I’ve had multiple family members deployed to active warzones.
Whenever we talked about war, it was never about politics. It was always “X’s tour is supposed to finish next month,” or “I heard something happened near [town], wasn’t X deployed near there?”
I know how everyone talks about it on the internet, but what is it like for you at home?
My ex is Jewish and my kids are half Jewish. Our discussions have been focused on the fact that what Netanyahu is doing has been making Jews less safe around the world. anti-Semitism is rising because of the fact he is murdering innocent people and children
My kids are less safe because of the Israeli PM and his Zionist government
I’m going to give an honest answer, but i fully expect to be downvoted and demonized for doing so. Nothing I can do about that, but op, you want an honest answer, this is it. I’ll also add that I would 100% consider myself leftist, in fact, extremely leftist in most of my views. Why the hell would my username be what it is and why the hell would I be on lemmy if I wasn’t… anyway… here’s the answer since you asked for it:
The large majority of jews I know, including myself and my family feel like this current war is the fault of Hamas. Oct 7 doesn’t happen, this war doesn’t happen. We also are continually annoyed by the fact that most people on the left, constantly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas has been pushing this war forward non-stop for decades. All you have to do is look up number of missiles launched at Israel since 2000 to see that. People no-doubt try to rebut this by saying “but Israel has been stealing territory”. My constant response to that is they have been taking territory to establish buffer zones to enhance security. As almost all of this land has been taken after conflict. Israel even tried to give back some of this land, but was then attacked again, and had to take land back in order to protect itself – But eventually our conversation just goes back to why this is even happening and we are always frustrated by the fact that any argument from the left condemning Zionists always begins in 1948 – when in fact the troubles of the region started hundreds of years before that. This pre-1948 history seems to never be brought up however. So the blame is always cast 100% on jews and all of the attacks on Jewish civilians within Israel are never ever given the time of day.
It’s incredibly frustrating and scary, because the narrative is fully turning into “jews are evil”, and there is nothing any Jewish person can do about it. Jews are never going to willingly leave Israel and Hamas is never going to stop trying to eradicate jews. There are only 16ish million jews on the planet and almost 2 billion Muslims. There is no way jews could ever win this propaganda war. I think a lot of jews who feel they are on the left side of the political spectrum are too scared to even speak about their feelings on Israel/Palestine at the moment, because they know they are going to be vastly outnumbered and demonized, by those they would usually consider friends, with anything they say. So most of us are silent on the subject because we don’t want to be ostracized.
I will end this by saying, we of course feel bad for civilians caught in the crossfire, but we feel like Jewish civilians are not given that same respect. The sentiment we get is that Jewish civilians seem to deserve it.
I appreciate the honesty but you seem to be missing the perspective that:
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The existence of the State of Israel is an explicit British colonization project and currently exists as a puppet state of “the empire”.
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The power imbalance between the state of Israel and Hamas and the repeated, and well documented, war crimes and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the State of Israel.
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Left wing vs Right wing is a false dichotomy. You will have opinions and viewpoints of both matter your political self identification and they are poorly defined.
I would be curious to know your opinions about the judenrätes of WWII (whether they were heroes or villains, left wing vs right wing, etc.) and how the current State of Israel is not just a continuation of that?
- Jewish re-colonization began long before the british had any input on the subject. The British were actually trying to stop Jewish migration for a while there. But the re-colonization of Israel by Jews goes back at least as far as the 1200s.
- There have been war crimes on both sides, and they both need be acknowledged in order to have a good faith conversation. Fact of the matter is that hamas is completely indiscriminate in their targets. There have been more than a few cases of Israeli civilian hostages being flat out raped and / or murdered by their captives during this war. I know of at least 2 instances where israeli hostages were actually killed by doctors.
I don’t know enough about the Judenrates to give an opinion on the subject. It looks like an interesting topic though, so I will read up on it.
edit: on my brief reading abotu Judenrates during wwii i get the distinct impression that these were people thrust into leadership positions that they may or may have not have wanted. They were used by the Nazis to potentially make impossible choices that hurt their fellow community members, but they had to make these choices or else their community would have suffered even more harm. They had to make “lesser of the evils” choices. I imagine these choices often made their community members dislike them, whether or not the Judenrates were making these choices with intention of doing the best they could for their people.
I’m curious where you find a connection between these WWII Judenrates and present day Israel?
the re-colonization of Israel by Jews goes back at least as far as the 1200s.
Immigration is not the same as colonization. When immigrating to a location (even mass migration) the power dynamics do not allow for the migrating group to dominate the local group. Colonization is when that power dynamic is flipped.
There have been war crimes on both sides, and they both need be acknowledged
Again power dynamics and scale are the most important factor here. If someone punches you that does not give you the right to murder their whole family. If someone peacefully barged their way into your home and you to leave what would your response be?
They were used by the Nazis to potentially make impossible choices that hurt their fellow community members, but they had to make these choices or else their community would have suffered even more harm
Yes, but why did Nazi Germany form them? What was their purpose in the machine?
I’m curious where you find a connection between these WWII Judenrates
I think it would be more productive for you to do a bit of reading and come back with what you think I’m getting at. I think answering that now would color the perception and make it harder to learn about a very important political concept.
we could have a big argument on the power dynamics you’re talking about, and I don’t really want to, but I will note the slew of pogroms in the middle east and ask you read about why the Bar Giora was formed. This was not a one sided affair.
and you talk about murdering whole families as if that wasn’t the intent of pogroms. Again, both perspectives need to be taken into account.
as for the stuff about the Judenrates, I don’t really want to play games with you. Tell me what your point is or drop it.
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Just wanted to say you’re getting a skewed picture of people’s opinions, as Lemmy isn’t popular / well known at all in Israel.
The absolute majority of Jews in Israel are united in wanting the hostages back (currently 58, of which an estimated half are still alive).
A lot want that and to end the war ASAP, not for any real concern for the Palestinians, but for the troops, the economy, and world image.
A lot want to keep going to eradicate Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis to prevent October 7th from ever happening again.
It’s difficult to be pro Palestinian when your friends and family have been slaughtered or held hostage by a (seemingly) unprovoked attack against soldiers and civilians.
The Overton window in Israel doesn’t currently allow it, though things might have been changing very recently.
At least here, we don’t discuss it much in the same way we don’t discuss the mountain near town; it’s there, we can’t move it, shrug your shoulders, it’s part of the landscape.
October 7th? Seemingly unprovoked?
Do they not understand how Israel was created and how it’s maintained ? It’s like if the Europeans who invaded, pillaged and settled in North America also stole their identities afterwards to spin the narrative! After all, Germanics and Eastern Europeans are as Semitic as I am a lady (I’m a hairy dude). The only moral thing to do is to condemn Israel as the European colonial project it always was, and not to take part in the killing at the very least.
But how can “Jews” (Moses killed ONE man in a way that one Palestinian could kill one low level IDF soldier and that was enough for him to realise that wasn’t the way… how do they claim to fear God? Lol) talk about it in earnest when their hands are covered in blood? The cowardly, weak and irresponsible way of acting will follow their personalities and they’ll just have a tantrum not to accept the reality of things: if you were part of the IDF, you 100% murdered innocents and have probably earned your place in Hell (definitely if you never repent!). I understand how sensitive that can make one feel, at the same time I understand they’re truly horrible human beings who will make any excuses and believe any lies necessary, so honest dialogue is impossible…
My family agrees that Israel learned nothing from the fascism that their families escaped and fought against and believes Israel is committed to nazism against Arabs. But my ex’s family is the typical liberal Zionist family that attributes all of this at the feet of hamas and Netanyahu. It’s a form of delusion that prevents any dialogue about the subject. They read passages from the Passover Seder with absolutely zero connecting of the dots to the horrors the state of Israel is committing against a helpless population. It completely makes clear to me how Hitler came into power and it makes me sad.
Fixed spelling error.
“Liberal Zionist?” Asking because I dont understand, not attacking anything.
They would prefer a two state solutions but believe Arabs and Jews are incompatible together. They are otherwise relatively progressive for their age. They’re Bernie supporters. it’s what is called Progressive Except Palestine (PEP).
Liberal Zionists prefer more palatable methods for eliminating Palestinians (cultural erasure, apartheid, legalized land seizure) but they don’t oppose genocidal escalations when they do occur.
I don’t even know what anyone means when they throw out “liberal” anymore.
My working definition is something like liberals would like everyone to be happy and get along but aren’t willing to give up an ounce of their own privilege for that to happen. Also quite ignorant about the actual realities of the social issues they allegedly care about. Can be mixed with many other ideologies because it doesn’t have any political substance of its own.
Liberal means “covert” and “more palatable” but with the same objectives.
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