I used to think that "Israel" was a good idea. My seemingly lifelong interest in WWII made me well aware of how close to extinction Jewish people became simply for being Jewish. Of course they deserved a place to call their own, where they were safe, after everything that happened to them. It felt like basic human decency to me, even when people smarter than me would try to explain the displacement that happened in order to give the Jewish people their "homeland".

I thought "But it's their homeland, right?", just like every other Zionist out there. I wasn't guided to believe this by any sort of religion. Just a feeling that everyone should have a place of safety, especially those who have been persecuted for entirely made-up reasons. But I clearly didn't see Palestinians as "everyone" at that point. Well, I did, but I didn't know they weren't given a choice to share their land with Israelis. I didn't know that they were no longer safe.

It should be clear by now, but before I go on, I want to make a point of saying that being critical of Israel is not the same as being anti-Semitic. If you choose to read on in bad faith from this point, that's your issue to deal with, not mine. I am pro-Jewish people. I always have been from the moment I learnt about who they are. I am also pro-Palestinian people. The conflation of Israeli policy with Jewish identity is the same as saying all Germans are Jew-hating Nazis. And with how steadfast Germany is standing behind Israel right now, they're quite clearly not¹.

So, what changed?

I simply educated myself on the history of the area and realised the pretty picture I had in my head of Palestinians welcoming Jewish people back with open arms to share the land, based on a mutual understanding of being persecuted was bullshit. It was dressed up as a righteous but peaceful reparation for the horrors of the Holocaust, and I felt for it. Until I didn't anymore.

Israel wasn't something that could just be given away to the Jewish people because powerful nations felt bad about what happened to them. It had to be aggressively colonised with the support of those powerful nations. And now? We're right back at genocide. What is happening to the Palestinian people right now is exactly what happened to the Jewish people during WWII. Yet governments around the world are totally cool with it this time? That's... interesting.

There's just no way that guilt is the main driver behind what's currently going on. If it was, indigenous peoples around the world would also be getting reparations. Sure, you could argue that it's just some good old-fashion racism as Jewish people are ethnically more similar to Europeans and therefore matter more, but I think it goes deeper than that. Cue the spooky "conspiracy theory" music with religious overtones:

I think it's mostly Christianity. Specifically, the use of Christianity as a political tool to make the whole world Christian.

Consider the fact that Israel is conveniently located for the elimination of Islam. They may have leveraged the situation in a way that made it seem like they're willing to accept their difference in religion to unite against another religion we know they want wiped out, but it's a little hard to convince Christians who are half a world away to help them. So, what if their plan is to get the Jews they've placed right back in the middle of everything to help them instead? Then maybe they can spring the Christian Zionism on them afterwards.

The basic idea of Christian Zionism is that the return of Jewish people to the "Holy Land" is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ. They can't have the Rapture that follows the Biblical end times without it. From my understanding, which is heavily affected by the fact that I just DON'T understand it, the Jews will build a temple in Jerusalem that will somehow reveal that Jesus Christ is who they should be following and they'll either convert to Christianity or just die. Then, when no more Jewish people exist, Jesus can come back and get the party started.

Just typing that out felt uncomfortably stupid, yet after learning about this, it became impossible for me to see Israel's existence as anything but a useful tool in the spread of a religion that's not its own.

I still think it's perfectly reasonable for Jewish Zionists to believe they have a right to live in their ancestral homeland. In fact, I believe everyone should have that right. But if they can't see that they only have Israel because our Christian overlords allowed it and continue to support their government's genocide of the Palestinian people in the pursuit of something that's not actually that beneficial for them in any non-spiritual, I feel deeply sorry for them.

I don't think enough people realise just how insidious institutional Christianity is. They believe that if we're no longer crusading in the name of Christianity, it's not harming anyone. But it's still doing the same damage it always has. It's using Jewish people as pawns and Muslim people as scapegoats. It's also forcing laws upon people who don't believe in it, or worse, on people who do believe in it, but the version of it that I personally believe it was supposed to be before the bastards driven by greed got their hands on it.

All this being said, religion as a power structure is and always has been the problem. And in Israel's case, it's not just Judaism.