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In reply to the discussion: 'Hamas's hands are covered in Egypt's blood,' says Egyptian ex-MP [View all]yardwork
(65,419 posts)I assume you are in Israel. Here in the United States there were large, well-organized rallies on October 8 - less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks on Israel. People gathered in public spaces and praised Hamas. There were pro-Hamas posters with drawings of paragliders. Local chapters of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Black Lives Matter (BLM), Sunrise Coalition, and other groups immediately had very similar talking points. These talking points, memes, and images spread on TikTok, Twitter, and other platforms like wildfire. This was all advertised as spontaneous and grass roots. It was not. It was the definition of astroturf.
One of the talking points equates Israel with the US history of oppression, including our history of slavery and genocide. The complex history of the Middle East is replaced with a cartoonish simplistic story in which "white" Jews decided to "invade and occupy" Palestine, with the help of "Western capitalists," putting the "brown, beleaguered Palestinians" in "open air concentration camps" and "how can the world tolerate this atrocity." It is "genocide and ethnic cleansing."
The actual complicated messy history of the region is ignored in favor of a simplistic good guys (brown) vs. bad guys (white) narrative. Every antisemitic trope I've ever heard (and some that were new to me) is trotted out to trigger people's implicit biases (and maybe, it turns out, not so implicit after all, sadly).
As a white American woman, culturally Christian, with no Jewish heritage, I am appalled by this antisemitic talk and erasure of historical facts. People who ought to know better have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked by Russian propaganda. They need to read 1984 again.
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