u/TheTruthIsRight

I wrote this as someone who was originally anti-zionist, but very much involved in decolonization and indigenous rights advocacy. I had a change of mind and I explain my reasoning and a better way to undersstand the premise of the conflict (link to the article below).

Jews are not just white people with a Jewish religion, they are a displaced Levantine people. Arabs are not just innocent natives, they are the descendants of Caliphates that colonized the entire MENA region. Israel is not acting in service of settler-colonialism, it is acting in service of decolonization. There was so much more that I was never told, and so never considered. I was lied to.

I couldn’t justify perpetuating things I knew to be false. And it irked me to see others, people I respected, continue to repeat the same fallacies I was believing. Ever since, I’ve felt compelled to set the record straight.

There came a point, it was May 2021 during a flare up between Israel and Hamas, where I saw familiar anti-zionist misinformation circulating everywhere I looked. I spoke up publicly and talked about my change in views, and naturally, took massive blowback, public shaming, and a lot of blocks on social media. However, credit to the people who respect my difference in views, and are still willing to have a civil dialogue on the subject.

That said, I often find discussing the war (and thus claims of genocide, apartheid, etc) to be unproductive. People are less inclined to think critically about the conflict, if the premise of the conflict is unjustifiable to them (eg. settler-colonialism).

So instead, I find it far more productive to go to the root, to the same things that led to me changing my mind, that is, understanding indigeneity as it applies here.

https://medium.com/@tony.masiuk/indigeneity-ethnogenesis-jews-and-arabs-why-zionism-is-actually-decolonial-d90aff8f15f9