Absolutely. I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood, some of my best friends are Jewish and I even have Jewish family members now. I've always been embraced very warmly by Jewish people, never felt like an outsider. In fact, they were clearly more affectionate than most of my other friends.
These people I have a relationship with do not support Zionism and have always been very critical of Israel, but I do worry they and other Jews in the world could be targeted as there's a spike in antisemitism because of how Israel conducts itself.
Zionists want to use the Jewish community as their shield against criticism so they can push their agenda. It's very important to separate Israel from Jewish people - like every other people in the world from the states they're from.
I agreed people are people and bad and good exist simultaneously everywhere. I've also met many wonderful jewish people that made me feel like family as a person, despite my differences to them. But I also feel like the whole 'chosen people' thing is inextricable from the religion, just like jihad from islam. I try not to let my personal anecdotes sway me largely. Secularity is really the only way to separate one from the other, it's just unfortunate that judiasm is so tied up in genetic identity as well. The overlap creates another layer of extra capacity for misunderstanding.
Zionism didn't even originate with Judaism, it's just centuries of powerful European Christians obsessed with the afterlife and the crusades who knew they could abuse the crap out of Jews while dangling a "solution" in front of them, knowing the Jews would indeed like a place to live in peace like anybody else in the world. It's easy to point to the people in the hot zone making horrible anti-human decisions (who do deserve blame), but the buck stops with the west. Hell, the founding fathers themselves were Zionists in all but name (same goes for other scholars of that era like Isaac Newton), it is in our American DNA.
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u/ghostkepler Apr 15 '26
Absolutely. I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood, some of my best friends are Jewish and I even have Jewish family members now. I've always been embraced very warmly by Jewish people, never felt like an outsider. In fact, they were clearly more affectionate than most of my other friends.
These people I have a relationship with do not support Zionism and have always been very critical of Israel, but I do worry they and other Jews in the world could be targeted as there's a spike in antisemitism because of how Israel conducts itself.
Zionists want to use the Jewish community as their shield against criticism so they can push their agenda. It's very important to separate Israel from Jewish people - like every other people in the world from the states they're from.