It’s important to note that support for Israel from the average everyday people in the West is decreasing. Western governments, on the other hand are a different story. They have been quite keen to wholly support the murderous actions of Israel. They have their supporters in the public, who go along with everything that’s claimed.
These pro-Israel people will believe anything you say about Palestine without question. Absolutely nothing will dissuade them to the contrary. You can put literal proof that a claim is false, and they will still believe it. They’ll even get angry when you show them they’re wrong. They will block and deny all proof contrary to what they want to think.
There is no denying that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli hospital at the biginning of their assault on Gaza. They even admitted it in the beginning. They only changed their story after the public backlash. The Anglican church came out and publicly said they were threatened by Israel for three days before the attack. Video of the bombing shows that it was clearly a bomb (air bursting small diameter bomb) dropped from an airplane, unique sound and everything.
Yet, these zealot supporters of Israel will deny these proven basic facts. So, the questions: why?
Increasingly, larger numbers of people are going out in protest of the ongoing genocide by Israel. Governments of the West are resorting to increasingly repressive measures to stifle dissent. Silence support for the Palestinian people. France attempted to ban all pro-Palestine protests. In Canada, Dr. abrham Weizfeld has been charged with a hate crime for writing “and a free Palestine.” Wesam Cooley was arrested and charged with a hate crime for saying “from the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free.” The Florida chapter of “Students for Justice in Palestine” has banned by an order by Governor Ron DeSantis.
All of this disgusting criminalization of free speech and human conscience is being done under the guise of “hate speech” or fighting “terrorism”. Why? Because Western governments fear the unpopularity of Israel’s genocidal crusade.
The Western people’s growing refusal to follow along with these government’s positions is something significant. The dissent against official lies used to justify profit motive murder is growing. And there’s some pretty good reasons why.
The Western propaganda against Palestine is failing. Primarily becuase Palestine isn’t scary… anymore.
For a very long time the US government has been using fear as way of controlling public anger, guiding it towards a “common enemy”. In terms of keeping a social cohesion under capitalism, it has done a remarkable job, until the past 2 decades or so. Through history this fear of “the Other“ has been a driving force behind the social justifications for imperialist conquest and rejection of any ideologies that would go against the interests of the capitalist class and the US empire. The fear of the “savage Indian” and Mexican was a justification for land theft. For decades the big scary Soviet Union was used for the invasion of countless countries killing tens of millions. The Soviets were a great scare tactic by the US, it was big, powerful, scary, but at the same time supposedly poor, weak, and a fragile society on the verge of its own destruction. The blatant contradiction there was deliberately ignored.
The War on Terror was an invention created to justify US empire expansion in the new century. It appeared almost exactly a decade after the sabotage of the Soviet Union. The nebulous threat of the “Islamic Terrorist” was pumped into the society with ease after 9/11. There was no big scary monster Soviet Union to frighten people with, given that the US was the sole super. The terrorist could appear anywhere at any time. They moved invisible through US undetected. That fear was used to justify numerous official and unofficial invasions of countries, all of them attacking countries in opposition to US global supremacy. All of it based on fear of dark-skinned “Arab.”
Palestine is not scary. You can’t make any rational argument that Palestine poses any threat to US at all. Before this recent conflict the refugee camps were filled to the brim with people. All of Palestinian society is controlled by the Israeli occupiers. A Palestinian has to get permission from Israel in order to build a house. Palestinian homes are emptied at gunpoint and bulldozed to make way for Israeli settlers at any time. Palestinians are made victims by a massive, outright genocidal bombing campaign. But at the same time, we’re supposed to believe they’re this gigantic threat that could destroy all of Israel. And, according to some, the US as well.
It doesn’t fly anymore. People aren’t falling for it anymore. Especially the younger generations that weren’t conditioned by Cold War propaganda. The average under fifty-year-old isn’t scared of Palestine. They’re not scared of Arabs. I think for three reasons:
1. People know that the justifications for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were lies. There never were any “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, and people know that the claim was a lie. They question justifications for war now.
2. Increased ethnic mixture of America has dispelled much of the racism perpetuated. The Arab has been demystified. He is no longer some shadowy, brown-skinned unknown lurking in a far-way land. He’s your neighbour, she’s elected to Congress. There is no mystery anymore, they’re normalized, humanized as regular everyday people. They’re not scary to the younger generations.
3. The reduction of the Protestant Christian faith in America. The logic has always been there. “Jesus was Jewish so therefore the Muslims are the dirty invaders of the Holy Land. So therefore israel belongs to the Jews.” They could pedal the FALSE claim that the Holy Land belongs to the Jews. In spite of the fact that the Talmud specifically says the Promised Land can only come about as a result of divine creation. Without this Christian fanaticism in the younger generations, Israel and its genocidal campaign gets less support.
Mostly what's left now is the Baby Boomers and a contingent of Generation X who still support Israel. Their numbers are shrinking. But still they believe.
So why are those who still support Israel demonstrating such denial? Because they’d have to admit they’re wrong. This cognitive dissidence is a measure to defend themselves from their own conscience. There is no rational reason for non-Israelis to support Israel. (Unadulterated racism is probably a major factor in their defiance.) They have no choice but to be irrational in order to avoid admitting they’re wrong and admitting that their position for decades has been inhuman. They would have to admit that they’ve supported and enabled a genocide.
Many average German people denied the crimes of the Holocaust simply because they couldn’t admit their country, their government, the war they had been supporting, was wrong. Eventually they were forced to see the truth when many of them were taken to the Buchenwald Concentration Camps to see it. Viewing the horrors of what had been going on is what shook them from their denial.
I think we’re seeing the same thing here: The supporters of Israel are in denial about the inhumanity of what Israel is doing. These people should be forced to see the inhumanity, the genocide that they have been supporting – and apologize to them.
Jason it's called dissonance. Dissidence is when you go against a regime etc.