I saw this yesterday -- pretty solid demonstration that the anger and moral superiority of anti-Jewish bigotry and anti-Jewish protests have run throughout history
I wish they included the Farhud in Bagdad in 1941 showing that the myth that the creation of Israel is what created anti Jew violence in the Arab world is hollow. The Hebron Massacres in 1929 stoked with lies by a Palestinian leader who later became a deeply embedded Nazi collaborator and recruiter of Muslims for the SS shows that it was not the Jewish immigration to Israel which was the problem- this was a definitely indigenous ancient community. We could have followed other Pogroms in the middle east as well which demonstrated that Jewish safety was never guaranteed and always contingent.
That said, I watched a video yesterdays from the Lubavitcher Rebbe about his philosophy towards people who take anti-Israel or anti-Jew perspectives which embodied the care and outreach he extended towards non religious Jews.
He believed that through conversation and open-hearted connection, it's possible to help people see through antisemetism.
Now a little rant that anti-Semitism was created as a name for the League of Anti-Semites to help export antisemitism to the world. No Jew has ever called themselves a semite. Arabs are semites too. The purpose of believing anti-Semites was to package bigotry against Jews to be palatable to intellectuals and progressives.
I was reading the other day about Ellie Wiesel The widely respected intellectual, civil rights activist, and Holocaust survivor -- his stance about Israel at the end of his life. He deeply supported Israel, while empathizing for the plight of the Palestinians. At the same time, Elie Wiesel fundamentally viewed anti-Zionism as a modernized, thinly veiled expression of antisemitism. He argued that denying the Jewish people's right to statehood, while simultaneously advocating for the rights of all other nations, sought to isolate and dehumanize Jews by weaponizing the oldest hatred in history.
If nothing else, we can take the admission of a state the the UN as a permanent recognition of that state. For every state except Israel.
If you take the worst accusations: genocide, apartheid, racism, occupation, oppression -- even if entirely true ---- other enthostates accused of apartheid, genocide, occupation, oppression are not opposed with the anime sorry and demonization Israel is.
This to me is an angle that is worth addressing -- it takes I've seen 1000x the effort to disprove a lie than to state the lie. Therefore it is mostly futile to try to convince someone. However, I find it fascinating that even if the accusations were true, the level of global passion against Israel can actually only be explained by antisemetism since other arguments fall apart with examination of parallels.
The availability heuristics is at play here with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation documenting public agreements to trade votes with Authoritarian Regimes to support for example China's claim to Tibet and Xinjiang (genocide, occupation, destruction of religious sites, ethnic cleansing)
So much more, but I'll pause here for now 😅