Will need some psychologist to explain me the fuck is going on with PEPs (Progressives except Palestine).
“I’m cool with social justice, anti war, and against racism. except for Palestinians, kill them all”
It’s always the same with these people… Morality later, when it’s convenient maybe, but not now. It’s not like we’re asking Contrapoints to go to Gaza herself (not everyone is brave like Greta), just to show her ideological opposition to the immorality of the empire… 🤷
I think it’s too scary to go up against Israel. People will do mental gymnastics to avoid stepping into the crosshairs of the Israeli propaganda machine.
I was so disappointed with Contra’s response to the Israel/Palestine situation. Like, I understand her not wanting to make a video about it. That’s one thing. But her whole “the left shouldn’t have made anti-Zionism its primary position” thing is just appalling. Zionism is a fundamentally cruel ideology and should be fiercely opposed.
I know she’s had controversies before, but I found most of the criticisms I heard of her to be pretty foolish (e.g. “How dare she advocating voting as well as doing other things?”). Perhaps I should have made an effort to look into those controversies more.
Can’t there be some nuance between “It’s OK that the country of Israel exists” Zionism versus “The whole middle east rightfully blongs to Israel” Zionism? I’ve personally tangled with many “anti-Zionists” who unironically want to destroy the country of Israel altogether.
Zionism is not “it’s OK that the country of Israel exists.”
Zionism is categorically an ethnocultural supremacist, nationalist movement, with the goal of taking over Palestine and making a Jewish state that explicitly does not allow in as many Palestinians as possible. That is what Zionism is. It is not simply the existence of a state named Israel.
It is my opinion that any country that has any fundamental beliefs about which races/cultures/people should be allowed to live there is fundamentally unjust, whether or not that’s an Israel that gives back all the land they stole from Palestinians and has their own now smaller region, one that completely overtakes Palestine, or one that agrees to a two-state solution that still lays claim to some Palestinian land.
Contra attempted to state that Zionism should not be opposed in the way that it was, because:
“Zionist” is a very broad category. Most Jews are Zionists.
If most Jews are Zionists, then that doesn’t make the position acceptable.
Contra also claimed that:
It was politically infeasible. What is the pathway that takes us from the present situation to the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state? I don’t see how this could happen without either a total internal collapse of Israeli society or else, you know, nuclear war. As usual, leftists have championed a doomed cause.
Which is like claiming that it’s politically infeasible to end redlining, because what would happen to all the poor white neighborhoods and their society if all the black people wanted to live in the same areas without discrimination too? Think of how it would collapse white society!
If someone has told you they are “anti-Zionist,” but actually want to simply destroy the entire country of Israel and it’s people, then they’re not anti-Zionist, they’re simply anti-Jew.
Ironically, that’s the one thing Contra was right about when she said:
Antisemites are happy for the opportunity to misappropriate the now-popular “Anti-Zionist” label to legitimize their agenda, and many people are not informed enough about antisemitism to recognize when this is happening. These problems are mutually reinforcing.
The problem is not anti-Zionism, the problem is people not recognizing when antisemites use anti-Zionism as a shield.
