u/Anglicanpolitics123

Given the fact that the scope of the horrors that is inflicted on the Palestinians is unavoidable, even for people who take a staunch Pro Israel stance. And so one of the things you have seen is a rhetoric that isolates individuals from structures of power. So you will hear "well I oppose Netanyahu and his current right wing government". Or "I think Israel is a major ally and I support its right to self defense but I think the extremist settlers go too far". The thing is, Netanyahu, and the extreme settlers didn't come out of no where. They came out of a system in place that actively dehumanizes Palestinians and we've seen rhetorical pattern when it comes to structures of oppression in the past.

During the Age of discovery when the genocide of the indigenous populations was taking place and you had certain people like the Dominican priest Bartolome De Las Casas documented those crimes many people in that age said "well we support the colonial project but we condemn some of the extreme abuses that individual conquistadors engaged in". During the abolitionist movement when the horrors of slavery were revealed you had many who defended the system of plantation slavery while condemning the "abuses" of individual masters. Same thing during Jim Crow segregation in the American South where they would condemn the extreme abuses of the KKK while leaving the system itself intact. Isolating individual actors or abuses in a system is a method of whitewashing said system.

Netanyahu and the extreme settlers aren't just a few bad apples. And they didn't just come out of no where. Netanyahu would not be able to do what he has done if all of the other PM's of Israel going back to Ben Gurion himself didn't set a pattern in place. There is a direct link between the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba under Ben Gurion's tenure and Netanyahu's current genocidal policies. And there is a direct link between the apartheid structures put in place in the occupied territories and the violent settler colonialism of the settlers.

Before I get into my points I'm just gonna say some preliminary things that I shouldn't have to waste time saying. Yes we should all oppose antisemitism in all of its forms, left, right, center, religious or secular. Yes no one should be unsafe because they are Jewish. Moving on to the argument, the idea that support for Israel hinges on Jewish people being safe might at the surface of it seem like a convincing argument but when you look at it more deeply it is a deeply flawed and unsound argument. And ironically the event that proves this to be the case of Oct 7th.

The Pro Israel crowd love to repeat that Oct 7th is the largest attack on Jewish people since WWII. Lets say we were to accept that framing of what took place. Where did Oct 7th take place? It didn't happen in Canada. It didn't happen in America. It didn't happen in Australia, or New Zealand or France or any other country. It happened in Israel. So if Israel supposedly keeps Jewish people safe how is it that the worst attack on Jewish people took place in Israel itself? Why is it that as a Jewish person you are more likely to face a lack of "safety" by living in the self identified Jewish state as oppose to living in other countries across the globe? Israel ironically enough is probably the most unsafe place you can live in as a Jewish person compared to other parts of the world

Now there are going be people who are going to reply to this facetiously by saying "well its because people hate Israel" missing the point. The state of Israel doesn't make Jewish people safe. It never has. It ties Jewish identity to a nationalist project that is rooted in power. But that's not the same as "safety". So the safety argument is very vacuous.

There are many different angles through which Israeli propaganda is spread and one of the angles that is used is the angle of LGBTQ issues. You see this all the time with those who say that because Israel is allegedly progressive on LGBTQ issues and womens rights that therefore there is liberal or progressive obligation to support them. Both the fallacies of this argument and the facts surrounding it need to be confronted so here is a challenge to this framing:

1)Occupation is not justified based on how liberal or conservative the occupier or occupied are

The framing of this argument is that because Palestinian society is socially conservative and Israelis are allegedly socially liberal, therefore somehow we should be supporting Israel's occupation of the Palestinians. Just think of how fallacious that line of reasoning is for a second. Imagine we were speaking of Apartheid South Africa. And we found out that White Afrikaners had socially liberal views on reproductive issues and homosexuality while Black South Africans and the surrounding African countries had socially conservative views on the same topics. Would that therefore mean that we are obligated to support the white supremacist system that the Afrikaners imposed on the black south africans? It's an absurd framing and yet this is what we are apparently expected to accept when it comes to the Palestinians. That because Palestinian culture is socially conservative therefore the dehumanizing system of occupation, institutionalized racism and denial of basic rights is justified. It's an a equals x logic that doesn't follow.

2)The Hamas throwing gay people off roofs myth

This is a big one that is repeated over and over again. By defending the Palestinians you are supporting people who throw gay people off roofs. Now, putting aside the notion that it is dishonest to think support for Hamas and being Pro Palestinian are automatically synonymous, due to the range of ideologies in the Palestinian nationalist movement, this statement is a propaganda talking point that is flat out false. It is rooted in video evidence from the 2010s that actually showed ISIS at the time engaging in summary executions in Iraq. So this is literally atrocity propaganda here

3)The British origins of current criminal law in Gaza

Palestinian Law as people should expect was impacted by the British colonial occupation from 1917-1948. One of the major pieces of Law that was introduced was the Criminal Code of 1936. Under that criminal code homosexual relations were criminalized with 10 years in prison. Now there are several ironies here. The first is that the Criminal Code Ordinance was passed as a means of "modernizing" the legal system in Palestine from the previous legal system that existed on the Ottoman Turks. The second is that in practice the Ottoman legal code actually legalized homosexual acts in the 19th century. In the name of "modernization" the British introduced a strict legal code on same sex acts and now you have people in the 21st century pointing the finger at these legal strictures to push an orientalist narrative about about the allegedly unenlightened Palestinian.

4)The Jordanian decriminalization in the West Bank

For those who know history during the 1948 war Israel captured what was then 78% of former Mandatory Palestine. The other 22% that was left was Gaza and the West Bank. Gaza was captured by the Egyptians and the West Bank was captured by Jordan. When Jordan occupied the West Bank they introduced the Jordanian Penal Code of 1951 which also governed Jordan that decriminalized same sex relations. Now why is this interesting. It's interesting because Israel didn't officially decriminalize homosexuality until 1988. So the supposedly "more enlightened" Israel that we are expected to support for pinkwashed reasons decriminalized same sex relations almost 40 years after it was already decriminalized in one of the Palestinian territories.

The last thing that I will say is this. Do LGBTQ Palestinians faced hardships and legitimate human rights struggles? Yes. That shouldn't be minimized. However the narratives around this should not be allowed to be weaponized to push Israel's brutal occupation of the Palestinian people unchallenged. These are propaganda narratives through and through.

When you listen to the Pro Israel crowd much of their arguments are rooted in many fallacies, half truths and deflection tactics. This has always been the case but increasingly in the face of the increasingly exposure of the genocide that has taken place there is a "throw anything at the wall" kind of quality that is becoming apparently as public support for Israel in many places. I want to go through some of these fallacies and half truths at a historical and logical level through the following examples:

1)You guys single out and protest Israel all the time. This shows you guys are antisemitic

The singling out argument is one that is thrown out all the time. It's basically this notion that if you critique Israel it must be because you're holding Israel to a standard you don't hold other nations. Now, anyone who has ever been a part of any type of Pro Palestine solidarity movement or knows anything about Palestinian nationalism knows that this is nonsense. When we talk about Palestinian nationalism historically, it has always been against occupation regardless of who the occupiers are. When the Ottoman Turks were occupying Palestine you had Arab Nationalist movements and local Arab groups in Palestine who protested Ottoman policies. Many Palestinian nationalists explicitly participated in the Arab revolt against the Ottomans. When the British were occupying Palestine Palestinian nationalists protested British policies of censorship, exile and restriction of movement among the populace. When other Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan occupied the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank even though they had a common Pan Arab cause with them they still resisted their attempts to dominate the Palestinians. In Gaza for example Egyptian authorities actually jailed Palestinian nationalist groups because they often times had a hard time controlling them and they were against Egyptian domination with some being tortured. In the West Bank when Jordan proposed to annex the West Bank that spawned such a fierce reaction among Palestinian nationalists that the Hashemite King Abdullah I was assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist. So irrespective of whether the identity of the occupier is Turkish, British, Jewish, or Arab Palestinians are against occupation. When we talk about the broader solidarity movement literally the same people I have seen who is at Pro Palestine rallies are the same ones who were at BLM protests, or protests for Native American and First Nations rights in a Canadian context. If you extend this more globally in places like the Pacific some of the same people who protest for the rights of Australian Aborigines and the Maori in New Zealand are the same ones who show up to pro palestine rallies. So this talking point is false.

2)Anti Zionism is antisemitism because it is a denial of Jewish self determination on their ancestral homeland. Furthermore anti zionists engage in antisemitic behavior

This critique is guilt of both the correlation causation fallacy as well as weaponizing identity politics to shield an ideology from criticism. First of all, Zionism is a nationalist and political ideology. The notion that any ideology can't be critiqued is absurd. The notion that a nationalist ideology in particular can't be criticized is ridiculous. The reality is that all other nationalist ideologies are subject to criticisms, including forms of nationalism that is ethnically or culturally based. In a Western context no one thinks you are a racist for critiquing Serbian nationalism. The Serbs have a history of oppression going back to the Ottomans. And they were placed in concentration camps in WWII. And yet in the context of the Bosnian genocide no one would say that critiquing Serbian nationalism is bigoted against Serbs. No one thinks you are automatically Russophobic in a Western context if you critique Russian nationalism, especially in the context of Ukraine. It isn't automatically considered racist if you have critiques of Black nationalism. Same thing when we speak about Arab Nationalism. In fact ironically enough in Arab and Palestinian circles there were intense debates about the role of nationalism in the first place. And yet for some reason this one nationalist ideology is meant to be held up as some sort of golden calf. Now have there been antisemitic expressions of anti zionism? Sure. We can look at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was the Bible of 20th century antisemitism. But there are racist critiques of many other nationalist ideologies. And yet we are allowed to critique those ideologies

3)Israel is surrounded by nations that want to wipe it out

This is the "surrounded on all sides" argument that is used to defend Israel by its supporters. Here's just a couple of problems with this argument. The first as a general historical observation, this argument is weaponized a lot by many nation states and political projects that have an oppressive, militaristic, chauvinist or genocidal ideology. The Nazis in WWII used the "surrounded on all sides" argument between the Western allies and the Soviets in the East to justify what they were doing in terms of Lebensraum. Apartheid South Africa used the same argument, saying that they were "surrounded on all sides" by hostile African nations as well as proxy groups for the Soviet Union and that was used as an excuse to have Western nations in the Cold War prop it up. The second problem with this argument is that in a 2026 context it's factually incorrect. Since the 1970s Israel has had diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbors. They have a treaty with Egypt which brings them into such a close working relationship with them that the Egyptian government assists them in the blockade of Gaza. They have a treaty with Jordan. Now with the Abraham Accords they have treaties with many of the Gulf States. So this notion they are "surrounded" in the current reality is nonsense.

4)Israel pulled out of Gaza and all they got for it was constant rocket attacks

This is one of the arguments that is suppose to apparently show Israel's generosity. They pulled out of Gaza apparently and in response they received relentless attacks from Gaza. Here's the problem with this argument. It doesn't tell the full story of Sharon's disengagement plan. Sharon's disengagement plan did indeed withdraw Israel's infantry and settlements from Gaza. What it did not do however is end control of Gaza's airspace as well as the ports for what can go in and out. Now here's the thing. If this was any other movement would people accept those conditions? If during the American revolution the British pulled their infantry from the Thirteen colonies but still retained control of Americas ports does anyone seriously think the founding fathers would stop fighting? If during Israel's own independence war the British pulled their infantry from Mandatory Palestine but still had the RAF control Israel's airspace and retained control over the movement of people and goods in and out of Mandatory Palestine would the Israeli nationalist militias stop the insurgency they had against the British? And yet for some reason this standard is expected of the Palestinians. Furthermore the other side of Sharon's disengagement plan was that the settlement blocs of the West Bank would be annexed to Israel as part of a final status agreement. That in itself is a problem because any final status agreement was either bi or multilateral in terms of its approach to all issues on the table including settlements. So this is fake generosity.

5)When they use the term colonialism it had a different meaning back then

This is one of the arguments put forward to try and rebut the charges that Israeli nationalism is rooted in settler colonialism. When they are confronted with obvious quotes from figures such as Jabotinsky who in his Iron Wall essay explicitly speaks about "Zionist colonialism" they say "well that word meant something different". Now lets think about this for a second. The early Israeli nationalist movement was using the term "colonialism" the way it was used in a 19th and early 20th century context. So presumably if we can't use the word the way it is used now, then we'd have to use it the way it was used back then right? Well what's the context of how it was used "back then". It was used in the context of events such as the Scramble for Africa by the European powers, the colonization of the Western prairies through the Numbered treaties of the Canadian government, and the colonization of Indo China by the French. Now would anyone think say for instance that because the word "colonialism" meant something "different" back then that we could not call what King Leopold did in the Congo colonialism? Or that what the British were doing in Kenya was colonialism? The analogy is apt because these colonial projects were taking place right when the Israeli nationalist movement was budding.

6)It can't be genocide because if it was they would have wiped out all the Palestinians. Furthermore Palestine has population growth

This argument is absurd on multiple levels. First a genocide isn't simply wiping out everyone in a population. It is the intent to destroy "in whole or part" the key word being "in part". Furthermore genocide does not only have to be physical. There is cultural genocide, biological genocide, and the intent to create conditions of life that make things unlivable for a population. All of those things are genocidal actions. Furthermore population growth taking place during a genocide does not mean genocide did not take place. In East Timor for example the Indonesian army carried out a genocidal campaign where 200,000 men, women and children were exterminated. And yet there was population growth that took place from 5-600,000 to around 1 million by the end of the occupation in the 90s.

There are many many other fallacious arguments and half truths but these are a couple of examples of this.