The state of Israel currently controls an area of land comprising four distinct regions: the 1948 green line territory (what could be considered “Israel proper”), the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.
In total, about 14.8 million people live in this combined area, with a plurality (but NOT a majority) of them - 7.2 million - being Israeli Jews. That means that the rest, the majority, are non-Jewish - they include Gazans, West Bank inhabitants, and non-Jewish Israeli citizens (aka ‘48 Arabs).
Are Americans aware of this? It doesn’t get brought up very much, but to me this seems like a pretty significant fact. We’re sending billions of dollars a year to Israel so that a minority of the people who live there can have a special set of rights over the majority.
I did not know this prior to October 7th. I was pro-Palestinian prior to that anyway, but I mistakenly thought that Israel was, at least, oppressing a numerical minority rather than a majority.
i bet most are simply not paying attention. america is a distraction + trauma factory. they are thinking about their boss, their friends, their kids, their living situation. their awareness of american empire and its rogue client state is probably some vague notion of a religious conflict in the middle east / “holy land” where there are good guys and bad guys, and for the culturally christian informed by the casual glimpse of a headline, the good guys are israel, because jews/jesus.
to that end, the protests are existentially threatening to the imperial relationship, because the minute a reasonable (i.e., not racist, not in a death cult) person asks, “what is all this about?” and gets exposed a non-hasbara narrative, it looks like something bad that should not be supported. not saying that everyone who asks gets the real story, but it creates the opportunity for them to get something closer than the casual media consumption narrative. this is also why uncontrolled but popular media platforms are a threat (like tiktok). the simple facts / context of this conflict are damning to israel as a settler colonial ethnostate and the US as its patron. not to mention, the capital formations that have bet long on israeli theft and were assured by their government allies that it was rigged to fall in their favor.
it surprised me over these months to see the speed and commitment of the entire system to rally around the rogue client state, watching the heavy handed response to peaceful protests, and the moves to frame anti-genocide speech and aid for families to be regarded as support of terrorism. it’s organized and calculating, but it also comes across as panic button. real power doesn’t panic.
i am left wondering if this conflict is the tentpole around which the contradictions of the US will ultimately unravel.