Offending Zionists is good, actually

 It is good for evil people who desire evil things to be upset by your words and deeds.

Caitlin Johnstone

June 8, 2025

Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

British comedian Dawn French was successfully pressured into publicly apologizing for a video she made in opposition to the Gaza holocaust after Israel supporters made a stink claiming she was insensitive to Israel about October 7.

I can’t believe it’s 2025 and people are still worried about offending Zionists. Oh gosh I’d better issue an apology, I’ve upset the people who are cheerleading an active genocide. Better be careful how I word this or I might seem insensitive to people who think it’s fine to bomb hospitals and burn children alive. Oh no I can’t say that because if I do I’ll be in hot water with the “intentionally starving civilians is good” crowd. 

Fuck these freaks. Fuck ’em. The more butt hurt they are by the things you say, the better. It is good for evil people who desire evil things to be upset by your words and deeds. The more Israel’s supporters hate you, the more likely it is that you are a decent person. Say what needs saying and wear their outrage as a badge of honor.

Israel killed four journalists in an airstrike on a hospital the other day, and it caused barely a blip in the news cycle. It’s so crazy how this is just normal now.

This was at the Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital by the way, which you may remember as the hospital that Israel ferociously denied bombing at the beginning of its onslaught in October 2023. Israel has since bombed that very same hospital many times.

The behavior of the state of Israel is one nonstop argument against the continued existence of the state of Israel.

Most Israel apologia is just saying ridiculous nonsense in an assertive tone and demanding to be taken seriously. They’re butchering children by the thousands in a completely undisguised effort to purge all Palestinians from a Palestinian territory, and then spouting a bunch of transparently bogus talking points to try and spin this as fine and normal. But because mainstream institutions solemnly promote this obvious bullshit, we’re expected to treat it like it’s a completely valid position that needs to be respected.

There’s no actual basis for the pro-genocide position in truth, logic, or morality. It’s a completely indefensible position, so self-evidently wrong that a child could recognize it at a glance. But because support for Israel is so entrenched within our political-media class, and because Israel’s supporters have a solid understanding of the power of narrative control, they are able to promote this nakedly evil agenda by sheer force of will — just by saying their talking points in confident-sounding voices.

It’s mostly just about tone. They have no arguments, so they rely heavily on authoritatively stated assertions, condescension, and rote repetition of the same tired slogans over and over again.

Such tactics are why so many westerners still believe Israel-Palestine is much too complicated an issue for them to take a solid position on. They see pundits and politicians defending Israel using smug, know-it-all mannerisms all throughout the political and media landscape, so they assume there must be more to this thing than it appears at first glance. If they just stuck with their initial intuition they’d wind up siding with Palestine, but the forceful feigned self-assuredness of Israel supporters shuts them down and shuts them up.

It’s so silly how western conservatives pretend they support Israel because they want to stand with a historically persecuted religious group when we all know it’s really because they hate Muslims. They see Jews as white so in their minds they’re supporting the white people against the brown people. It’s nothing grander or more noble than garden variety racism.

Seems like a lot of western Jews don’t understand that in the eyes of the average westerner they’re literally just white people. The Jewish people we run into in the west look, speak and act pretty much the same as any other pale-skinned individual in western society, so they’re not othered in the way some races and cultures are. Being Jewish isn’t typically seen as any more remarkable or exotic than being Episcopalian.

This is why Jewish Zionists get the response they get from western Palestine supporters on the left. Their crying and histrionics about how the pro-Palestine protesters make their feelings feel looks exactly the same as any other white person Karening and drama queening because their feelings aren’t being given priority over the lives and rights of others. It’s also why Jewish anti-Zionists who spend their energy tone-policing the pro-Palestine movement tend to get a lot of pushback; for many people it reads the same as a white activist centering themselves within the Black Lives Matter movement.

Western Jews are generally seen as white people by western society. It didn’t used to be that way back before our society got a lot more secular, but that’s how it is now. Western Jews enjoy white privilege and do not encounter the same obstacles that actual oppressed minorities encounter in life, but the tradeoff is that when they try to act like they’re an oppressed minority in order to promote the interests of Israel, people tend to scoff and roll their eyes as much as they would at any other white person acting like their whiteness makes them a disempowered victim.

There is no antisemitism epidemic in our society. There is some hatred toward Jews on the fringes, but it’s nothing like the systemic prejudice people from other races and marginalized groups encounter in the west. Overwhelmingly “antisemitism” is just a victim-LARPing narrative used to bludgeon all opposition to a genocidal apartheid state whose crimes western governments have been backing to the hilt.

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By Caitlin Johnstone / Rogue Journalist

Caitlin Johnstone is an independent journalist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her website is here and you can follow her on Twitter @caitoz

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(Source: caitlinjohnstone.com.au; June 8, 2025; https://v.gd/Cg39OC)
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