I have been reading and watching some of the interviews of Gideon Levy, who is a well-know journalist and author in Israel. 

He actually enlightened me to understand an angle I was missing. I always believe that humans – in general – have good hearts. It is almost impossible- unless brainwashed- to judge a population by the actions of their leaders. 

What is mind-blowing to me in light of the known history of occupation and engineered ethnic cleansing (also according to some Israeli historians) is that I can only count a handful of Israeli people who are vocal about the violations of human rights their armed forces are committing to Palestinians for decades. So, what is the secret here?

It is only when I read and listened to people like Gideon Leavy, Ilan Pappe, Omer Bartov and few others that I am coming to realize the root cause. I also come to similar conclusion that the change of Israeli population’s perception need an external push from a super power like the US and Europe.

I like the way Levy portrayed this. Few points to summarize some of his talks:

A. “The Israeli society has surrounded itself with shields, with walls, not only physical walls but also mental walls.” Levy portrayed 3 principles enabling Israelis to live in peace with the occupation:

1 – Most of the Israelis, if not all of them, deeply believe that we are the chosen people. And if we are the chosen people, we have the right to do whatever we want. 

2 – Victimization: there was never in history an occupation in which the occupier presented himself as the victim—not only the victim, but the only victim around. This also enables any Israeli to live in peace, because we are the victims.

3 – (the most dangerous) the systematic de-humanization of the Palestinians, which enables us Israelis to live in peace with everything because if they are not human beings like us, then there is not really a question of human rights.

“And if you scratch under the skin of almost every Israeli, you will find it there. Almost no one will treat the Palestinians as equal human beings like us.”

B. A corrupt friendship

It was pointed out by Levy and others that Israel lobby in the US is both corrupting Israel and US societies. “I think that we are dealing with a corrupting friendship. I think that if it weren’t for the Israel Lobby, Israel would have been today a better place to live in. Israel would have been a more just place. And I think that if it weren’t for the Israel Lobby, the United States would have been a better place and a more democratic place. “
Although this may sound as an exaggeration and I need to dig deeper into AIPAC and other Israeli lobbies actions, I am inclined to believe it especially when I read a 2022 AIPAC tweet that 95% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their elections!

C. Hope for change?
Levy and others seem to feel desperate that a change in the mindset would come from within; his argument is due to the consistent brainwash the medial is causing inside Israel, but he also gave another reason that current generation feel very comfortable.

“the chances that change will come from within the Israeli society are so limited. When the brainwashing system is so efficient and life is so good, why would Israel go for any change? What is the incentive?”

He puts hope that super powers would exercise some pressure on Israel just like how US push pressure on some countries to improve human rights condition using US funding to those governments as a leverage.

More to come on digging deeper into this, but here are links to some of the interesting talks:

On Israel lobby

https://youtu.be/JQS-_9K5-Dk?si=ecu7xcxiQ7irQwj8

Most western media outlets are using this title to distract people from the other facts related to “Genocide practices against Palestinians“ or “killing of 4000+ children “ or “Bombing all hospitals”

Roughly speaking, Israel is killing 70+ kids per one Hamas individual. Does that make sense to any human?

Using the title “Israel-Hamas War” and the fact that the US announced Hamas as a “terrorist organization” gives the misinformed audience a bias towards acceptance of any casualties as long as they are relevant to the “terrorist” side.

But also what about those being killed and kicked out of their homes by settlers in the West Bank? No worries, no body is watching and we can find explanations later, or just call those “terrorists”

The stupidity here is thinking that killing all those civilians wins you anything. On the contrary it promotes more hate and those who grew up without their parents and loved ones will form resistance 2.0, 3.0 …etc. No sane human would approach this problem like that.

Any wisdom from leadership?!

I still see hope that intellectuals and youth will resist this madness. What I’m sure of is that Israeli leadership are far from doing what is in the best interest for any human.

Watch this analysis by Prof. Omer Bartov (Brown University), who is an Israeli American fought in 1973 war.

Follow your humanity and open your imagination when reading this.

A. Creating an open air prison for Palestinians

You read in the news (both sides are aligned here) that Israeli occupation is shutting water/electricity and reducing or eliminating supplies going to Gaza.
You should not just read this without thinking, in what world a country has such a control on a population of ~2 million people?!
Aside from the current war, what would you call a place where an authority has this kind of control? A prison!
Gaza is like this (a prison controlled by Israel) since 2007.
Open your imagination and assume you have grown in Gaza, how would you view your prisoners? Would you try to do your best to break out of it?
All you have to do is look up UN reports and human rights reports about the living conditions in Gaza.

After you do your homework, you will ask yourself, why? Does this promote peace or hate?

B. Apartheid system cannot be a democratic

Israel has three regimes split by the ethnicity of people: Jewish Israeli, non-Jewish Israeli, and Palestinians (look this up or check resources below including human rights reports). Obviously, democracy cannot mix with discrimination.

So when our president said:
“We will make sure the Jewish and democratic State of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.”

“Jewish” and “democratic” cannot merge together. It doesn’t matter though, all what it takes is digging human rights reports from inside Israel to figure it out. I would appreciate Biden to instead just say “I support Zionism”

C. US supports Apartheid system!
A child is killed and 2 are injured every 10 minutes!
In a moral world this doesn’t make any sense, and has to be condemned and brought to justice. However, we are far from that, we are supporting and paying our tax to this regime. Thanks to our priorities towards imperialism and the corruption/influence of foreign apartheid governments on our policies.

I have seen AIPAC bragged in their tweet from 2022 “More than 95% of AIPAC-backed candidates won their election last night! Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!”

This is a revealing tweet that should motivate our intellectuals to understand what AIPAC is and realize the massive influence they have in deciding US policy. Rest assured next time a US President proposed fund for Israel to commit genocide that majority our elected officials would not dare oppose it because of fear they will lose next elections.

I urge intellectuals to play their roles; to spend time to understand the control/manipulations surrounding them, expose lies and seek truth. It is going to go worse otherwise for coming generations.

I also urge Israelis to listen to the voice of people from within like Ilan Pappe and Gidean Levy, who appear to be more sincere to them than their current leadership.

Resources (below and in previous posts)

AIPAC tweet: https://x.com/aipac/status/1590362232915132417?s=46

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-09-14/ty-article-opinion/.premium/whatever-the-supreme-court-rules-israel-wont-be-a-democracy

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-03-23/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/israelis-know-that-true-democracy-will-spell-the-end-of-zionism

https://www.wrmea.org/transcending-the-israel-lobby-at-home-and-abroad/keynote-gideon-levy-the-nature-of-democracy-and-human-rights-in-israel.html

https://jewishcurrents.org/aipac-harmful-to-israel-harmful-to-the-u-s

https://youtu.be/MMNVccRAkww?si=wAq4EyMWF-UW765m

People like yourself and your LinkedIn network!

Recently we have seen many people posting about the crimes being done and the thousands of children being killed/bombed in Gaza. Yet, some are asking if LinkedIn is the right place for this. I consider people in LinkedIn as the intellectuals and the professionals in our society. At the core of that we – the educated – have a moral responsibility towards our communities side by side with our professional work.

So you may wonder about your role.

I would not have written this in a better way than the paper Noam Chomsky published in 1967 for similar reasons as we have been witnessing. The players were the only difference. He was criticizing US prutality and unjustified war in Vietnam. I put the source below, but the summary of the article is that:

“intellectuals should make themselves responsible for searching for the truth and the exposing of lies, especially lies by their government “

He suggested – which I would think we would agree to – that if we don’t play this role actively, we will end up with disastrous situations, and we all suffer the consequences. You may ask what I have done to deserve the suffering!

Because you did not search for and promote truth and expose lies, you have not done your public responsibilities to save your society from dragging into lies. You simply did not put your education/thinking to work for the society in large. Being passive is only serving the agenda of those in power.

Quoting below part of the article, feel free to replace the ones in the article with current players:

(Macdonald concludes: “Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code, only they have the right to condemn the death-camp paymaster.” The question, “What have I done?” is one that we may well ask ourselves, as we read each day of fresh atrocities in Vietnam—as we create, or mouth, or tolerate the deceptions that will be used to justify the next defense of freedom.)

So this is a humble request to my colleagues (especially US citizens), play your role because if we don’t, the fire does not distinguish between those who ignite it and those who were close by and did not warn or prevent ignition.

Your voice matters!
Don’t be in denial!

Resources:

The Responsibility of Intellectuals

The Responsibility of Intellectuals – Wikipedia

The role of any religion is to help followers perfect their ethics. In researching about this unparalleled support for US to Israel’s regime crimes, I see how religion is being manipulated to have the masses follow and submit to the will of those in power. However, those in power don’t care about religion. There is a war lobby that benefits from war (another research to come)

Back to manipulation. In some Abrahamic religions, there is a prophecy that at the end of time Jesus Christ will come back to earth in Jewish land and those who believe in him will be saved and others will be punished.

The interesting part is how this story is used by heads of some churches (predominantly evangelicals) to support Israel just because of that prophecy, regardless of any means to reach this goal. They made it sound like a good news because Jesus will come back and this formation of Jewish land is the start. Those are the biggest supporters of Israel in the US regardless of the genocide against Palestinians.

Here is the irony: the core of religion’s ethics is for people to live in peace and have high morals. At the same time, you allowed and supported war crimes because it aligns with a prophecy. How peaceful and aligned is that?!

So, in case you were thinking that Jews are the biggest US supporters of Zionism, that is not true. More than 55% of US Jews are antizionism (resource in a previous post). The major support (from population viewpoint) comes from Christian Zionists (a group of Evangelicals). Not all evangelicals though supports Zionism and the percentage is declining through the years, thanks to the young minds. Evangelicals in general form about 24% of US population. Evangelicals are part of Protestants who form 40% and keeps declining in rates higher than Catholics. There is also another interesting observation; most – if not all – antisemitic movements in the US are related to White Christian nationalists which are predominantly Protestants according to my observation. Check the second resource.

To summarize, there is a lot to do with Israel than superficially thinking about conspiracy theories made by Jews. In fact, one of the most active antiZionism organizations is Jewish Voice for Peace. At the core are manipulated Evangelicals by those in power who do not care about religion. They use it to mobilize masses to their benefits.

For those being manipulated, please do your research and read and reflect on the core values of humanity which is at the core of any religion. If someone tells you otherwise you have to use your instinct and judgement as a human being.

Resources:

About Three-in-Ten U.S. Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated | Pew Research Center

Hate Groups in the U.S.

Evangelical Diversity and Support for Israel