At first I glossed over it — it’s typical bullshit, really — but as I was poring over the anti-Zionist Jewish organizations known to me (Jewish Currents, Jewish Voice for Labour, Independent Jewish Voices Canada, South African Jews for a Free Palestine, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, Never Again Action, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewschool, American Council for Judaism, & Neturei Karta), I thought back to that comment, and an unusual thought crossed my mind: what if every single one of those organizations had nobody but gentile members?

Let’s pretend for a moment that every single one of these Jewish critics of Zionism — Katie Halper, Tony Greenstein, Peter Beinart, Rabbi Brant, Ilan Pappé, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Matt Lieb, Daniel Maté, Dr. Gabor Maté, Stephen Kapos, Norman Finkelstein, you name them — let’s take this cliché to its logical conclusion and imagine for a minute that all of these hundreds of thousands of people are lying about being Jewish. All of them. Without exception.

What is it that all of these people are getting by repeatedly lying about being Jewish…? Is the answer that they’re lying in hopes that nobody will accuse them of antisemitism…? So, they’re discussing Palestinians’ suffering, sharing news from reporters and Nakba survivors, saying ‘not in our name’, talking about Judaism, talking about Jewish history, talking about Palestinian history, holding or attending Jewish anti-Zionist events, maybe wearing Jewish fashion like kippahs, donating to Palestinian aid groups, rejecting pro-Zionist businesses, putting their positions in Synagogues or universities on the line, publishing their names for Palestinian causes, and sometimes suffering physical violence — these ‘cosplayers’ are going through all of this trouble and they are pretending to be Jewish mostly or entirely because they want to avoid an accusation of antisemitism?

Or maybe that is not one of their biggest preoccupations. Maybe they are all pretending to be Jewish because they feel like that gives their opinions, their writings, their discussions, their signatures, their protests, their donations, and the rest of their activism a degree of ‘authority’ that should impress others. Yet to that I can only state my question explicitly: why are they caring about Palestinians at all…? Because they have nothing better to do…? Would it not be easier to simply ignore the situation in Palestine completely?

And perhaps the most interesting implication in all of this: this international, loosely connected network of secret gentiles are portraying Jews in the best possible light by behaving as caring, humanitarian, antiapartheid peace activists… whereas ‘real’ Jews oppose a ceasefire, support the forced separation between Palestinians and others, and prevent aid from reaching them… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that one.

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[–] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 12 points 3 hours ago

And perhaps the most interesting implication in all of this: this international, loosely connected network of secret gentiles are portraying Jews in the best possible light by behaving as caring, humanitarian, antiapartheid peace activists… whereas ‘real’ Jews oppose a ceasefire, support the forced separation between Palestinians and others, and prevent aid from reaching them… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that one.

Remember that a core belief of liberalism is that indiscriminate mass murder of an entire population for being insufficiently progressive is not only justified, but that opposing the same is an endorsement of all of the beliefs they imagine their targets to hold. It's why they think "queers for Palestine = chickens for KFC" is some kind of own.

[–] Barabas@hexbear.net 8 points 3 hours ago

And perhaps the most interesting implication in all of this: this international, loosely connected network of secret gentiles are portraying Jews in the best possible light by behaving as caring, humanitarian, antiapartheid peace activists… whereas ‘real’ Jews oppose a ceasefire, support the forced separation between Palestinians and others, and prevent aid from reaching them… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that one.

This assumes that a zionist would see being caring, humanitarian peace activists as a positive trait rather than weakness.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 19 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

And perhaps the most interesting implication in all of this: this international, loosely connected network of secret gentiles are portraying Jews in the best possible light by behaving as caring, humanitarian, antiapartheid peace activists… whereas ‘real’ Jews oppose a ceasefire, support the forced separation between Palestinians and others, and prevent aid from reaching them… I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that one.

Remember how liberals always act when they interact with someone to their left who criticizes them:

Being surprised that they aren't as far left as possible.
Pretend that their position is actually still more liberatory than their critic's.
Undermine the criticism by derriding the critic as having an ulterior motive.
Gaslight the audience into believing that the leftist position is an idealistic pipe dream and the liberal position is as far left as a "sane" person should go.

So apply it in this context:

Deny that Jewish anti-Zionists even exist because that's an oxymoron or a paradox.
State that Jewish anti-Zionists are reactionary because Zionism is progressive somehow.
Call the anti-Zionist opposition fake Jews or opportunists/clout chasers.
Conclude that settler colonialism is as good as it'll ever get; that apartheid is Good, Actually; and that you have to be an impostor or self hating Jew to believe otherwise.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 9 points 3 hours ago

Pretend that their position is actually still more liberatory than their critic's.

Especially by painting the critic as somehow a reactionary.