"Ask A Jew" Wednesday

[u/AutoModerator]

It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

[u/bearoscuro]

There are an unfortunately high number of people who react to even mild expressions of Palestinian solidarity like this, even after 10 months of watching children be pulled out of rubble.

I understand it's a fear response, and I've gone out of my way to be extremely polite and nonconfrontational when people like that talk to me. I'm certainly not going to win hearts and minds of racist strangers, so I figure I might as well just not agitate them more. However, it's very hard for me to have sympathy for it at this point, when that attitude is what's actively helping continue the genocide, and even locally on a smaller scale, getting people I care about surveilled, harassed, hurt by police, fired from work, etc.

I guess my question is: is it possible to get through to people in that level of knee-jerk racist fear? Unfortunately I don't see good outcomes, even on a domestic local level, if there's no way to deradicalize them.

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/bearoscuro]

You can't. At least, not as an ally.

The Jewish emotions around antisemitism and how it relates to pro-Palestinian movements are complex and require navigation that I don't think is possible without lived experience. Unless you can completely understand & deconstruct their fear -- and do so in a way that they themselves can't fully dismiss you, which has "being Jewish" as a prerequisite -- they will (likely rightfully) dismiss you as "goysplaining". The only solution really is to try to direct them to either antizionist Jewish individuals or smaller-scale organizations and then refuse to continue the engagement.

[u/bearoscuro → u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet]

Oh no worries, I was not planning on trying to talk to them in any lengthy conversation. So far it usually goes as a "you're all terrorists! Fuck Palestine!" from them, and a reply of "haha, ok, have a nice day :)" from me while hoping they leave lmao. They fully see me as a threat on sight, so prolonging the interaction is pointless. I'm aware I have 0% chance of Winning Hearts And Minds on this.

What I mean is, is it actually common for any conversations or outreach (whether with family, colleagues, religious settings, schools, idk) to get people on that level to let go of their views?

I'm curious mostly because these are unfortunately people who will be voting, participating in school board and police budget discussions, general hate crime prevalence towards Muslims, etc. So that's not great to consider. I'm curious if that's a chance that their numbers will lessen over time as people manage to soften their stances, or if I just need to resign myself to it.

[u/sudo_apt-get_intrnet → u/bearoscuro]

I've never had success of fully pulling someone out of Zionism. However, I have had a lot of success at least showing that antizionism isn't inherently antisemitism by being able to talk to these kinds of people on their level. Once this happens a lot of new paths open up, so that hopefully even if they are still Zionist they don't treat Zionism as a self-preservation issue -- reducing the strength of Zionism as a whole.

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