Right / left political shift and Israel

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Some strange shifts in politics taking place in Europe.

Far right and right politics shifting to supporting Israel with the left associated with support for Palestinians.

Always thought far right was anti semitic?

Although Trump was very much pro Israel.

Maybe the conflict is creating a right wing revival in Europe ?



https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67378893

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67390514

Similar divide here but difference there but right, left, and center all used to support Israel.

In Europe I think that people - mostly right wing or racist working class people- that traditionally dislike Jews now hate Muslims and support Israel for that reason. At the same time intellectuals or "woke" people in the centre or on the left wing that have nothing against Jews view Israel as something of a apartheid state and find the treatment of the Palestinians offensive.

In the US, if by "left" you mean anyone who doesn't support Trump, I would say most support Israel, but it's soft support. Israel has always been presented in our media in a positive light. Much of the conflict there has tended to show Palestinian militants as terrorists. Arguably, the ones who were blowing up crowded buses in West Jerusalem, before the wall was built, were bona fide terrorists. Right-wing support for Israel is sort of obvious. West vs. East. Maybe other Westerners don't understand this because conservative elements of those societies have always been antisemitic,. Not nearly so true in the US. Donald Trump is not an antisemite. In fact it's not unusual for people like him to have Jewish friends and business associates.

The far left i.e. the Squad is very pro-Palestinian. Again obvious reasons. Since the start of the current war, young people have been exposed to an avalanche of anti-Israel propaganda, and they're responding to it. But the US citizens haven't experienced decades of anti-Zionist orientation in their culture to the same extent as Europeans.

There seems to be a great deal of propaganda on both sides. People need to know how to sift through information to be able to decipher what is or isn't a good source, piece of evidence, or argument rather than relying on tabloids, misinformation, and personal biases. That stuff along with critical thinking in general is probably something we need to do a better job of teaching in school.

To add to what I said before, Americans have seen pictures of kids throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, but it's easy to persuade Americans to sympathize with the soldiers in that situation. In the US, Israel has always been seen as a thriving Western democracy, so protesting Palestinians don't get automatic support. It's easy for Americans to believe them to be on the same side as the people who destroyed the WTC or the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although in recent weeks, many are seeing a different picture.

Something else people outside the US may not understand, is that Americans associate terrorism i.e. random targeting of civilians or targeting them solely based on their nationality, with Muslims in the Middle East. Sure we've heard of Basque terrorism, terrorism in N. Ireland, Tamil terrorism in Ceylon, but those things never affected us directly. It's a hard mental image to ignore. OTOH we've never associated Israel with terrorism. The concept of State Terrorism was never a thing here.

They probably still are. As far as I can tell, they want all of Europe's remaining Jews to leave Europe and move to Israel.

Also, as far as I can tell, they see Israel as a shining example of the same kind of ethnostate, with legally mandated privileges for one particular ethnic group, that they would like European countries to become for their own dominant ethnic groups.

See, the thing is, right wingers tend to be very Christian. Christians believe that Israel is God's chosen people and that we need to support Israel or we're going to be struck down.

I just don't see why american politicians, right or left haven't really expressed a lot of concern for all the children that are getting killed over there. Like last I heard at least 3,000 children but I imagine its a higher number now since the conflict is still going on. I mean I guess there is a demcratic congressperson who was bringing some of that up and the democrat party was divided on whether they should condemn her opinions or not. Last thing we needed right before the next election that determines if we continue with democracy or get fascism is such division amoung the democrats.

The hamas attack could not have come at a worse time, that is for sure.

Not all Christians believe this.

Traditionally, most Christians have believed in Supersessionism.

Many of today's evangelical Christians, on the other hand, are premillenial dispensationalists, a belief system that originated in the early 1800's.

Indeed. Though nowadays I mostly only hear criticism of Israel from people on the left. Mainstream conservatives, moderates, and liberals overwhelming, unquestioningly support Israel. This is the consensus that has been spoon-fed to the public by politicians, educators, and pundits. The consensus has been so hard to break, because you actually do get both conservatives and liberals to agree on something--so it seems like it *must* be reasonable if they normally disagree on so much else. Both sides buy into the nationalist narrative that Jews will never be safe unless they have a state of their own built on the graves of Palestinians where non-Jews are second class citizens. Both sides see Jews as historical victims, and any suggestion that they could ever be the oppressors of anyone under any circumstance is branded as anti-semitism.


Basically this. Anti-Semitic right-wingers will tolerate Israel inasmuch as it serves as a sort of "first line of defense" against Islam. "Those dirty Muslims won't get to us unless they kill all those Jews first!"
Islam has been viewed as an adversary to the west even moreso than Judaism. Jews at least started gaining *some* tolerance and acceptance in Europe in some circles starting around the Enlightenment. Open hatred of Jews became much less acceptable after 1945, but there has been no such moment with Islam in the west where we realized that collectively disparaging an entire religion can have genocidal consequences.

See, that's where so many of you leftist types go wrong, this is like the whole "false consciousness" thing again, where you think everyone else is too stupid to genuinely hold the beliefs they do and must have been misled to them. To be fair, plenty of people are in fact that stupid, but it's still a super off-putting position and one of the greatest examples of cope I can think of, rationalizing the failure of your ideology as the people just not being able to get it rather than actively rejecting it for good reasons.

I happen to support Israel because I view them similarly to how I view the US, a flawed country that is still worth saving, where as they seem to be surrounded by theocratic dictatorships and kleptocracies who only use the Palestinians for their own political machinations. I wasn't spoon fed that opinion, I developed it organically over the years, and it's informed by a lot of reading into the history of Israeli military and intelligence actions that are highly critical of Israel (they're a terrible "ally" to the US, to pick but one thing), but I still think they're the side I choose to support warts and all.

I am not saying *no one* who supports Israel has put serious independent thought into it. I was merely describing why the consensus of supporting Israel was and is as widespread in the US as it is. When the government, the liberal (and conservative) media, and liberal (and conservative) educators are almost all pushing pro-Israel arguments for decades, then it is not unreasonable to say that the deck has been stacked against pro-Palestinians. It would be like if the above groups all told the American public to drink Coca Cola, but then Coke fans act like Pepsi is less successful because the impartial, meritocratic market has spoken (forgive me for the soda analogy). The government and the establishment at large have had their finger on the scales in favor of Israel for about as long as Israel has existed. Most supporters of Palestine have done so by thinking outside the box defined by the establishment. Most supporters of Israel cannot say the same--even if there are exceptions.

But Coke is objectively better than Pepsi, government thumb on the scale or not.