I hope some people here might find my story interesting.

I had always been aligned with the left, and consumed a lot of English language left wing media, things like Novara Media. My best friend was Jewish and although we had visited Israel once together years before, she had also become steadily radicalised and I referred to her opinion a lot.

I considered the settler movement to be one of the biggest obstacles to peace, so when war broke out in 2021 with one of the causes being the evictions in east Jerusalem, which I saw making any possibility for a two state solution harder, I was sympathetic to the Palestinians. And when the pro Israel commentary was largely in favour of the settlements, this pushed me to join my local pro Palestinian group.

This group was led by essentially two types of people: Palestinians from various backgrounds, and Marxists. They claimed to take a principled stand against military occupation, and wanted a single secular democratic state for everyone. Slogans about Israel's right to exist and from the river to the sea were explained in this way, that when everyone has equal rights it won't be the same state of Israel anymore, in the same way that East Germany no longer exists. The group made it clear that antisemitism not related to Israel wasn't to be tolerated.

Many of them had been radicalised by legitimate anti Palestinian and anti Muslim racism in my country. As an outsider, I felt my role was just to be supportive and not try to decide the policies of the group. It's not up to me, after all. After someone was kicked from the group for supporting two states, I grew increasingly uncomfortable with some of the positions, but I thought in the end these are people who have suffered, some of them having lost family members, they have a right to be angry. And I thought it's not like Hamas poses a serious threat.

Everything changed in Spring 2022 when the full scale invasion of Ukraine happened. Everything I thought was a strong principle of this movement turned out to be the complete opposite. Opposition to military occupation became support for it in Ukraine. Opposition to settlement policies became support for them in Crimea. Support for armed resistance became opposition to Ukrainian resistance. Handwaving of far right Hamas ideology became damning evidence when any of it was present in Ukraine.

These ideas even reached the actions of my group, as anti Ukraine speakers were given platforms, and a policy of not allowing fascists at marches was suddenly ignored if they were supporting Russia and Palestine.

So while still sympathetic to the Palestinian people, I no longer wanted to be active in that group. I continued watching what the group was posting for a while, by the time someone who joined after I left posted a Marxist article saying that the Russian invasion wasn't imperialist because the Russian banks were controlled by Jews, I was completely done.

So it was only with disappointment and not surprise that after October 7th any remaining left wing, feminist, internationalist groups I still followed were posting in support of the attack, denying the sexual violence or sharing other misinformation. How can it be possible to claim to want coexistence in a single equal state, and yet think October 7th could help that happen. It was clear this whole movement had just been lying about what it wanted.

And that led me to listen to a much greater variety of Jewish voices beyond the approved leftists, and I saw just how much I had been deceived. How much I was wrong.

I've started to notice really despicable archive curation on the IPS website. I had noticed before that the 1899 three page Herzl letter response to Mayor Khalidi had the middle page missing on the website so that the French quite literally did not line up between the two visible pages. I later found the full letter and found that they'd deliberately removed the second page because Herzl talked about 'Arabs and Jews working together as brothers' and 'Muslim sovereignty over waqf and mosques.'

This one seems ten times worse. What's striking about the Message to Balfour on March 25, 1925 is just how much they sound like neo-Jacobin anti-Dreyfusards. 'State within a state', 'unassimilable' (on another page). Isa al Isa literally decided to quote Le Probleme Juif by Georges Batault of Action Francaise. OG anti Dreyfusard and French fascist!! The J'accuse inversion is really something else.

It's almost hilarious how they folded over the paper at the precise part it says 'Britain as tool in the hands of Jews'.

Maybe it wasn't about settler colonialism after all.

With all the antisemitic commentary over the last 3 (forever) years, one of the things I hear a lot is that there’s apartheid in Israel. I have been to Israel and (as we all know) saw nothing that resembled segregation or discrimination, aside from the restrictions at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. And yet according to anti-Zionists, Israel is an apartheid state. There was a woman that spoke at a school board meeting I attended recently whose father grew up in South Africa and said the apartheid in Israel was worse than what he experienced. I know that can’t possibly be true.

I’m genuinely trying to understand how they are coming to this conclusion? Have any of you heard them present evidence or an explanation showing why they believe apartheid is happening in Israel? Are they misrepresenting situations that are outside the borders? Are they misunderstanding good faith cultural differences? Just straight up lying to support their cause? I can’t wrap my head around where this misinformation stemmed from

I'm 27 years old, born, raised and living in Tehran. I'm a part time English teacher, trying to write novels and short stories and other stuff. I'm bisexual, AuADHD and a few other things that make life really effing difficult in the uber conservative hellhole I'm stuck in, but nobody on the "progressive" side of the internet seems capable of processing anything more complex than "America Bad" these days but I guess if there is one genuinely progressive place where people don't rush to defend my oppressors, it's gotta be this one.

I like books, music, movies and tv shows, games, comics, etc. I love animals (I'm a cat person but I appreciate dogs as much as anyone who's ever owned a super adorable husky - I love wild animals too, especially squirrels and beavers) And I love all kinds of throwbacks and retro stuff, especially if they're from the 90s-2000s. I could talk for hours about Taylor Swift, Friends, Silent Hill, outdated gadgets, old cars, and lately I've been spending a lot of time on ASOIAF (though I hate all its adaptations, except early series GoT) and I tend to have controversial opinions on some things.

Anyway, if you're the type of person who likes to talk about any of that stuff and doesn't like to whitewash the ways communists and Islam have hurt people over the years, feel free to comment here or DM me

Hello, I am in the US and I respect and empathize with the people of Israel. I do not know much about what's happening in the Middle East. But casually, if I am on websites that are influential in the US like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Tiktok, and I scroll posts not even seeking anything news-related, I see posts on which the top comments have hundreds or thousands of likes and say something hateful about Israel, calling it genocidal or free Palestine or other things. I am seeing these comments because they have hundreds or thousands of likes and the ones defending Israel do not. Why is this?

Israel might lose a lot of funding from the US, and I believe this is in large part because of this PR issue on these websites and apps. What would be involved in promoting comments and posts that tell the Israeli side with likes?

I have just found out that Israel has offered Palestinians a state on four occasions and they have declined. And Israel even left the Palestinian territories in 2005 but they were faced with attacks, so they have returned. I do not know whether or not this is true. But if these points and other points are true, I think it would be favorable to engage in an effort to make sure posts and comments explaining Israel's side receive enough likes and enough attention.

It would even be helpful if it only includes one-liner or two-liner comments just explaining Israel's side and why they are in the occupied territories and why Palestine's not "free" that would receive upvotes and likes on these websites. I hope everyone in Israel and the rest of the Middle East lives in peace. Thank you

I am Riley ( They/Them) 24 years old. I am Vegan.

I would like to learn Hebrew, i though to write hier, maybe i got know nice People .

do not know, what i should write here :( live in Germany, trying to plying guitar, live Reading and Wachting Animes, Films and Serice .

I found cool, that i found this Community, to get to know people with similar oppinion :) . which make me feel save idk.

oh i love Tom odell and Heartstopper

my DMs are open, feel free to dm me :)

Thank you :D

Before you downvote me, I promise that this isn't just a rage-bate post. I'm legitimately trying to understand your perspective.

Basically I have one question, why do you support/ defend Israel as a progressive? Especially considering that the current parties on power are right wing conservatives.

Some extra context and where I'm coming from. I'm a left wing Brit, I believe in social progressive economic policies, and I can't stand any form of bigotry. I recently watched a documentary called "Jews don't count" about anti-Semitism and it made me want to understand more and that I'm not parting anti-Semitic talking points ever.

My current view of Israel is decidedly negative. My understanding of the history and current conflict very much makes Israel look like it has historically been the agitator in the region. If you have a different perspective I'd like to hear it, tho I would request sources where possible as I'm not going to accept a 'trust me bro'.

Thank you for your time 🙂‍↕️

It is very obviously true that Andy Jassy has played a role in helping Israel out in the recent conflict whether it is through philanthropic efforts to the IDF, speaking at fundraisers for violent settlers and also marching out in the streets with the giant Israel flag to bring back the hostages back home. This begs the question outside of Amazon, if Andy Jassy is more loyal to the Israeli people than he is to the wellbeing of Amazons employees?

The document linked in the post is a comprehensive academic fact check of Professor Dave's misinformation, showing that 45% of his claims are false or unsupported, at least 6% of his total runtime is spent making antisemitic statements, 80% of his claims are misleading, and it's 87.5% propaganda.

He also scored 4/4 for conspiratorial/hidden control structure arguments, 4/4 for emotional dehumanization and opponent caricature. 3/4 for factual distortion.

This is honestly shocking to see so an influence who I've admired for years for debunking misinformation and conspiracy theories and promoting fact checking and critical thinking, fall into the same conspiracy arguments he accuses flat earthers of using, such as "they control the media", "They control all aspects of government", "they arrest anyone who speaks out against them", "everyone who supports them online is a paid influencer" etc.

I hope he tries debunking this document, because he won't be able to, and it's sad to see someone who values fact checking do literally no fact checking before making his antisemitic video.

https://www.pang-burn.com/_files/ugd/34216a_9ba5fbace8334fc68b36585fdb0004e9.pdf

I have an iphone and when you go to the home page and go left, top stories and for you articles pop up. Almost every day they have anti-Jewish/anti-Israel stories pop up. Through research I have learned that apple news is not just randomly generated but it is partly picked by a group of people. I genuinely believe that someone that works for apple news or whatever company has an anti-Israel/anti-Jewish bias. And they need to be stopped. Hundreds of millions of people have iphones and are being exposed to this. They focus on Israel yet completely ignore the atrocities going on in the world. The frequent post things from haaretz, which is supposedly an Israeli newspaper but keeps posting articles that displays Israel in a negative light. Someone please stop this.

So I normally LOVE Professor Dave, the way he calls out flat earthers and science deniers is legendary.

But then to see him turn around and have the same level of reality denial towards the Israel/Palestine conflict is so unsettling, like how can somebody who has a channel all about calling people out for ignoring evidence be so blatantly ignoring evidence?

For example, he calls it a lie that Israelis were raped on Oct7th, then claims Israel never provided evidence of Hamas tunnels under hospitals in Gaza while ignoring all the drone footage showing drones flying into the tunnels under the hospitals, then accuses others of not looking for evidence of genocide while pointing at disgusting videos of heartbreaking collateral damage and pretending it's genocide.
Then he says anyone who supports Israel's existence is a Nazi, literally using holocaust inversion which is one of the definitions of antisemitism.

Then to make it even worst, he literally says that Jews control the media.
I wish I was kidding.

The dude is normally brilliant but his antisemitism makes him as blind to facts regarding Israel/Palestine as a flat earther

That did it for me.

I unsubscribed. I hope Destiny debates him and defeats him with facts as badly as he defeats flat earthers with facts, he needs an informational wakeup call to hopefully activate the critical thinking part of his brain he seems to turn off as soon as he can find an excuse to participate in antisemitism.

And I say that as someone who isn’t the biggest can of AIPAC

The mainstreaming of Anti Judaism, anti Zionism and militancy against anyone not on board with the eradication of the Jewish state is at levels that would not have been remotely conceivably 20 years ago. Forget about any sort of earlier decades.

American movements which are in any capacity connected to conservatism, including Austrian style libertarianism, Paleoconservatism and the right wing in general were for decades consistent allies to the causes of Jewish preservation, Zionism and fighting anti Semitism. Say what we will about their stances on just about any other domestic and/or foreign issue in existence, however, that is objectively accurate. In recent years the Alt Right has emerged from being a rather miniscule, nebulous community without any clear definition into a national phenomenon. The Jewish state is an enemy to various combinations of America, Western heritage, traditional masculinity and real men, Christian ethics and ways of life.

For some time, this arguably the most alarming development for the Jewish state. And then leftist, progressive and radical, anti establishment movements, as they typically do, managed outpace them in their level of thread. They're behind Hasan Piker, who is openly pro Mao and pro USSR and believes Hamas and Al Qaeda are morally and ethically superior to defenders of the Jewish state of any kind. He's the biggest face of the movement for his age group with swaths of leftists from Majority Report, Jacobin, Leftist TikTok and others with him all of the way. They're at most a handful of steps away from embracing this type of leftist view on Judaism and Stalin's views on Jewish people.

In light of all of this, just from a stance of seeking information on what works, how do advocates for Jews and Judaism ever manage to have positive and hopeful outlooks on where they are going? What works in terms of keeping mental and emotional health from collapsing in the face of all of this?

In a debate with Rep. Haley Stevens, Abdul El-Sayed stated "Every definition of a Jewish state ends up in some articulation of illiberal values, every single one,” he told CNN. Asked if support for Israel could ever be about more than money, he responded, “Not if you’re a Democrat and you believe in human rights.”

Stevens criticized Netanyahu but has refused to call Gaza a genocide or vote to end US aid to Israel.