Thread by @JKSteinberger

It's becoming clear to me how generalised Western Islamophobia has prevented "us" (media, politicians, public...) from truly understanding the violent, extreme Zionism that rules Israel. For instance:
1⃣ we recognise indoctrination of children by ISIS, but not by Zionist orgs.
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But Zionist organisations teach children false history and indoctrinate them into violence against Palestinians and Arabs more generally.
2⃣ we recognise violent terrorism as 'belonging' to Islam, but we fail to recognise the long patterns of violent terrorism ...
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associated with Zionism, including Nakba(s), domestic & international assassinations, harassment, participation in various conflicts.
3⃣ we understand how extreme factions in the Muslim world can take over entire societies and control them by propaganda, fear, ...
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and violence (Iran, Afghanistan ...), but for Israel, we assume that it is a liberal, progressive democracy, without recognising the very same aspects of anti-democratic extremist violence and coercion at play.
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I am sure there are other examples. My point is that our pervasive Islamophobic framework of Muslim = violent, backwards, indoctrinated, fanatic, and Jewish = liberal, educated, democratic, progressive, advanced, misleads us in understanding what is happening within Israel.
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This occurred to me in seeing how absolutely fanatical & glibly, triumphantly anti-human so many Israeli accounts on here are. It reminded me of the worst corners of far-right neo-Nazis, Trump & Putin supporters. These are people who sound as though they are indoctrinated ...
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into a cult of absolute fanaticism and violence. And my conclusion is that they *are* indoctrinated, that mainstream Zionism is such a violent fanatic ideology, but that somehow the Western world is incapable of recognising it as such because of our knee-jerk Islamophobia.
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And because our media and politicians are incapable of recognizing mainstream Zionism as a violent, fanatic cult, with a long history of indoctrination, terrorism and social control, they follow along and are (almost) all complicit in genocide.
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As usual, I am probably slow in figuring this stuff out. But it's why history of different Jewish movements, the violent history of Israel, and the takeover of what is now mainstream Zionism matter so much. They are the reality. Nothing is so dangerous to a cult as reality.
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I should add that as a half Jewish child, with Israeli family friends, I was exposed to some of this (land without a people for a people without a land, some children's books, etc). It took contact and friendship with Palestinians to learn that this was not, by far, ....
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the whole story. Many people here are learning a different history, but it is still not being communicated or acted upon by (most of) our media or politicians.
And another question no one dares to ask: what happens to millions of indoctrinated Zionists? What deradicalisation
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program could possibly work at that scale? These are people joyfully convinced & complicit in the worst violence. Facing reality would shatter their selves, their ways of life, the foundations of their existence. Many former Zionists will have to spend a considerable ...
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chunk of their lives working to figure this out: with what support, with what organisations?
Anyway. Free Palestine, and may the violent blot of Zionism be lifted from everyone in our lifetimes.
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