#Americans shedding a reaction to the evils of the Holocaust is absolutely a bad thing for American Jews

[coolmachetefacts]

Something zoomers and less informed millennials struggle with is that support for Israel has been baked into American society for decades and really only in the last ten years has that meaningfully changed.

The process has inarguably been going on longer than that, but has been most obvious to the lay observer for about a decade. Particularly, Trump made Israel a partisan issue. Trump brought to America the vicious hate of blood and soil Zionism. It's hard to fully encapsulate how much damage Trump's support for Israel did to the works of hasbara. Honestly, it's depressing.

More critically still, Christian Zionism—a necessarily antisemitic belief—has become the primary form of vocal support for the Israeli state. I don't particularly believe the average gentile is reacting to the plenary evil of the Evangelical beyond how loathsome they are or, indeed, their antisemitism in any meaningful way, but as with the reaction to Trump, at least we've gotten here.

Prior to around the turn of the century, American support for Israel was part of a cultural and political reaction to the Holocaust. Even different from a lot of powers in Europe that had found in a Jewish state an answer to their Jewish question, the United States was among several nations to make a blunt, direct statement about allyship with Israel as a deviation from historical antisemitism locally and abroad. Now, all but our most vicious antisemites claim to be Zionists and, vitally, Israel embraces them.

More notable still is how a reified, non-ideological form of anti-Zionism has taken root in American society. This, in particular, is a very new development.

Truthfully, I am deeply suspicious of any gentile who calls themselves an anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism and Zionism both are ideologies with historical roots nearly two centuries old. Anti-Zionism is not merely a dislike of revanchism and far-right nationalism—things one should not need a deeper body of thought to dislike.

Nonetheless, where gentile anti-Zionism was once primarily a form of thinly-veiled antisemitism (it still is in many cases), it has seen more and more use by people seeking a specific term for their hate of state violence, which has further crystallized the change in the perception of Israel.

This, not just some mindless love of death, is why there is such a notable cleaving between the generations on the issue of Israel in the US.

#Israel #Anti-Zionism #Zionism #it's obviously more complicated than this #but I am not jamming out a book on tumbr dot fart with my thumbs #if I'm being honest #Americans shedding a reaction to the evils of the Holocaust is absolutely a bad thing for American Jews