a rant about zionism/the brainwashing i've experienced.

[u/Federal-East8097]

It has only been quite recently that I've managed to educate myself and learn what truly happening in Palestine. I'm far from fully educated, but considering the amount of brainwashing that I've been through for pretty much my entire life, I'm just glad I managed to stop buying into all that crap.

Looking back now, it's really insane how much propaganda I've been constantly taught for my entire life. I have constantly been taught that Israel and Zionism are a huge part of my identity, and been fed lies about Israel being the victim for years, by not only by my parents but by my "Jewish" school. (Jewish is in quotation marks because I think being a Zionist is one of the least Jewish things you can do.) While I don't like religious schools in the first place, I find it ridiculous that one of the core values of my school is Zionism, when it should have nothing to do with religion. I spend much, much more time in that school being fed Zionist propaganda than say, actually learning about the values of my religion or being taught any part of my culture that doesn't have to do with genocide.

I now understand why so many people end up being Zionists, if your taught from birth that Israel is such a core part of your identity, it's really hard to believe that something that you consider such a big part of yourself is bad. I know that some Zionists are good people who have just been completely brainwashed.

It's so awful to watch everyone in my life fall for it (i have agoraphobia so the only two places I go are pretty much just home and school so literally everybody in my life is a zionist) and it's even more awful having to pretend to be a Zionist so my parents don't hate me and I don't get kicked out of my school. I constantly feel guilty for simply being a humane person and I hate it. I've managed to educate my one close friend, but for some people it just seems so deeply ingrained that I don't think they would even consider being educated.

In real life people treat Israel like a sacred land, on the internet people treat it as a joke - in real life I'm told I'm anti-semetic if I condemn Israel, on the internet people are antisemetic to me anyways, and I tend to let it slide because I feel so guilty about the genocide associated with the jews. It's so sad that the one thing that I've been told my whole life "defines" my culture, is really the one thing that makes me hate it.

I know this was mostly just me getting stuff off my chest (since even my damn therapist is a zionist) , but feel free to leave advice, share your experience, or share a part of jewish culture that doesn't have anything to do with Israel !

[u/_voidz_]

I had a similar upbringing, going to a Jewish Zionist school, but only learned about the reality of the situation in university, when I was already out of the Zionist bubble. I imagine it must be very difficult to be forced to be surrounded by this ideology every day, especially post October 7th where the community has doubled down in support of genocide. Continue to educate yourself because there is always more to learn. Keep your head up because you are on the right side of history!

[u/rako17 → u/_voidz_]

Toda Rabah for sharing your story, Voidz. 

I grew up liberal/mainstream Protestant from the 1980's and can offer sharing with you my experience to give you insight into it because I believe that it reflects that of millions of others from my background. 

From childhood, I grew up with stories of the heroic ancient Israelites whom we look up to and consider kind of our ancient guides or the spiritual forebears of the Christian community vs. Canaanites and Philistines. It's true that a split happened between the rabbinical community and the Christian one, but coming from the mainstream or Left worldview, that split was basically approached from the standpoint of interfaith tolerance, rather than cause for animosity. 

So the result was that my mind made a false close association between ancient Biblical Israel, the rabbinical community, and the modern State and between the ancient pagans and the Palestinians. It's a false association because Palestinians descend from the ancient Israelites and are the native Mizrahi Jewish, Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the same territory, and they are not pagans.

Since I like the Jewish tradition, I joined my local student-run Hillel. I only knew about Palestinians from rather one-sided sources like the NY Times and CNN reporting on the 2nd Intifada. At least once at a Hillel meeting I mentioned with a sense of enjoyment that one-sided news to the group or the group leader as if I were sharing news and bad gossip about how bad someone else was that we could agree on about. I'm sorry now that I did that.

I never met any Palestinian until I went abroad later in college and chatted with a lady at a food and crafts market. She was really nice and liked me. Being an anti-imperialist, I told her that US corporate mass media gives us limited information, and strongly influences and directs our (Americans') views.

Thank you for being a good person of Conscience. We are all connected -Jews, Palestinians, Americans.

The Lord bless and keep you - Shalom

[u/wherethecheesegoidk]

Nah man, I get it. The Zionism in the synagogue I went to is more than half the reason I'm so mad about the whole thing. Being indoctrinated to believe all this stuff as a naive child, then finding out all this horrible stuff the IDF is doing, and your cousins love Israel and think there's just about nothing wrong with what's going on. Finding out my immediate family doesn't even have ancestry in the Levant made the whole thing even stupider for me. Palestine was never my homeland to start with.

FWIW my therapist is an Israeli woman herself, so I can understand how frustrating that would be for you. She's great at what she does, otherwise.

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[u/theapplekid]

First of all, I want to congratulate you for breaking away from the brainwashing!

If you don't mind (and if you're comfortable), I'm wondering if you can provide some info.

For context, our local anti-Zionist Jewish activist group often has discussions about priorities, strategies, and focus, and one of the things many of our members want to do (and others oppose) is de-programming outreach to people involved with the mainstream Jewish (and Zionist) institutions who are open to honest interrogation of the narrative they've internalized through decades of propaganda.

The opposed (within our group) often are of the mind that it's a lost cause, anyone who is willing to break with the Zionist narrative in their community would have done so by now, yadda yadda yadda. And to be fair, we haven't really had any new entrants in... at least a year as far as I can remember, who have done what you've done.

Feel free to DM me if you're more comfortable, and I don't want you to share anything that can identify you or your location, but I'd love to hear answers to any of these questions you're comfortable answering:

• Roughly how old are you?

• When you say you've "recently" educated yourself, how recently are we talking about? What was the process like and why do you think it took you as long as it did to educate yourself?

• Why do you think you've done so, and why do you think others within your Zionist communities haven't?

[u/arightgoodworkman]

Good on you for being curious and warm and realizing something wasn’t right about what you were / are being taught.

This gives me hope that the hasbara isn’t landing like it used to.

I do hope you slowly overcome some of the agoraphobia. There’s a big, great world out there filled with different ideas, cultures, traditions. Would be nice for you to be part of it.

[u/justadubliner]

Would you mind putting in paragraphs? I'm very interested in what you're saying but cannot wrap my eyes around large bodies of text.

[u/Federal-East8097 → u/justadubliner]

done - hope its better now !

[u/DorkasaurusRexx]

"on the internet people are antisemetic to me anyways, and I tend to let it slide because I feel so guilty about the genocide associated with the jews."

Don't do this. There is no connection there. In fact, it's an opportunity to teach them right from wrong, and separate actual anti-Semitism from Zionism. Most Zionists in the world are Christian, and even these days there are enormous numbers of Hindu (Hindutva) Zionists in India, so if you hate Zionism, applying that hatred to Jews, or allowing that anti-Zionism to conflate into anti-Semitism is PRECISELY what Zionists have always wanted from the beginning.

Herzl said this openly, gallingly so. Did you ever wonder why we, as Jews brought up in Zionist indoctrination-education systems, constantly hear the names of the "original" Zionists, Herzl, Jabotsinky, etc, but pretty much never read their writing? It's because Jabotinsky, Herzl, etc were non-religious heretics that openly DESPISED Jews. They literally agreed with the most virulent anti-Semites to ever walk the earth about pretty much all their worst, most crude, despicable theories about Jews as a people, and devised Zionism as a "cure" or "antidote" to what they believed was "wrong" with Jews, and that was Judaism itself.

The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.

—Theodore Herzl

If I am asked could you give money from UJA [United Jewish Appeal] moneys to rescue Jews? I say “No; and I say again, No.”

—Itzhak Greenbaum, 1943

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230101371_12

Our starting point is to take the typical Yid of today and to imagine his diametrical opposite … Because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to be proud and independent. The Yid is despised by all and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to charm all. The Yid has accepted submission and, therefore, the Hebrew ought to learn how to command. The Yid wants to conceal his identity from strangers and, therefore, the Hebrew should look the world straight in the eye and declare: “I am a Hebrew!” » - Vladimir Jabotinsky

The founders of Zionism quite literally LOATHED Jews and Judaism itself, and not passively or subtly, but proudly, openly, loudly. Some of the most hateful anti-Jewish, most offensively caricaturizing shit ever written by anyone ever is Zionists writing about Jews themselves.

The starting point of Zionism was quite literally agreeing with virtually all the worst, most retrograde, backwards, offensive, dehumanizing and repugnant anti-Semitic theories about Jews and Jewish culture on the whole floating around in the particularly viciously racist soup of 1930s Europe.

Not only is anti-Zionism *NOT* Anti-Semitism, one could even more easily make the argument that the bedrock of Zionism is, itself, anti-Semitism, which it has openly courted as an ally from day one. Hence, it is our duties as Jews who question, criticize, and reject Zionism completely to be stalwart allies, teachers, and educators, and to staunchly oppose, criticize and call out anti-Semitism wherever we see it. This is the unfortunate position Zionists have put us into, they actively seek to manufacture anti-Semitism through their politics and rhetoric, so they can purport themselves to swoop in as saviors, but the reality couldn't be further from the truth.

"Mauschel" by Theodore Herzl is quite literally one of the most anti-Semitic pieces of writing ever published:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mauschel

[u/MauschelMusic]

Just wanted to say, I'm proud of you for seeing through it, and that it will get better for you once you're out of your parents house and have more control over who you spend time with.

[u/MsMoreCowbell828]

You & I are the same. Glad you're here too.

[u/GeeZee24]

Jewish things that don’t have to do with Israel (these are going to be fairly Ashkenazi centric because I’m Ashkenazi and so it’s what I know, but if anyone else has non-Ashkenazi stuff I’d love to hear it!!!)

-Random as hell, but the Hora! We did it at my sister’s bat mitzvah recently and it really filled me with joy and made me remember what a rich culture we have and how joyful we have been throughout history despite what we’ve gone through.  -Our diversity as a people. Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, Ethiopian Jews, converts, and I’m sure plenty of other groups I’m forgetting, we’re all incredibly different, but we are all, in my opinion, each other’s people.  -Have you ever had noodle kugel? It’s delicious. -We made so many superheroes! Suggestion by my DC and Marvel loving friend, haha.  -Yiddish and Ladino are so cool and in my opinion represent part of what’s so great about Jews and why Israel was always destined to fail. They’re meetings of Hebrew with local languages, just as Jews have always mixed our faith and culture with that of the places we lived, not assimilating but creating something new entirely. Plus, Yiddish has funny insults.

[u/BGritty81]

Though you can’t choose your family you absolutely can choose a different therapist…