this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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I've had multiple family members deployed to active warzones.

Whenever we talked about war, it was never about politics. It was always "X's tour is supposed to finish next month," or "I heard something happened near [town], wasn't X deployed near there?"

I know how everyone talks about it on the internet, but what is it like for you at home?

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[–] whoisearth 97 points 6 days ago (1 children)

My ex is Jewish and my kids are half Jewish. Our discussions have been focused on the fact that what Netanyahu is doing has been making Jews less safe around the world. anti-Semitism is rising because of the fact he is murdering innocent people and children

My kids are less safe because of the Israeli PM and his Zionist government

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

I wonder if they admit that other prime ministers been oppressing Palestinians too and resulted Hamas throwing rockets toward Israel

[–] [email protected] 22 points 5 days ago

My family overwhelmingly supports the genocide and the Israeli government. My father even thinks they arent going far enough and my mother just wants it to look pretty. The majority of Jewish people (especially religious people) see not only Palestinians but all muslims as lesser people.

Im not intrested in hearing "not all Jews" like its supposed to make me feel better because it doesn't. It just whitewashes real issues and fundamental problems with the Jewish community. The simple fact that Zionists control Jewish education and own most Jewish institutions, and they use it to spread hate.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 days ago

Its a genocide, not a war

[–] [email protected] 57 points 6 days ago

Not a Jew, but my family's Jewish, and it's about as difficult as you'd expect. They get offended by the slightest implication that maybe Israel isn't perfect, assume I support Hamas just because I'm opposed to the IDF killing children - to clarify, I'm opposed to anyone killing children, including Hamas. We don't talk about it that much though.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I know my family are raging Zionist so I don't even bring it up.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How did you manage to differ?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 days ago

🤷 The woke mind virus got me.

I think it comes down to exposing myself to other people and their perspectives. As a teen I was as racist as any Zionist. Once I moved away from home and met people from outside of my insulated Zionist/Jewish community I started hearing other perspectives. This led me to take a serious look at Zionism and the state of Israel including how they operate to maintain apartheid. I didn't like what I saw, I tend to be an empathetic person so it really hurt to see my people and culture I identified with take part in these Injustices.

What followed was years of deprogramming and the painful process of coming to terms with the fact that Israel were the bad guys in this scenario. I grew up in the West Bank on a settlement so the roots went deep and they were painful to RIP out. A great eye opening book I read was "A Day In The Life Of Abed Salama". It really helped connect the puzzle pieces and pull down the propaganda curtain that I experienced growing up in a Jewish settlement.

Also my parents were born in the 60s so probably lead poisoning right?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I’m an American atheist Jew, and I’ve had conversations with my (converted) mother about it. She’s pretty solidly on Israel’s side, but she’s also not very educated about the conflict. She just kinda goes by the mainstream media’s narrative and doesn’t think too much beyond that. When I present her with information, she’s horrified and agrees with me that “Israel is going too far,” but it never results in her thinking the U.S. should stop sending them money. She hates Netanyahu and his conservative government, but she’s very hung up on Hamas being a terrorist organization. And I suppose I am too, to be honest. I want a free Palestine and for the Israeli settlers to be expelled, but I don’t want to support Hamas and I think they should pretty much be eradicated. I’m just much more willing to condemn Israel for their actions than she is; she’s very caught on the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself from Palestinian terrorism, and has a hard time seeing that it’s gone way past that at this point.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago

Hamas being a terrorist organization.

For what it is worth the Warsaw Uprising and the Yugoslavian Partizans were also terrorist uprisings against their legal governments that were committing a (technically legal) Holocaust.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (6 children)

Just wanted to say you're getting a skewed picture of people's opinions, as Lemmy isn't popular / well known at all in Israel.

The absolute majority of Jews in Israel are united in wanting the hostages back (currently 58, of which an estimated half are still alive).

A lot want that and to end the war ASAP, not for any real concern for the Palestinians, but for the troops, the economy, and world image.

A lot want to keep going to eradicate Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis to prevent October 7th from ever happening again.

It's difficult to be pro Palestinian when your friends and family have been slaughtered or held hostage by a (seemingly) unprovoked attack against soldiers and civilians.

The Overton window in Israel doesn't currently allow it, though things might have been changing very recently.

At least here, we don't discuss it much in the same way we don't discuss the mountain near town; it's there, we can't move it, shrug your shoulders, it's part of the landscape.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Important distinction that might help you: Being against this war doesn't make you "Pro Palestinian," it just makes you anti-war, and especially, anti-genocide. On the flip side, being anti-war/ anti-genocide doesn't make you anti-Semitic.

Genocide is NEVER justified.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

This is a lengthy question, but it comes from a place of positive intent and genuine inquiry.

As someone stateside with Jewish friends in JVP as well as Palestinian sympathies of my own, this is context that I'm missing. I read about the refusenik movement and the Likud Party's stances on conscientious objectors. And similarly, Holocaust denial on the Hamas side and openly cidal rhetoric. I read a bit about the original treaty between Mohammed and the other local tribes, as it was a founding document for sharia law. As a result, the subsequent Jewish exile shaped the lives and culture of the diaspora. Not just their religion, but their philosophy and morality. The genocide of the Holocaust led a number of German and European Jews to be given the option--from the bloodied hands of the Nazi regime--an opportunity to instead be deported to Palestine as part of the Haavara agreement. The following Nakba, what Israel describes as the War of Independence, was described by neutral parties in the region as a massacre by extreme-right settlers who killed Palestinian Arabs (regardless of religious denomination) and Jewish sympathizers equally. Subsequent laws drawing the lines of Israel by the 1948 lines drew Palestinian Arabs as blatant second class citizens in what I, as an outsider, percieve as a reflection of Sharia law. Gaza's creation as an open air prison complex is, by national convention, a collective punishment.

This is the context as far as I understand it. Forgive the gaps in my knowledge, I'm a white American with no religious or familial ties to either. But if both the Israeli system treats non-Jews as an other to be eliminated, and the pro-Caliphate extremists favor nearly identical conditions for non-Muslims, which is better? Each regime results in an apartheid-driven ethnostate. Each party having, at one point or another in the past several hundred years, perpetrated several wars and genocides against one another in a struggle for a piece of land that has formed the axis of every major Abrahamic religious conflict since the 8th century, is... a lot.

Is returning a genocide for a genocide right? Is it equitable to vow the extermination of an outsider as vengeance for a crime that their great grandparents don't remember? Obviously, my fluency in both cultures is severely limited, and I'm trying my best to understand. But if the sanctity of life and the forgiveness of one's enemies are values held by both cultures, what is the catalyst for this genocide as it stands currently?

If this sounds like an attack, I swear it isn't. I haven't had a conversation with someone actually from Israel concerning the matter, believe it or not. So my picture of the situation has been incomplete. Obviously, this was never about October 7th. This started long before that. But where, and when? And why?

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