It is so incredibly sad to hear that there is no amount of pain the people of Palestine can go through at the hands of the nation of Israel that would be enough to consider them as human as you and worth every protection you have. You cannot keep your humanity and support the state of Israel. It is plain to see to the whole world and if that bothers you, that is something you can change.
Y'know, I wasn't going to glorify this with an answer but I think I'll answer it once and never again.
The fact that a Jew talking about their relationship to Yisrael automatically translates in your mind to "this person sees Palestinians as less human" is something you need to unpack. I have made my hatred of Netanyahu and his cronies VERY open knowledge. The actions of the Israeli government have nothing to do with me.
I'm also American. I am not complicit in the crimes of my government by saying that I want the US to continue to exist. It is the only place in the world with consistent disability protections. It is the only place in the world I can sue (given the funds) if someone violates my rights as a disabled person, and be almost guaranteed to win. It is the only place in the world I could still be ALIVE, with the strange comorbidities in my health and the way they overlap. It is not inhumane of me to say that I support the continued existence of my country, and it is not supporting the crimes of our joke of a government to say so.
Israel is the only place in the world I am protected as a Jew. It is the only place in the world I can go, with no questions asked, and know that I will be safe from Antisemitic violence. It is the only place in the world where I do not have to fight for my right to observe my religion and all its laws. Where I do not have to violate my religious calendar to keep a job. Or to access healthcare. Or to go to school. It is not inhumane of me to say that I support the continued existence of my homeland, and it is not supporting the crimes of the Israeli government to say so.
Israel is a land that we have been chased from repeatedly throughout history, with no country willing to accept us. The Arabs were the ones who threw us out in the first place. It is the ONLY PLACE ON THE PLANET where we are protected by law innately. If it ceases to exist, we are once again a people with no home, on a planet that has hated us as long as they have needed a scapegoat.
Notice how I did NOT say that the Palestinians should be driven from their homes. How I did NOT say that they are less human than me. How I did NOT say that this war should have happened in the first place. That any of this is okay. That I think they do not deserve protections. Notice how NOWHERE in ANY POST I HAVE MADE have I said anything except that this has been solved already before. Twice now. If you read the history, you'd know that, actually. Twice, a 2-state solution was agreed upon. Twice, the agreement was destroyed by powerful parties that wanted each other destroyed - once by Shamir refusing to bargain with the PLO, and once by Hamas rewriting the arrangement to eliminate Israel, in line with their constitutional statement that all Jews should be eliminated.
Both groups have harmed each other over and over and OVER again, for centuries. First, Jews were murdered and chased from Israel by Palestinians. Centuries of conflict gave way to the events of the Shoah, and the UK giving us back Yisrael - and leading to modern-day Palestinians catching the brunt of thousands of years of resentment.
Today, the Israeli government and the terrorist organization claiming to represent the Palestinian people (Hamas) are at each other's throats. They are using the civilians under their control as pawns in a war that has been going on since we were Judean and Philistine, not Jewish and Palestinian. And people like you are taking the horror of it all and using it to feel righteous for having the "right opinion" on a conflict that does not impact you and that you know nothing about. You are taking the deaths and mutilations and suffering of these people and throwing it around to have someone it's acceptable to be angry at. And that someone is always going to be a Jew, because it's always BEEN us.
You do not know anything about my humanity, nor I of yours. But I can bet that the time I spend in actions of tzedakah and tikkun olam for the communities that house me is much more humane than harassing minorities online for being too nuanced for your tastes.
I'm gonna say it, since I'm sick and tired of tiptoeing around it. Yes, in the definition YOU have chosen, I am a Zionist. I think that Yisrael needs to exist. I think my people deserve to have one fucking place where we are safe on this fucking planet that hates us. And I think that we deserve to not be held responsible for the actions of a government we do not control.
Fuck off. I won't be addressing this again.
