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.
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.