How To Save Your Zionist Friends

by admitting we are all hypocrites, living in settler colonies

I love that, in another time and place, I met a woman called Bebonkwe.

She’s a proud member of the Plains Cree tribe, currently living on Lenape land, in what’s now known as New York City. In her own language, she’s a member of the Nehyraw, but if she’d told me that, I would have never heard of her people, so she self-identified as a Plains Cree tribal member, even though this is an English term that collectively references First Nation people hailing from a massive geographical region, from Manitoba, Canada down to Montana, USA. It’s inaccurate, but it’s all she’s been given by the settler colonizers who are occupying her land, removing her right to self-define, let alone to self-determine.

‘Cree’ is short for ‘Cristenaux’, the name the French gave them, after the ‘first contact’ in 1732, when Pierre Gaultier was met by my friend’s ancestors, in full war paint.

1732.

It’s not that long ago, especially when viewed from my own ancient Hebrew calendar, which is currently in the year 5784.

That’s 292 years ago, and now look.

Bebonkwe and I met at the United Nations in so-called New York City, which is known as the United Nothing by Palestinians, for obvious reasons.

Bebonkwe talked about the brutality of the US state system of different IDs and permits that control all First Nations folk. They’re Federally-recognized, or State-recognized, or Unrecognized, or just totally off the system, as a lot of folks now are.

There are Federal Reservations, Allotted Lands, Restricted Status Lands, State Indian Reservations. All legally defined and different, and limited in access. Many have none.

There are Tribal Governments, another category altogether for Alaska Natives, and Hawaiians, for some strange reason, and yes, the U.S. of A. does consider BLOOD QUANTUM to be a marker of inclusion - or not - in a similar way that Hitler’s Nazi regime defined my own people’s tribe for inclusion - or not - in their bureaucratic system of control, but which the Zionist regime’s system of control does not stoop to doing, alas for the opposite reason; as it would illuminate that Israeli Jews and Palestinians have, on average, around 80% shared the DNA markers in our bodies.

Which nixes the Zionist fake fact that’s often circulated in their propaganda machine that Palestinians aren’t from Palestine, and are actually ‘colonizers’ from the Arabian Peninsular, which is wild, when you think about it.

But also, they don’t allow DNA evidence because, as far as I know, ALL TRIBAL NATIONS, and this includes Jews and Plains Cree people, do NOT themselves use blood quantum as their metric for inclusion. We are older than this clunky, repulsive science. We go by more organic, complex, and beautiful metrics for inclusion, which are a lot to define here, and are irrelevant to this article. It’s basically more akin to a ‘naturalization’ process alongside a lineage system. But it’s irrelevant for now.

What’s relevant to this article is that YOU want to drag your American Jewish Zionist friends out of the ‘Hasbara’ Zionist propaganda hole that they’ve been sucked into, but the only way to do this - and it’s a long shot that it will work, as it’s the strongest propaganda machine in the world - but the only way I can imagine to even attempt to extract your friend out of the alternative Zionist reality they’re trapped inside is to ACKNOWLEDGE FULLY THAT YOU ARE A SETTLER COLONIZER - AND A HYPOCRITE - and from there, acknowledge that Bebonkwe’s colonization isn’t something in the past, and is still worth resisting, because it’s not done and dusted.

It’s ongoing. It’s happening today, while you’re reading this.

It’s violent, and it’s been ongoing since April 1607, but has not yet ended.

THE AMERICAN SETTLER COLONIAL PROJECT IS STILL ACTIVE AND STEALING LANDS FROM THE REMAINING FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE.

And you, dear reader, are the essential, passive part of this.

A current hot front of the project of violence is the coastline, where the US settler colonial task-forces are planning to build wind turbines, which sounds good, but involves digging up sacred sites belonging to First Nations, including the Chumash, whose dead won’t be allowed to rest, not unlike Palestinians who are often moved to more convenient, and less desirable, places when Zionists want to build something.

The truth is, YOU CANNOT SELF-IDENTIFY AS AN AMERICAN ANTIZIONIST WITHOUT ACKNOWLEDGING IN THE STRONGEST TERMS YOUR OWN COMPLICITY IN THE SETTLER COLONY YOU LIVE IN.

Literally, if you turn the lights on, can you identify whether the electricity you’re using is tainted with the dust of the exhumed? The answer is, nope.

And this is one of the foundational reasons that Zionists ‘debunk’ anything you say, because they are not wrong in this ONE foundational observation about the people who are calling them colonizers, i.e. you.

The ‘hasbara’ machine mixes truth into the cocktail lies, and this is how it’s powerful, and an effective, compelling narrative once you’re sucked inside.

So while I am the most strongly antizionist person you will ever meet, if you point a finger at Israel and say “look - they’re doing genocide and settler colonization, I’m a leftist American who opposes this,” and if you’re absolutely ignorant about the brutal repercussions of your own personal existence in your own personal house, and how it is violent to First Nation people in Turtle Island, well - it’s essential I bring this to your attention. You - like them - are part of a brutal settler colonial project.

One example - Biden’s environmental climate change Orwellian bullshit legal bureaucracy is currently hammering the Quinault Indian Nation, because the Double Speak laws - that say they’re protecting First Nation ‘rights’ (that were granted by the colonizers, but whatever) - are being used as a way to impoverish, distract, intimidate and dis-empower the Quinault. Because they have to do a ton of brand new ‘leftist’ legal paperwork, to approve or disprove various aspects of their land without any extra budget from the US Government to perform this gargantuan ‘extra’ task.

And you know what? This all looks incredibly familiar….

Hmmmm….. who else has a whole bunch of different, divisive, controlling IDs? Who else gets the bureaucratic burden to navigate with almost zero potential for actually winning the system, such as a building permit that’s refused almost every time, while Jewish Israeli counterparts are granted permits to build illegally on Palestinian land…

Is the American settler-colonial propaganda misinformation bubble slowly coming into focus as you start to question what you’re meant to do with this information, in your warm home, that it’s possible you technically ‘own’, with the papers of ownership probably dripping in fresh blood, and not the crust of hard, stale scabs from 250 years ago that you’ve been told are beyond a glimmer of doubt irrelevant, in history books, and not ongoing, gaping wounds that still have the potential to be addressed, if not entirely healed at this stage.

Kinda like meat needing to be eaten because it’s a by-product of the calves killed to enable dairy milk, and so it’s guilt-free, until you’re like - let me re-examine this tear in the fabric of consensus reality.

You are a zombie.

Like the Zionist Zombies amongst us, we are all - to a greater or lesser extent - in a cognitive dissonant, dystopian, capitalist nightmare that we’re oblivious to, at best - - - or at worst, we pretend doesn’t exist.

Another time, we can focus on the British and European version, which isn’t settler colonialism - Brits, French and Dutch were obviously common or garden colonizers who didn’t settle, or sometimes did (South Africa / Algeria, ooph). The Germans in Namibia, who tested their knife on their colony long before they got busy with the Jewish subjects of Germany.

The Euro colonial enterprises were about controlling / seizing / stealing or otherwise raping people and lands far away, and benefiting from these spoils in the lands the colonizers truly originate from. And - ongoing now, as ‘neocolonialism.’

Also, this clearly shows the utter irrelevance of where one comes from, in terms of whether one can be a wanker or not. The British did it to other lands. Actually - full disclosure - the British did it first to their own working class, and after that, they did it to other people in other lands. The Zionists, perhaps they’re from the Levant, who knows, but also - it’s IRRELEVANT in terms of whether this makes shoddy behaviors like land-theft or murder somehow excusable. It’s a non-sequitur, at best.

‘Neocolonial’ is another adjective that’s applicable to what’s happening in the Zionist project, as can be seen from the Indian workers who are currently being recruited to replace the Gazan men who are now ‘unavailable’ so if you’re British or French or - well, ALL people are benefiting from the Zionist regime via the invisible tentacles of neocolonialism. Apart from Palestinians. But apart from them, it’s a rare fellow that’s not benefiting from Amazon Web Services or Google, at the very least.

How clean is your side of the street?

So, humility please. Be f’n humble. Own your own bullshit. Know your complicity in what’s happening in Palestine, and what happened in the Holocaust, and America, and all of these oppressive regimes that constitute the West.

Humility is the appropriate approach for anyone reading this, anywhere in the West.

(Possibly the Irish get a pass, but not if they use Google.)

If you’re sickened by the genocide and ethnic cleansing you’re watching on Instagram, welcome to your own quiet blindspots.

And an especially warm welcome for American settlers.

Hello and howdy.

How’s your proxy war going?

In Palestine, and also, in Ukraine.

Did you know your Nation State murdered an incarcerated person today with gas? Do you know what this kind of information does to survivors of the gas chambers of Nazi Germany, whose grandparents escaped from being gassed? As a side-thought, while you’re honing your empathy, in order to utilize it for Palestinian liberation.

Research your own nation state settler colonial project and reflect, and additionally USE THIS to honestly and knowledgeably start to learn about your complicity before you start a conversation with Zionists in your community, before attempting to offer them advice on their own shit. They have ample shit, violent and unacceptable shit, but You need to do this work before expecting them to do their own work.

This is painful work, and you need to get in the trenches before you fancy yourself fit to preach.

If you or your Zionist friend are American Jews, it’s a double whammy right there, and expect it to be hard for them to even imagine, and if they do get it, you’ll be humbled and ready to support the Zionist in your life who is inside a trap without some kind of smug ‘holier-than-thou’ crap, but instead from a space of shared humility and despair in the dystopias we’re all trapped inside, which is more appropriate, considering.

This is one of the reasons Zionism is an extension of the West, and one of the reasons Christians are super into it. It’s a new frontier for the American pioneer spirit - and, at least these fascists are honest about that, unlike those with a blind spot.

But you’re benefiting from one of the older frontiers right now, and - it’s not over.

You’re benefiting at the same time as thinking you’re innocent, while your Zionist friend knows about this American guilt, but is blind to the Zionist one.

Pulling threads of the Zionist project reveals the West. But to your friend, the Zionist dream is actually a way to get out of the American dream with their dignity intact - because they believe that the American settler colonial system is exactly what it is, but that the Zionist one is an indigenous liberation project for the Israeli Jews, who are liberating the land from Arabian colonizers, like I mentioned earlier.

It’s upside down, but so is your blindspot, so there we go.

You both need to get real, and then you can talk about it.

And now I recommend you go read ‘Don’t Read This,’ which seems indispensable for EVERY SINGLE PERSON to read.

If you find the way out, please let me know.

Meanwhile, you’ve rationalized previously killed people as not saveable.

Piles of Native American bodies that were previously killed, also Jewish bodies piled up in Auschwitz, or the Palestinian bodies killed in the Nakba, can all be relatively easily rationalized in the colonial mind - but what's harder to let slip are the current and future bodies we’re watching in a bloody genocide. Yet still, you are being asked to revisit the recently butchered, and acknowledge that six million lives, whose bodies were incinerated in the ovens, make XX,000 Gazan bodies seem less worthy of this big nasty word ‘genocide,’ invented to describe Jewish lives erased in the Holocaust of the West, and this is why Zionists are like, huh? when you use this big word for what they sometimes actually DO know is happening (although often, they’re ignorant of it, even now - by choice - sometimes they’re so far inside the bubble that they don’t actually know.)

Definitely worth mentioning the SIX million, at least in passing, if you expect your Zionist Jewish friend to listen to anything else you've got.

And know that the thousands or the millions is not how the big word ‘genocide’ is defined, but in the intent and erasure of a group - which is clearly the intent and the result in Gaza, for Gazan Palestinian life, as universities, and hospitals, and theatres, and archeological sites, and mosques, churches, ancient cities etc are flattened.

But it’s sanctimonious to omit a tip of the hat to the Holocaust as a precursor to any lectures you might have for a Zionist Jew. A decent, heartfelt acknowledgement that it isn’t crazy for American Zionist Jews (and even some antizionist Jews) to be nervous it could happen again, and that fear of another Holocaust is an understandable driver for wanting to protect the Jewish State, especially as a bunch of Jews were just killed, and nobody in Palestinian solidarity spaces is deeply engaged with this, if they even honestly remember that part of the story.

But one of the main proofs in your Zionist friends’ heads that you're antisemitic, the thing that’s underlying their nervousness, is that you're okay with Europeans settling other people's lands, and that you yourself partake in settler colonialism - but that a double standard applies to, the Jews.

They may think it's antisemitic to single out the Jewish settler colonial state if your own house is located in the most brutal settler colonial project ever in the history of ethnic cleansing and genocidal regimes.

Y'all are blind to your own participation.

You’re a pot, calling a kettle, black, and that’s even without accounting for the SEAMLESSNESS between the US, German, and British states’ military and diplomatic machines, churning out the carnage in Gaza.

You’re not truly an antizionist American unless you are rigorously calling out Zionist bullshit and equally, educating yourself what Native Americans are asking us to do as allies of their liberation struggle. It’s a lot, but again - you’re a clown to any Zionist without doing this work, or at least owning up to your complicity, and ignorance.

And being ready to acknowledge anything you’ve gained from the Holocaust, or the list of companies you’re unhappy to buy stuff from, which would include the suppliers of pocket knives to the Hitler Youth, i.e. Puma - who you’re already boycotting because of BDS, insha’allah.

Yup, same perpetrators. Just don’t compare the Nazis with your Zionist friends if you’re serious about not alienating them. That’s actually number one on any list of ‘How To Save Your Zionist Friends From The Rabbit Hole Of Zionism.’

I just started with Bebonkwe because, ouch.

I mean, she told me she is literally WATCHING WHAT HAPPENED TO HER OWN PEOPLE, she is triggered, and seriously - the entire First Nations of Turtle Island are numb and finding it hard to function as they watch this retelling of their own history, in real time with TikToks from the oppressors, to boot.

But not comparing Zionists with Nazis is the actual Number One thing to avoid, even if it’s tempting and quite frankly, true at times, because you will not be winning hearts and minds at this time if you make this comparison.

There’s plenty more for you to discover in the Zionist toolbox, so let’s take a quick look. Actually, scrap that -

STUDY THE ZIONIST TOOLBOX

1. Solidarity activists supporting the Palestinian cause in the West often hate Jews - well, you know what? There’s always a few. Acknowledge this, it’s very important to acknowledge the truth - are you really just going to Snopes the word of a minority that is feeling persecuted, without even responding? What you need to do is agree that - YES - any antisemites who were already living in the West are now firmly embedded in the movement, alongside Palestinian activists. But also reassure them - thankfully, these antisemites are massively outnumbered, and that you’re vigilant not to accept any antisemitism on your watch. Reassure your frightened friend that you - and that all of the Palestinian solidarity activists you know - are firmly anti-racist against all forms of discrimination, including antisemitism.

2. Hamas rockets are cheap, disposable, and intended to be used extremely wastefully because of the Iron Dome. That’s why the Al-qassam Brigades shoot them like water - because a maximum of 1% will get through the Dome - so it’s not because they expect or want to murder all the Jews of Israel. They expect to only kill a few, which again is not okay - all human life is precious, including Jewish life - but this does explain the enormous amounts of rockets being lobbed at Israel.

3. Human shields - based on neutral evidence, there’s currently not a lot pointing to Hamas using human shields, because tunnels under hospitals in Gaza didn’t produce the verified evidence that was expected if this was true, but we don’t want to form opinions based on a weak understanding of this subject, so let’s read this book by a Jewish Israeli author, Neve Gordon, called ‘Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire.’ It’s published by University of California Press in 2020.

4. ‘Happy Israeli Arabs’ isn’t evidence that Palestinians aren’t oppressed in the West Bank or Gaza, or that the State isn’t currently committing massacres, any more than ‘happy Native Americans’ living in New York City prove other Native American populations living in reservations are doing A-ok, or that there wasn’t any genocide committed in the past, or that there isn’t ongoing violence against Native Americans, or indeed, Palestinians, whatever the connection of Jews to this same, very special piece of Land in the Levant. Also, PS, there are no ‘happy Israeli Arabs’ right now, believe me on this, and actually, they never existed. It was always one choice that was complicated and flawed, but all options are shit, so some chose that shit option. But, your Zionist friend won’t be ready to hear this, it’s a straw they’re clutching tightly, so softly softly with busting this myth, and also, when they learn that Palestinians who live inside 1948 ‘Israel’ aren’t happy, that’s when things get dangerous for them.

5. Always - always - always - understand the fear is real for Zionists. The fear is what’s driving everything. The fear is based on SIX MILLION DEAD, and it’s not a baseless fear, for this reason. It’s based on the rise of Trump, on the statements of Kanye, the philosemitism of Elon Musk. The ‘Punch’ in Punch and Judy, and also, the lack of acknowledgement by friends in the Left that antisemitism exists. And this is why your Zionist friend found community in a bubble of propaganda, because they always felt lonely in their Jewish bodies in Western leftist spaces, watching and empathizing with the pain of Black Americans, or the injustices experienced by Latinx Americans, but never feeling that solidarity from Leftists for the genocide of the Jews, which still holds the highest numbers per capita - and may this never be a bar that’s surpassed by anyone. In the October 7th massacre, they fell into a paranoid hole because they also think it’s nothing to do with Palestinian pain, because they’ve been told Palestine has had its own government (the PA in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza), so there’s some kind of somersault Black Mirrors logic that says, YOU should care about the dead Jews in the October 7th party and gated community, but the current dead Gazans are not the focus because, Hamas - something like that, I don’t totally get their thing beyond this. Ceasefire now!

Alternatively, leave the Zionists in their hole, and they will come out when they’re able, and don’t allow yourself to be distracted from Freeing Palestine right now.

That’s what I’m trying to do - stay focused. But every now and then, someone asks me for advice, and there I go again, spending a day hammering away on this machine.

Because their rabbit hole is dark and it’s lies, and I don’t engage with fascists, to the best of my abilities, and suggest you don’t either.

Another morsel of compassionate antizionist wisdom for you to free yourself, as much as freeing your Zionist Jewish friends. Try not to waste time on this black hole.

Okay, back to what you can do… get ready to reach out to all your Jewish friends and express a real, heartfelt message of solidarity when it’s International Holocaust Day next week, on January 27, 2024, even though a lot of Jews hate that day, because it was started by the West as the White Savior Day that the ‘Allied forces’ freed Auschwitz, or whatever overtly annoying American fantasy they have about their own power.

Jewish people remember the Holocaust on our own day, Yom Ha’Shoah, which marks when we freed ourselves, not when YOU did something, finally, after sitting around for years while we were shouting about the upcoming genocide.

Which is one reason why Zionists now get to fantasize about their upcoming doom, while they bomb the f’k out of defenseless Palestinian women, children, and men in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as brutalizing them, and refusing to allow food aid, water, or basic supplies into the territory.

But nonetheless, it does provide a good moment for you to alleviate Zionist fears - and THIS is GOOD for PALESTINE - if they feel safer, they don’t justify the bombs.

So yeah, that’s your main job in regards to your Zionist friends. Check in on them on International Holocaust Day.

Make. Them. Feel. Safe.

And may this lead to an immediate and lasting CEASEFIRE.

Or - ignore them, and keep your eye on allyship for Palestine.

Up to you, there’s no good option here, it’s a genocide, and we are all bleeding.

As is this O’odham musician, Raye Zaragoza, who mentions her own pain caused by the American settler colony in this beautiful powerful song, inspired by the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the protests at Standing Rock, which is your next project to get to understand, inside and out, in your quest to become a better antizionist American.

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