r/JewsOfConscience Ashkenazi Apr 23 '24

Discussion Being a Jewish Anti-Zionist feels exhausting.

First off, I’m an American and I am aware of exactly how much privilege that affords me.

But at the same time I feel like I’m fighting on all fronts - I’m fighting my own people, sometimes my own family, who cannot even bring themselves to acknowledge the crimes against humanity being committed. Heck even if I censor myself and my true feelings about Israel (that it was made as a monument to antisemitism, not a place to fight it) I’m a “traitor”

And then when there is actual antisemitism if I call it out, I get attacked for it and called a zionazi.

I am just so tired and worn out emotionally from all this. It feels like the group of people I can rely on or trust is very small.

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u/zzpop10 Apr 23 '24

Here here comrade! The good fight is often a lonely fight.

While it’s pointless to argue with people online, when I have asked non-Jewish friends of mine who are very pro-Palestine to workshop how they phrase certain things I have felt that they listened to me and appreciated my input.

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u/ray-the-they Ashkenazi Apr 23 '24

Yeah. I try to talk more in person than online. Even on Facebook with people I know is hard. One time I just reposted something about the number of journalists killed by the IDF and my cousins latched onto the fact that the OP had “from the river to the sea” in their comment instead of addressing the actual issue and lectured me about how much “Hamas hates them”. Like… yes. And the more people Israel kills the more they’re going to hate you. That’s how cycles of violence work.

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u/zzpop10 Apr 23 '24 edited Apr 23 '24

Yeah, these are not fun times and it hits hardest when the tensions are within our own families. Sending you whatever positive energy I can!

Also, it’s just so annoying how obsessive people are over the “river to the sea” slogan. Every conversation is about that slogan. The entire thesis of the “antisemitism on campus” narrative rests entirely on the interpretation of that one slogan. It’s just become “the thing” for people to latch onto. And I’m not even like a big fan of that slogan or interested in defending its use against anyone who would criticize its use, not that I have a problem with it either. Slogans just don’t matter that much, that’s the point! People just repeat the slogans they hear other people saying at rallies and it mostly doesn’t go much deeper than that and we don’t need a federal investigation over it! It’s just so obviously bad faith when people try to reduce politics to a semantic gotcha game of “you said the bad word, conversation over, I win!” It reminds me when the right-wing were pretending that they would have been ok with the slogan “black lives matter, too” but because we didn’t include the “too” we were clearly saying that no other lives mattered. Right, sure. There is no winning these stupid semantic games. If the pro-Palestine protesters dropped the “river to the sea” slogan entirely then the people who want to find a reason to hate the protesters would just immediately move the goal posts and pick some other thing to latch onto as their new excuse to not engage in conversation.