My people are not your propaganda.

Something I did not make clear in yesterday’s post (link below) is this:

The equating of Jewishness with "Israel" and the confusion it creates is 100% intentional on the part of the settler-colonial government and its “allies.”

A key tactic within Zionist propaganda is working very hard to convince everyone that the issue is Just So Very Complicated™. They aim to muddy the "Israel-Palestine debate" in as many ways as possible to deflect criticism and distract from the obviousness of their crimes.

Indeed, there scarcely is a debate at all, save for the one they have manufactured. And just as the "western" powers are happy to use Jewish settlers as their human shields, the occupation government uses all Jewish people as their own rhetorical shield by equating us—again, all the Jews of the worldwide diaspora— with them, their values, and their actions.

By conflating critique of Zionism or the "state of Israel" with antisemitism—by equating bigotry against a people, religion, or ethnicity with political dissent, they have very successfully injected some of that false nuance they rely upon to maintain power and position in the region.

We see a similar tactic when functionaries of that government get on television with transparently fake documents and other "intel."

The purpose of that is not for everyone to credulously believe. It is to stoke enough helpful outrage in some and take up enough energy to debunk their lies in others.

They aren’t worried about being consistent, so long as they are consistently in power. They aren’t worried about being embarrassed, because enough people have so thoroughly bought into their prior lines as to fall directly into that helpful outrage without looking much further into things.

So I don’t want people to feel bad about how easy it is to be sucked into toxic narratives about this subject, because it’s truly the point.

The propaganda is so entrenched and so richly detailed, it is incredibly difficult to parse.

Again: that’s truly the point.

The "conflict" in the region is constantly framed as complicated, historically nuanced, and thus not easily summed up in a moment’s conversation. Because it turns out that it really only takes a moment to say "this is ethnic cleansing and genocide," which hurts their vile cause.

This is why "Israel" lives forever in quotes in my writing.

1. “The state of Israel” is an illegitimate settler-colonial occupation of the land stewarded for generations by Palestinians.

2. "Am Yisrael Chai." The [cultural, religious, diasporic] People of Israel live, and they have misappropriated our name in service of death.

Yesterday’s post was a cleaned up version of the wall of text I sent to my friend in response to their question of whether “Israel” is necessary to act as a shield against antisemitism. It can be viewed here:

https://medium.com/@sharynblum/is-israel-a-shield-against-antisemitism-in-short-no-06f493edfa63