Ask Lemmy

My family still has pretty significant generational trauma from surviving the Holocaust, so the genocide going on in Palestine is quite black and white for us. It’s wrong, Israel’s behavior is monstrous and immoral, and it needs to stop. The Palestinians never deserved this. We talk about it constantly.

Your question kinda implies that we all must have family deployed in a war zone though (unless I misunderstood), and that’s not the case. I’m American. I do have some Israeli relatives who I won’t ever speak to again because they support the genocide, but they’ve all aged out of the army.

My family agrees that Israel learned nothing from the fascism that their families escaped and fought against and believes Israel is committed to nazism against Arabs. But my ex’s family is the typical liberal Zionist family that attributes all of this at the feet of hamas and Netanyahu. It’s a form of delusion that prevents any dialogue about the subject. They read passages from the Passover Seder with absolutely zero connecting of the dots to the horrors the state of Israel is committing against a helpless population. It completely makes clear to me how Hitler came into power and it makes me sad.

Fixed spelling error.

My ex is Jewish and my kids are half Jewish. Our discussions have been focused on the fact that what Netanyahu is doing has been making Jews less safe around the world. anti-Semitism is rising because of the fact he is murdering innocent people and children

My kids are less safe because of the Israeli PM and his Zionist government

My brother and I (both 38) actively speak out and oppose it.

My mom has been sort of in a state of shocked bewilderment. She's horrified and also constantly confused as though trying to comprehend how 2+2 = 5. For her, it doesn't make sense: Jews aren't killers, they're victims. But they're killing all these civilians. Why would anyone want to keep the war going instead of getting the hostages back? Netanyahu is a monster. We all know this. Why is he still in charge?

I'm sorry that she's suffering (then again, anyone of concience is). She's also expressed a sense of alienation, since she has no idea how others feel, because she doesn't feel like it's socially acceptable to say what she feels outside the home. But I'm grateful that this hasn't created any conflict between me and her. She doesn't feel as comfortable as I do saying the plain facts of it, but I remind her that all my convictions are a reflection of the values she raised in me, and I think that reflects highly of her.

My da is Jewish and believes that all of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, and any killing over it is justified because "it was promised to us in the Bible."

My only retort was "That's actually fucking disgusting. Wonder what Jesus would think of that? For fucks sake."

He doesn't mention it anymore.

Hate that shit.

EDIT: Jewish lineage, not a practicer of the Jewish religion.

Not a Jew, but my family's Jewish, and it's about as difficult as you'd expect. They get offended by the slightest implication that maybe Israel isn't perfect, assume I support Hamas just because I'm opposed to the IDF killing children - to clarify, I'm opposed to anyone killing children, including Hamas. We don't talk about it that much though.

Zionism wasn’t just taught to the boomer generation in America their entire lives, there was no other concept at all. The reality was that Jews belonged in Israel and no other context was provided. It was true for our Jewish education, too, but the internet and global media has changed things. It’s really hard to get someone to understand that we are not Israel and Jews are not Israel. We are not them and this is something we should be condemning. I had a bit of a time just getting my father to come around to the idea that a ceasefire might be a good idea on account of all the children being killed. That’s how deep this goes even oceans away.

Its a genocide, not a war

Just wanted to say you're getting a skewed picture of people's opinions, as Lemmy isn't popular / well known at all in Israel.

The absolute majority of Jews in Israel are united in wanting the hostages back (currently 58, of which an estimated half are still alive).

A lot want that and to end the war ASAP, not for any real concern for the Palestinians, but for the troops, the economy, and world image.

A lot want to keep going to eradicate Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis to prevent October 7th from ever happening again.

It's difficult to be pro Palestinian when your friends and family have been slaughtered or held hostage by a (seemingly) unprovoked attack against soldiers and civilians.

The Overton window in Israel doesn't currently allow it, though things might have been changing very recently.

At least here, we don't discuss it much in the same way we don't discuss the mountain near town; it's there, we can't move it, shrug your shoulders, it's part of the landscape.

I know my family are raging Zionist so I don't even bring it up.

lol bruh, nonexistent. I’m not into starving civilians, my family’s not into thinking. One cannot overstate the intergenerational trauma of the holocaust and how it impacts the worldview of the children of survivors.

My family overwhelmingly supports the genocide and the Israeli government. My father even thinks they arent going far enough and my mother just wants it to look pretty. The majority of Jewish people (especially religious people) see not only Palestinians but all muslims as lesser people.

Im not intrested in hearing "not all Jews" like its supposed to make me feel better because it doesn't. It just whitewashes real issues and fundamental problems with the Jewish community. The simple fact that Zionists control Jewish education and own most Jewish institutions, and they use it to spread hate.

I'm going to give an honest answer, but i fully expect to be downvoted and demonized for doing so. Nothing I can do about that, but op, you want an honest answer, this is it. I'll also add that I would 100% consider myself leftist, in fact, extremely leftist in most of my views. Why the hell would my username be what it is and why the hell would I be on lemmy if I wasn't... anyway... here's the answer since you asked for it:

The large majority of jews I know, including myself and my family feel like this current war is the fault of Hamas. Oct 7 doesn't happen, this war doesn't happen. We also are continually annoyed by the fact that most people on the left, constantly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas has been pushing this war forward non-stop for decades. All you have to do is look up number of missiles launched at Israel since 2000 to see that. People no-doubt try to rebut this by saying "but Israel has been stealing territory". My constant response to that is they have been taking territory to establish buffer zones to enhance security. As almost all of this land has been taken after conflict. Israel even tried to give back some of this land, but was then attacked again, and had to take land back in order to protect itself -- But eventually our conversation just goes back to why this is even happening and we are always frustrated by the fact that any argument from the left condemning Zionists always begins in 1948 -- when in fact the troubles of the region started hundreds of years before that. This pre-1948 history seems to never be brought up however. So the blame is always cast 100% on jews and all of the attacks on Jewish civilians within Israel are never ever given the time of day.

It's incredibly frustrating and scary, because the narrative is fully turning into "jews are evil", and there is nothing any Jewish person can do about it. Jews are never going to willingly leave Israel and Hamas is never going to stop trying to eradicate jews. There are only 16ish million jews on the planet and almost 2 billion Muslims. There is no way jews could ever win this propaganda war. I think a lot of jews who feel they are on the left side of the political spectrum are too scared to even speak about their feelings on Israel/Palestine at the moment, because they know they are going to be vastly outnumbered and demonized, by those they would usually consider friends, with anything they say. So most of us are silent on the subject because we don't want to be ostracized.

I will end this by saying, we of course feel bad for civilians caught in the crossfire, but we feel like Jewish civilians are not given that same respect. The sentiment we get is that Jewish civilians seem to deserve it.

I’m an American atheist Jew, and I’ve had conversations with my (converted) mother about it. She’s pretty solidly on Israel’s side, but she’s also not very educated about the conflict. She just kinda goes by the mainstream media’s narrative and doesn’t think too much beyond that. When I present her with information, she’s horrified and agrees with me that “Israel is going too far,” but it never results in her thinking the U.S. should stop sending them money. She hates Netanyahu and his conservative government, but she’s very hung up on Hamas being a terrorist organization. And I suppose I am too, to be honest. I want a free Palestine and for the Israeli settlers to be expelled, but I don’t want to support Hamas and I think they should pretty much be eradicated. I’m just much more willing to condemn Israel for their actions than she is; she’s very caught on the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself from Palestinian terrorism, and has a hard time seeing that it’s gone way past that at this point.