cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/54992042
Nov. 5, 2026
The poll says 66 percent of Jewish voters in the US believe that Aipac’s campaign spending against candidates who criticise Israel actually increases antisemitism in the country.
In addition, 60 percent believe that Jewish organisations that label harsh criticism of Israel as antisemitic are exploiting concerns about antisemitism to defend unpopular Israeli government policies.
Notably, 80 percent of Jewish voters believe that Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and Gaza are increasing antisemitism in the US.
My very Jewish friend in high school, a vehement antizionist, said that truly beating antisemitism doesn’t mean one place Jews are safe, but having Jews be safe everywhere.
Honestly the deeply contested Middle Eastern Holylands, seems like a really dumb place to go for a sense of safety.
Let me see, has humanity ever faught over religion before? Gee I wonder.
You gotta look at it from the perspective of the original Zionists in the 1890’s. A big part of why we view the Middle East as a religiously/ideologically fraught region is because of the effects of Zionist settlers moving in and starting conflicts. When the Zionists first moved in, Palestine was a pretty peaceful and relatively backwater territory of the Ottoman Empire (side note, most of the land the Zionists “legally” purchased was from Ottoman absentee landlords, not actual Palestinian folks; if Palestine hadn’t already veen part of an Empire, and had already had self-determination, the whole thing probably never would have happened). And European colonialism was still socially acceptable as a “civilizing force” to many people (at least in Europe) at the time.
What a kumbaya moment. Did it include American Universities?
Hard to disagree with that. Furthermore, it’d be lovely if that was equally true for everybody else too.
Less likely than spontaneous pink unicorns happening, but definitely lovely.
And I’m not even sure they are all that safe in Israel. Or their actions don’t seem to indicate that they feel safe.
In any case, I am quite sure that this notion of a relationship that no one could ever question in this country (until fairly recently) stoked a metric shit-ton of antisemitism here.
People have a really hard time with the nuance of “I hate that I’m funding a country like Israel no matter what their actions are and no matter how I vote. Also, I’ll be labeled an ‘antisemite’ and lambasted for this criticism.” Some people in that camp may not really be able to tell the difference between what the country of Israel is doing vs. what “the Jews are up to”. And so some fall into outright antisemitism.
I do have to say a bunch of people lording it over others that no one could say shit without being drummed out of polite society does build up a lot of resentment. And people are right to be deeply resentful. It just needs to be aimed at those that are to blame, though. I mean, we don’t even have universal healthcare here, but Israel does? Why the fuck are we sending so much money to them?
Their actions have directly caused them feeling less safe.
When you forcibly take away territory from a neighboring people so you can give it to “settlers” from your country, you generate resentment and anger.
When you label an entire population as terrorists and kill a large portion of their people you create the next generation of angry orphans who will seek revenge against you.
Their morbid plan had one flaw: unlike Europeans in North America, they didn’t outright exterminate all the natives upon their arrival, they merely decimated and displaced them. The resentment stems from being neighbors with people who stole your land. Even the French were better at conolizing North Africa: they stole the land and decimated the population, but then they employed the natives and let them live there. It allowed them to stay a bit longer than otherwise. In the end they were kicked out after a bloody war of emancipation against apartheid and oppression.