I need a place where I can talk rationally about Israel.

[NAF1138]

I am hoping I can do this here with people who are not just going to start screaming like on the SDMB or Facebook. This gets long and stream of conscious-y.

Short version: I am conflicted about Israel and my Judaism and my politics which all seem to be clashing and there doesn't seem to be a rational place to talk any of this out because it's all so loaded, even on my end.

The current goings on in Israel are extremely difficult for me to deal with, and by current I mean for the last several years.

I support Israel as a concept. I believe it needs to exist, and that its population has a right to continued existence. I do not support the current government or their tactics. I find them deeply troubling but, I understand them a little. From their perspective there are no shades of grey and all protesters are potential combatants. They are wrong, and should not be responding as they are, but I feel like the fundamental motivation for why they are reacting as they are to Palestinian protests is being ignored by people who are supporting Palestinians. I'm not sure what they think is motivating Israel, or if they think about it. I also wonder if they consider Hamas in all of this. . I had someone the other day tell me that, while Hamas may want the destruction of Israel they are simply a terrorist group and we should not pay attention to them. This made me sad.

But, that's not what I want to talk about in particular because, as a non Israeli I can't do anything about Israeli policy. I am frustrated by it, but I can not directly change it and am only indirectly effected by it. I have relatives in Israel (I have had family there since the 1800s), but I don't live there. But I am at my wits end because of the rise of American antisemitism on the left that seems to come from people who would go apoplectic if I told them they were being anti semetic. I had someone the other day tell me I was simply being too sensitive and that he doesn't hate anyone and we have to be able to be critical of Israel without being called anti semetic.but the Apartheid in Israel simply has to end. Yeah, calling what's happening in Israel apartheid is inherently antisemitic. That's not fair criticism, that's loaded language that places Jews in the position of white colonizers. I see images on Facebook (I know I know) of Nazis lining up Jews to be killed with the caption "What's the difference between an Israeli shooting into Gaza and Nazis shooting into Concentration Camps?" It makes me afraid. I see people on the left, in Democrat support Facebook pages say things like

SOMEONE HAS TO SAY IT.
Watching Fox News and all of there bullshit reasons to praise IQ45 for continued theft of the Palestinian property is insane.

1st of all most people do believe the holocaust happened and do feel compassion for the Jewish people. But how can you justify what is happening to the Palestinian people? After all it’s their land that has been seized by Israel. Nor you can compare it to what happened to black people during slavery. No one helped the black people seize another country, no one put black people on a pedestal as the most important people in the world.

The irony is that this is supposed to be a holy land. It's living proof that religion is the greatest cause of war. The leaders of the push to move this embassy are intentionally inciting war.

Wasn't Israel established in 1948 on land owned/occupied by Palestinians? That's the problem!! All the choosen people and holy land nonsense is hilarious... Besides, when does God need man's help?

Comparisons to apartheid and to Nazis are, frankly, disrespectful to the victims of those atrocities as well as the people in the current conflict. Talk about how this is proof that religion is evil, people bringing up "the chosen people" nonsense is similarly frightening and underscores my belief that there needs to be a Jewish homeland. I am more than troubled by the low key antisemitism of the left. The denial of Jewish personhood by the left is, to me, every bit as bad as the "Jews control the banks" propaganda being spread by the alt right. And the denial of Jewish personhood is the primary tactic of the Anti Israel left currently. " Jew are old white men questing to oppress the poor brown people in the middle east. Jews are just a religion. Why does there need to be a theocracy? Jews only care about other Jews.". These are things I hear people who I think of as friends say while saying that they need to be allowed to criticize Israel without being called anti Semitic because that's reductionist.

So, I am left feeling isolated and alone against what seems like a growing tide of hate on all sides. Because I know damn well that the right hates us too. I have experienced that form of antisemitism first hand. I had my daughter disinvited from a preschool because we were Jewish. I have had people tell terrible anti semetic jokes or casually use the word kike in front of me before finding out I was Jewish and then apologizing because "you don't look Jewish. I didn't know". I just can't even.

Add to all the the frustrating and troubling rise of holocaust denial on the left and the right and I am starting to feel trapped on a sides and that trapped feeling underlines my feeling that we need Israel. We need a place where Jews aren't a stereotype. Where Jews are just people. Where Jewish construction workers, and Jewish athletes, and Jewish garbage men and Jewish chefs are as normal as Jewish lawyers and doctors and Bankers because, Jews are just people there in all their shapes and sizes.

I don't know. I'm not sure what the point of all this was.

Hopefully there is a conversation to be had in and amongst all of that.