Let me be clear: first off, I’m no antisemitic, but I am an anti Zionist, I’m anti Zionist because I support Palestinians’ autonomy and freedom from the state oppression and violence coming from the Israeli state. I do not support the continued occupation of the homeland. From sea to sea, Palestine must be free. I feel comfortable saying Israel is a racist state the same way I say this country is. It’s at its core from its inception been racist, just as with Israel.
So for the Democratic party to condemn their colleague for calling Israel out on being racist is laughable. She had it right the first time, there need not be any walking back your statements. Now of course, when she referred to the state, she wasn’t mentioning every human living in that country, but rather the state and its policies, its policy makers, its actions and violence. The state of Israel is imbued with racism, thus making it a racist state. Same with the USA. Its inception is rooted in racism, its policies and actions, laws and policy makers have routinely acted in racist ways, making the current police state we live in racist as the police who enact violence on behalf of the dominant socioeconomic class.
You can 100% be pro Jew and be anti the Zionist idea of maintaining occupation of Palestine and enacting violence and state repression. Stop blindly supporting Israel as if it was support of the Jewish people. The prime minister is a racist, he’s constantly been on the far right in policy making and his agenda, and just recently had his whole country protesting his actions. We must remember the old adage: “all skin folk ain’t kin folk” — by this we mean just because we look the same (maybe even had the same struggle in ways), don’t make us alike or you looking after my best interests. In this sense, just because the people of that country have endured their own oppression and violence over the years, doesn’t absolve them of their government’s current sins. Just because their prime minister is Jewish, doesn’t mean he’s for the people or progress. We’ve seen a party in Sweden with deep neonazi ties come to power, we seen a woman in Italy come to power with a base in Mussolini’s fascist ideology. All people who may look like us or have gone through a struggle don’t make them for us. Same with policy, all policy changing ain’t positive.
We can look at home with regards to the George Floyd changes to ban certain practices and no knock warrents on behalf of Breonna Taylor or even body cams. These policy changes were no more than appeasements long overdue mind you and without addressing real changing to policing. Body cams were never something meant for the accountability of police; rather, it was tauted as something for officers to back themselves up in their narrative. The slogan the company used to pitch body cams to police was “when something happens, everyone sees a side of the story — make sure its yours” it wasn’t meant to make US feel safer, but for police to have their own ability to say “look I feared for my life”.
We look at prison “reform” as well when there was a huge push to get prisoners to stop fighting fires for the state. Well, those same people like doing that, for the skills they get the freedom they’re allowed to have at the fire camp rather than the walls of OSP, the lack of cops and actually working with people. The same as when we look at divesting from prisons, like our Governor did here in Oregon, rather than taking from the wages of these overpaid babysitters with badges and racist ways they took from the food budget. Meaning we get smaller portions, and older, worse meat than we already get.
So we must be ever vigilant that when we make demands and fight for what’s right, we must make sure we’re not getting the wool pulled over our eyes or appeased. But I digress, in the same way I didn’t feel more comfortable or safe or less oppressed in this country just because we had a black president, your support shouldn’t be thrown to some leader and their oppressive state because they’ve been oppressed before.
Stay woke comrades.