Thread by @DecolonizePS

In light of #JennaOrtega boosting DecolonizePalestine, a Times of Israel blogger was “horrified” and set out to smear the website, calling it antisemitic propaganda and Jenna ignorant at best.

We went through his terrible blogs so you don’t have to!

As expected, the blogs offer no actual refutation of any of the points made, and does what amounts to throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Yes, Yizhak Rabin was by any definition a war criminal. He led a literal death march where hundreds died.

It wasn’t us who founded our movement in Basel or established a colonial trust and a colonization department.

Nor would we ever infantilize Palestinians who resisted their ethnic cleansing as he does here with the sneering “pacific” descriptor.

It was the original Zionist founders who called us barbarians and “useless Kushim” to justify dispossessing us.

This language of racial and moral superiority is the same-old rhetoric of colonial justification.

None of this is even implied on the website. This is a complete imagined position that the author projects onto us so he can dismiss us without addressing the points raised.

This is not the only time he resorts to this while accusing us of “rhetorical tricks”.

This can be clearly seen here, where he calls the website full of “antisemitic tropes”. You’d think if they were so abundant he would be able to quote a few.

If he read anything about “shadowy operators” it is only because he wills it onto the text.

We also noticed how he conveniently mixes and matches, replacing words such as “Israeli” or “Zionist” with “Jew” to completely misrepresent arguments, putting words in our mouths not mentioned anywhere on the site.

Saying that our sources are either inaccessible or debunked is laughable, we link to rigorous scholarship that can be verified from multiple sources.

We apologize that the notion of old primary sources is foreign to you.

For all the claims about “lies” nothing is actually contested or refuted. Just a general assurance that the whole site is full of lies, and antisemitism, and the plague so just avoid.

(Yeah Haaretz is only left-wing through the reactionary lens of Israeli politics)

Setting aside the inflammatory smear, this is not even what the articles are about. These supposed “good things” he is referring to are critically taken apart, revealing that their outwardly progressive veneer is a farce.

What is admirable about nightclubs on top of destroyed villages?

How is dumping sewage and uprooting olive trees compatible with being a so-called “leader on environmental protections”?

P.S. Redwashing was about the idea of early Kibbutzim being socialist and current claims of Zionism being compatible with leftism. It has nothing to do with this fever dream of an ultra-progressive Israeli government structure.

(As you welcome Netanyahu as PM for the 6th time)

Israel could only exist because of the destruction of Palestinian society.

It is natural for people living under this status quo to want to reject it and its colonialism.

Guy who only knows how to scaremonger about Hamas: Getting a lot of Hamas vibes from this.

What is actually “horrifying” to the author, is that support for Palestinians outside the failed two-state paradigm is becoming more mainstream. That Palestinian dispossession is no longer seen as a given as has been for so long.

Anyway, free Palestine and consider becoming a patron to keep a Times of Israel blogger mad.
patreon.com/decolonizepale…