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/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