actual genes. The vast majority of genetic variation in humans is found within all groups, rather than between groups. Meaning there’s a high chance you have more genetic similarities with a stranger of a completely different ethnicity/race from you than a stranger of your own ethnicity/race. Which makes it all the more stupid to consider any group of humans as innately more prone to certain mentalities or behaviors
I had a similar experience last semester with one of my closer classmates. He basically asked something like “How am I not supposed to be antisemitic?” I just explained to him that there are Jewish antizionists and that he only sees otherwise because the mainstream media amplifies only one side. And that was sufficient for him, but I also have a lot of credibility on this because I’ve been openly Pro Palestine.
Thing is that I can’t blame him at all for coming to this conclusion, every and I mean every single Jewish org in our area is Zionist. So when they see mainstream media, politicians, and Israel conflate the two why wouldn’t they believe them?
Yeah, how many synagogues are organizing against the genocide? How many jewish groups are actively advocating for an end to israel? Compared to how many are actively advocating for the genocide and deepening ties to israel
It’s not just the media, the quantity of genuninely antizionist jewish organizations is vanishingly small and mostly located within Iran if I had to guess
Also there’s definitely a decent amount of jewish anti-zionist orgs in the US. Jewish Voice for Peace (you might’ve seen their “Not In Our Name” slogan) alone is gigantic and probably the largest or most recognizable pro-Palestine protest group in the country. The name sounds lib, but they’re very clear that they’re firmly anti-zionist, pro-BDS, and have been calling Israel a settler-colonial, genocidal apartheid state for years. Liberal and conservative zionists alike claim they’re infiltrated by Hezbollah
Salience bias. Like half of ethnic Jews in the US are secular; either non-religious or vaguely spiritual but never actually attending synagogues. Zionist Jews tend to be the most religious, loud/ outspoken about their Jewishness, and conflate their ethnicity with their core identity as a person; and thus are way more likely to be involved in synagogues or Jewish orgs. (Also, I’d bet the average Evangelical Christian is even more likely zionist than the average religious Jew.) Meanwhile antizionist Jews tend to blend in with non-Jewish people/ groups and generally don’t feel the need to congregate into Jewish identity groups
I have a Jewish friend at my uni who’s been fervently pro-Palestine for years. If you saw him at a protest, you’d probably assume he’s mediterranean or middle eastern. And he obviously doesn’t go around telling people he’s an anti-zionist Jew, nor should he have any special obligations that differ from non-Jewish antizionists on the basis that he was born with similar phenotypes to the people committing horrific atrocities
Ethnicity, like race, is a social construct lumping people into blurry categories from a spectrum of superficial appearances. Fun fact: despite diversity in appearance and culture, humans are by far among the least genetically diverse mammals to exist, with phenotypes for appearance making up <0.1% of our actual genes. The vast majority of genetic variation in humans is found within all groups, rather than between groups. Meaning there’s a high chance you have more genetic similarities with a stranger of a completely different ethnicity/race from you than a stranger of your own ethnicity/race. Which makes it all the more stupid to consider any group of humans as innately more prone to certain mentalities or behaviors