Jeff Hewson

Day after day after day we learn about new unbelievably fucked up things Israel is doing, but every time anyone responds to this deluge of information with a "Wow Israel's pretty fucked up, hey?" they get people yelling "Oh so I guess you have a problem with JEWS! Okay, Hitler." And what's funny is this really, truly isn't about Jews. Both Zionists and genuine antisemites try to make such criticisms about Judaism and Jewishness, but that's just baby-brained analysis. You could take pretty much any ethnic or religious makeup and replace them with the ones at play in Israel-Palestine dynamics and you'd see the same types of abuses. You'd see that state requiring nonstop war, violence, apartheid and abuse in order to maintain its status quo, and you'd routinely see footage of members of the supremacist group behaving like monsters toward the victim group. Did you know studies have shown that being wealthy reduces a person's empathy? Just that one tiered social system placing the wealthy above the non-wealthy turns the elevated class into garbage human beings. How much worse can we expect the privileged group to be in an ethno-supremacist apartheid state, where members of the privileged group are indoctrinated from birth into believing all kinds of justifications for this abusive dynamic? There is literally no criticism you could possibly level at Israel that would not get you accused of antisemitism if you said it to a large enough audience, but this isn't about Jews, it's about abuse and injustice. The majority of the most moral and upstanding people I enjoy following on here happen to be Jewish; Jews are some of the best people I know. You either support an abusive apartheid ethnostate which can't exist without being in a constant state of war or you don't, and the majority of the people who do are not even Jewish. Anti-semitism is just an accusation that shitty people level at good people to divert criticisms of their shitty position.

You have already taken a side on Israel-Palestine. You have either consciously chosen to side with the people who are being continually massacred by Israel, or you have consciously chosen to side with Israel, or you have sided with Israel by being "neutral", or you have sided with Israel by being indifferent. As Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” It's okay not to have an opinion on everything. It's fine not to take a position on every political issue that comes across your screen. Most people have way too many opinions, and most of them are about silly and unworthy things. The onslaught that is happening in Gaza is not one such instance, though. Taking a stand against genocide is what having opinions on things is FOR. Opposing mass-scale human butchery and ethnic cleansing is the fundamental, bare-minimum position that all other political positions should follow from. If you can't take a stand against that, what are you even doing here? How have you been spending your brief time on this planet? How have you managed to make it to this point in life without maturing to the barest minimum standard possible? You might think Israel-Palestine is too complicated for you to take a stand on. It isn't. It's very simple. Many of the small specific details are complex, but the overall reality they form is simple: an apartheid state has spent five months butchering and starving the population it has marginalized in a way that advances that state's longstanding political agendas of ethnically cleansing that population from the land. You might think you're too cool or too evolved or too smart to take a side on Israel-Palestine. You are not. You have already taken a side, whether you admit it or not. You might think Israel-Palestine has too many gray areas and uncertainties for you to legitimately take a side. It does not. The endless stream of footage of skeletal bodies and children ripped apart by military explosives over the last five months makes it very clear that this issue has a right side and a wrong side, and you are already standing on one of them. By all means refuse to take sides on other issues; not taking a side is entirely legitimate when it comes to most issues people are wasting their breath bickering about. But not this one. When it comes to Gaza, reality demands a position from you. That doesn't mean you have to side with the Palestinians if you don't want to. You are a sovereign human being; it's up to you. But don't kid yourself about being neutral. At least be real with yourself that by refusing to pick a position you are licking the boot of a nuclear-armed ethnostate that is backed by the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. If you can't be real about anything else, at least be real about that.