Their comment got buried but they're right about one thing - they do exist, in numbers. I think less than they suspect, but still.
I'm still reeling from a conversation I had with an Israeli man 3 days ago where he repeatedly insisted to me that "everyone is racist" and that I just wouldn't admit I'm racist because I'm woke. He assured me that Israel knows what it's doing in Gaza is bad but it won't stop because all Israelis are racist (his words). I have never visited Israel but such a claim seems absurd to me on the face but he was so confident that it did make me wonder - there probably are a great many racists in Israel, trained from generations of propaganda to hate their neighbors and believe in zero sum tribalist thinking. It made me realize I probably should learn about deradicalization.
I'm also now thinking a lot about how to handle racists. He kept pressing one particular question to me - "Israel won't stop. So what do you do?" As an optimistic anarchist my hope was always deradicalization leading to, you know, Israel stopping. Or convincing the Americans to stop giving them weapons which forces them to actually be friendly to their neighbors rather than to try to kill them all. But when I brought this up to him he said "no, Israel will never stop. I didn't know Palestine existed until I was twelve, I always was taught Israel is a big square."
So, I don't know what to do about weaponized racists, but I think I should like to figure it out before the radicalization methods applied to the Israeli population are adopted elsewhere.
Well that's the gist of the conversation I had with the guy. He often pushed the point, "if what Israeli is doing is so bad, why don't any countries come to take away all the Palestinian refugees?" I'm happy to hear Israeli citizens don't want to hunt Palestinians down, but wanting them expelled and not caring how it happens is barely better.
Their comment got buried but they're right about one thing - they do exist, in numbers. I think less than they suspect, but still.
I'm still reeling from a conversation I had with an Israeli man 3 days ago where he repeatedly insisted to me that "everyone is racist" and that I just wouldn't admit I'm racist because I'm woke. He assured me that Israel knows what it's doing in Gaza is bad but it won't stop because all Israelis are racist (his words). I have never visited Israel but such a claim seems absurd to me on the face but he was so confident that it did make me wonder - there probably are a great many racists in Israel, trained from generations of propaganda to hate their neighbors and believe in zero sum tribalist thinking. It made me realize I probably should learn about deradicalization.
I'm also now thinking a lot about how to handle racists. He kept pressing one particular question to me - "Israel won't stop. So what do you do?" As an optimistic anarchist my hope was always deradicalization leading to, you know, Israel stopping. Or convincing the Americans to stop giving them weapons which forces them to actually be friendly to their neighbors rather than to try to kill them all. But when I brought this up to him he said "no, Israel will never stop. I didn't know Palestine existed until I was twelve, I always was taught Israel is a big square."
So, I don't know what to do about weaponized racists, but I think I should like to figure it out before the radicalization methods applied to the Israeli population are adopted elsewhere.
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> 80% of Israelis voted to continue bombing Gaza until everyone was dead
No, they did not.
A single poll given by an Israeli newspaper found that 82% of people who took the poll supported the "expulsion" of Palestinians.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-28/ty-article-ma...
They even explicitly noted that those specifically calling for death was a minority.
Well that's the gist of the conversation I had with the guy. He often pushed the point, "if what Israeli is doing is so bad, why don't any countries come to take away all the Palestinian refugees?" I'm happy to hear Israeli citizens don't want to hunt Palestinians down, but wanting them expelled and not caring how it happens is barely better.
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