#‘how can they justify the deaths of millions and get away with it?’ idk dawg ask Reagan and his response to the aids crisis

[soullessjack]

Israeli propaganda is really some dystopian fucking nonsense. AI Generated evidence of Hamas leaders? Pretty painted actresses who can barely hold back their smiles as they walk through destroyed buildings? Just straight up lying about a fucking school calendar? It’s actually unbelievable, and for a little bit I wondered “how can this be the propaganda that brainwashed people so extensively they can’t even register Palestinians as people who are suffering,” but then I remembered all of the propaganda that the US has pumped out that is still embedded into our very lives and culture. carrots being good for our eyesight? A straight up lie told by the British to hide their radar technology during WW2 (also, a fucking looney toon convinced half of us that rabbits eat carrots as much as lions eat meat).

I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make or if I’m even trying to make one at all, but if anyone ever has any more questions like “how can they believe [insert lie]” like I did, I think it’s worth looking at our own history and what we were told and what we believed or still believe to this day before we ask. “how can they be this cruel and inhumane to literal children?” “how can they think this tiny baby is a part of Hamas?” look at any instance of European colonization or American slavery. look at Japanese internment camps. look at any minority group that has ever been compared to an animal or portrayed as unintelligent savages that need to be civilized. it’s not a question of who has the worst history or shifting blame. It’s that the Israeli government has been perpetuating the same notions against Palestine to its own people for decades, as the American government has perpetuated to us against countless groups, and many of those notions have become even staples of our own pop culture; like the association of weed, crack, guns, poverty watermelon and fried chicken to Black people all pretty much being a product of slavery and Reaganism. just the general association of poverty, drugs and violence with minorities is a product of propaganda in itself.

I think I’ve finally found the point I wanted to make, and it’s this: before we start criticizing Israeli people for so easily believing the propaganda of the IDF and their government, consider what we have easily believed from our government and, say, the CIA. consider how easily they sold it to us, and how it still affects our country now. the Israeli government and the American government are not just allies of each other, but also very similar in how they operate and brainwash their own people. their “birthright” to Israel is about as real as our Manifest Destiny was (as in, not at all). their viewing of Palestinians as “children of darkness,” or “cockroaches” or “Hamas/terrorists,” is not at all far from our viewing of Muslims as terrorists, or Indigenous people as savage and wild.

There are patterns here, patterns that have always been here, and it’s beyond crucial that we start recognizing them and going forward with that knowledge.