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Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Israel Supporters Are Some Of The Worst People In The World by Caitlin Johnstone Caitlin Johnstone |
Yesterday I shared a tweet about how Doctors Without Borders are now encountering children as young as five in Gaza who say they want to die because of the horrific things they have experienced during Israel’s ongoing genocidal onslaught.
It’s just about the most awful thing you can imagine, tiny children being so traumatized that they consciously don’t want to go on living. It boggles the mind to even contemplate it. But almost as soon as I shared my post, I got a response from an Israel supporter saying, “Gazans support Hamas. Hamas conducts Islamic extremist terror. Gazans should reconsider their support for Hamas.”
Later I got another response from an account with a bunch of flag emojis next to its name saying, “Before shedding tears for the people of Gaza, remember that they created Hamas, elected it, supported it, supplied it, worked for it, hid it, sheltered it, filled its ranks and celebrated all its atrocities.”
I received another response from an anonymous account saying “FAFO”, an acronym for “Fuck Around, Find Out”. Used here, it means that those small children who want to die because of the horrors they have experienced actually deserve it, because they are Gazan. Which is also essentially what the other two responders were saying as well.
This happens all the time. The other day I shared a report from an American doctor saying that IDF snipers have been picking off Gazan children with single shots to the head, and I again received a comment from someone saying “Fuck around and find out.”
They’re essentially standing over a pile of child corpses and puffing their chests like a guy who just won a pub brawl.
It might seem kind of petty to focus on individual comments from random social media accounts, but this happens so often, and I see other people talking about it too — I just saw a screenshot of a guy saying “fuck around and find out” in response to that gut-wrenching photo of a dead Palestinian girl ripped apart by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah earlier this month. So this is definitely a symptom of something profoundly ugly lurking in the underbelly of our society that’s worth drawing some attention to.
If you don’t interact with many Zionists in your day to day life or don’t have a large enough profile to be constantly swarmed by Israel apologists you might be unaware that this is happening, but the vitriol I’ve been seeing from Israel supporters on social media platforms since October 7 has been one of the most shocking and disturbing things I’ve ever witnessed.
Every single day these last four and a half months I’ve been inundated with comments from Israel supporters excusing the most monstrous acts imaginable in the most monstrous ways imaginable. People calling for the total destruction of Gaza. People saying the Gazans deserve what is happening to them. Saying the sickest shit you can possibly think of in response to news of terrible things happening to innocent children.
Over the years I’ve butted heads with pretty much every political faction in the English-speaking world at one point or another, and I can honestly say that Israel supporters are by far the absolute worst. No political faction I have ever interacted with is as immoral and dishonest, or so frequently says things that are so jaw-droppingly disgusting I am sure I must be misinterpreting it at first. I’ve never tangled with a more odious group of people.
And to be clear I’m not talking about a faction of just Israelis or Jews here; a huge percentage of these awful comments come from Christian Zionists and American rightists, with a decent smattering of Hindu nationalists from India who’ll support any excuse to cheerlead the killing of Muslims. The only unifying feature I’m seeing in the faction I’m talking about is that they support Israel and its actions in Gaza. What I’m saying here will be spun as antisemitic by Israel supporters no matter how I put it because Israel supporters are manipulative liars, but to be clear this is not about Jews at all.
There’s something seriously, seriously wrong with these people. They have no interest in truth or morality; all they care about is supporting their favorite ethnostate and murdering Palestinians. I guess when you’re already able to numb your heart and your mind enough to support an apartheid state that whose existence requires nonstop violence and abuse, when that state ramps up its atrocities to historic levels you’re not going to have enough of a conscience to see anything wrong with it.
Anyway that’s my rant for today. Just had to get that out. I don’t know what to do about any of this, but it’s probably worth bringing some consciousness to.
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