Finding Sinister Motives For Every Normal Israeli Behavior Is Easier Than I Thought

by Sulamain Ahmed, online activist

New York, February 15 – If you’re new to pro-Palestinian activism, the prospect of having to take activities in which every ordinary human being engages, and interpreting them as driven by evil motives when an Israeli does them, can seem daunting. But trust me, once you get going, you will find it almost reflexive. In no time at all, like me, you can look at a bunch of young Israeli women dancing and your first thought will be, “The only reasonable explanation is that they are celebrating the killing of Palestinians.”

I, too, once thought that training myself to view, for example, Jews quietly visiting the holiest site in Judaism, not as an unremarkable manifestation of people showing reverence for a shrine, but as SETTLERS STORMING AL AQSA, would take much effort. But, surprisingly, the reframing took a matter of mere hours. Now I expend only the tiniest conscious effort to describe normal border control and security procedures – accepted everywhere as an inconvenient necessity – as APARTHEID RACISM when Israel does it. It can only be explained by a desire to perpetrate dehumanization and humiliation.

This of course holds true, and becomes even easier, when it comes to active military measures Israel takes to protect its people. Security is one, perhaps the most basic, obligation, of a state to its citizens, whether to prevent, deter, or retaliate for, attacks, and to remove threats to those citizens. Except when Israel does it; then it derives not from standard military measures to remove threats, but attempted genocide. Even the smallest act cannot be innocent; no good deed can be good if performed by an Israeli, certainly not an Israeli Jew. We must, must assume some dark motive behind the things that are totally normal, even praiseworthy, when others do them.

Take disaster aid. How dare you accuse other countries of cynically exploiting the suffering to raise your humanitarian profile! Unless you’re talking about Israel. Aidwashing! Pinkwashing! Greenwashing! Nothing, nothing at all, can carry any innocence or ingenuousness when Israel does it. And once you give it a try, you will also see how easily you can frame even the tiniest behavior as indicative of irredeemable Zionist evil.

Palestinians able to earn more much in Israel than in Palestinian-controlled territory becomes “Israel exploits Palestinian laborers.” Israeli agricultural tech and innovation become “Israel maliciously destroys desert and swamp ecosystems.” It’s not “Israeli parents take children to elementary school” but “settler-colonialists conspire to defile sacred indigenous sites.”

Now you give it a shot.

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