Thread by @sunnshiiny

This is an interesting thread that I’m going to use to illustrate current affairs in Israel.

The farther left are struggling with whom to support during this Palestinian Israeli conflict. They’re struggling with cognitive dissonance.

https://twitter.com/genevievejoelle/status/1395050655765590017

Characteristic of the further left is the desire to view the world through binary thinking. Good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust.

Nuance and grey areas are forbidden. So a fissure has emerged between those who support Palestine and those who defend Israel.

It’s a curiosity to witness those who attempt to impose simplicity onto a complex and complicated situation. You can almost feel the angst this is causing within the progressive camp.

Support Jews who have been persecuted for millennia or Palestinians, indigenous to the region?

It’s a tough choice. There are arguments on both sides to foster allegiance and support or condemn as unnecessary violence.

Which is why nuance is so important. Politics is not simple & using black and white thinking makes problems difficult to assess & analyze.

There’s no doubt Netanyahu is orchestrating genocide. There are some who would argue it’s self defence. But there are a multitude of defence strategies that don’t involve extermination of people who have had their land stolen out from under them.

Zionism is a form of imperialist colonialism.

After several losses to warring invaders and displacement from the lands known as Israel and Judea, most Jews were driven out of ancient Judea by the Romans in 70 CE.

Jews emigrated to Europe & Northern Africa. The Jewish Diaspora emerged as a distinct culture.

Until the resurgence of Zionism, Jews didn’t have a homeland for about 2000 years, many much longer.

Claims to the land base are politically motivated & backed by biblical beliefs.

But few want to discuss this reality.

After centuries of persecution, 19th century Jews dreamed of returning to a homeland.

British Christian leaders agreed to arrange for Jews to regain a homeland and encourage resettlement in Palestine for Jewish citizens.

The establishment of a Jewish homeland resulted from a desire to decrease the Jewish population in Europe and for Jews to have a land base to return to using the long held Jewish Old Testament belief that Jews are god’s chosen people and Israel was given to Jews by god.

In the past, religious dogma was used conveniently to solve political difficulties by both Jews and Christians. And that’s led to the difficulties in contemporary geopolitics.

Maintain a land base for Jews at the expense of Muslim Palestinians.

So Zionism was British supported imperialist colonialism from its inception.

There are global leaders who consider it their purview to decide the fate of millions with the stroke of a pen. A small elite group of Christian white men who use their wealth & power with impunity.

And so it’s been for millennia.

Well, until the Enlightenment and growing sense of personal agency and human liberty.

To understand the current situation in Israel, you must understand the history of Christian imperialism through the ages.

That’s nuance.

Christian leaders conquered most of Europe. Most residents converted to Christianity, many by force. But not the Jews. They had a separate identity untethered to a land base and worked diligently to maintain cultural and religious relevance separate from Christianity.

The Jews also had experience and knowledge in finances and banking. And they were unrestricted by Christian religious limitations for exchange of money.

In other words, they competed with the white Christian elite leadership for wealth and power.

Many Jewish communities practiced a form of proto-democracy (every individual was equal before god) long before Christian communities of Europe who were dominated by feudalism, a particularly harsh form of autocratic patriarchal hierarchy.

Long the literate academics and philosophical thinkers, Jews heavily influenced and were influenced by the Enlightenment.

Encouraged to assimilate by Enlightenment thinking, Jewish scholars entered gentile society.

Not always with success.

A complementary Enlightenment movement within the Jewish community expanded Jewish academe to include more than study of religious texts. The same occurred in the mainstream gentile Enlightenment.

A significant move away from the authority of the religious leadership.

This has been the source of tensions between traditional religious dogma and the leaders who espouse faith over reason AND modern democracy that embraces science, personal liberty, secularism and humanism.

Most progressives don’t know why they believe in personal liberty, egalitarianism, the elimination of poverty, the social contract, and the separation of the state and religion. This is why. Because of the Age of Enlightenment and the Christian & Jewish academics who promoted it.

And it’s this conflict between the traditional elite powers of the religious leaders and aristocracy vs the commons that has dominated political conflict for centuries.

This is the foundational conflict that has contributed to the Israel Palestinian conflict.

The “moderates” are not interested in true democracy. They prefer autocratic power, based in deism, which is not challenged and has a democratic veneer applied to seem like democracy.

Those that are humanist, secular and democratic prefer the elimination of religious influence.

The Israel Palestine conflict is drenched in religious overtones. Jews have no secular legitimate claim to a land base they were driven from 2000-2500 years ago. But both traditional Jews and evangelical Christians maintain the Jews are god’s chosen people of the Old Testament.

Making it almost impossible for progressives and conservatives to challenge that rationalization with a well established religious tolerance taboo forbidding the challenge of religious beliefs.

Progressives are divided over which cultural group is worthy of the lands known as Israel or Palestine.

Imperialism vs indigenous land claims.

There is exceptional cognitive dissonance trying to understand the claims and reciprocal violence on both sides.

Palestinians were driven from a land base they’ve occupied since before the common era to solve Europe’s Jewish “problem.”

Segregated, persecuted.

There is no confusion whose land it is.

But the elephant in the room (biblical reasoning) prevents us from resolving the issue.