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Notes -
What is the Zionist model of antisemitism*?
Matt Yglesias posted what turned out to be a surprisingly hot take that the downturn in public opinion of Israel is a result of Israeli actions, and that the best way for Israel to fix its public relations problem is to change its actions vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue and foreign policy.
I was surprised at the pushback. This seems straightforwardly true. There was a great chart I saw a few days ago, which I am unfortunately unable to find, which showed that public opinion of Israel has been approximately this low before. It was in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon and the notoriously brutal siege of Beirut.
Most of the alternative theories fell into two camps.
It’s hard to tell how religious the people in 2. are, but my general impression is, “quite a bit”. Many of them seem to speak of antisemitism as if it were a spiritual fault, another manifestation of the platonic ideal of pure evil. Seen as a spiritual problem, the correct response is to become even more aggressively Jewish. This has the rather large problem of being counterproductive when, e.g. smashing idols goes wrong.
*By “antisemitism” in this post I almost exclusively mean “antizionism”. I use the term to maintain consistency with the pro-Israel literature I am engaging with, not as an endorsement that antizionism = antisemitism.
I tend to lean towards model 1, except I don't really think it was a coordinated campaign, just social incentives. Due to geopolitics of the cold war, Israel became a symbol of the west. And if there is anything the left truly loves, it's destroying symbols and hating on the west. And if you want to try and unite the working class globally, you better pick an international issue that everyone is familiar with.
The irony is that Israel is less and less representative of western culture as time goes on, given that their religious lunatics are growing rapidly as a percentage of the population. Once they pass 50%, things are gonna get very hairy over there. You think Netanyahu is bad, wait until the all ministerial positions are occupied by the Haredim.
In the meantime, we all get to deal with the absurdity of listening to "leftists" go on and on about Israel despite the fact is has nothing to do with envisioned proletariat uprisings, and that far worse atrocities are being committed in almost all non-western corners of the globe as we speak.
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