hopefully i don't get called a lib for this but i have been feeling quite a bit of uncertainty when it comes to Jewish people who have been indoctrinated into Zionism and Americans , and partially people from other western nations , who have either due to economic distress or due to indoctrination joined the military . don't get me wrong both are absolutely privileged , especially those Jewish people who live in occupied Palestine , however i feel that they aren't fully responsible for their harmful beliefs . of course this doesn't excuse acting on their beliefs , but from testimonies of people who have rid themselves of those beliefs its not an easy thing to do (i have been particularly affected by Matt Leib's , of the BadHasbara podcast , comparison between fighting off his heroin addiction and his Zionism) .
they are of course not the people who are most victimised , however i feel somewhat uneasy about blaming them for not doing the work of deindoctrinating themselves , especially as , especially those who joined the American military , they are really mistreated . a lot of propaganda is explicitly about making those who benefit from the ideology maintained by it to feel unsafe , therefore , in their minds , justifying violent actions .
like this mostly matters for those who are on the path if deindoctrinating themselves , even if they themselves have not realised that yet , for example a ex military member who is struggling with trauma over actions they made in while deployed or someone who has been raised in a Israeli settlement questioning the morality of living there , beyond the usual labor Zionist stuff . i definetly don't think that , sorry for the extreme example , someone who relives pressing down the trigger of a sniper riffle and the bloody effects of what happened after , especially if they were aware then or were made aware later that the person they killed was a noncombatant , that their actions were wrong . i think that helping them towards the realisation that its a wider issue is the better option .
like this isn't very well put together but like just wanted to throw this out and have someone say if i'm not insane or just the usual over empathic stuff .
on language
feel free to replace each usage of "person" with "entity" , i wanted to make this more readable to those outside the ΘΔ space
While I don't fully agree with or like this standard, I think it's a very useful barometer:
My sympathy ends, when someone harms someone else.
It's perfectly okay and reasonable to feel empathy and sympathy for people who have been indoctrinated and misled, and ideally, we are working towards a world where that will no longer occur.
Yes, people are incredibly dualistic. Complex and simple, "stupid" and intelligent, stubborn and open, hardcore or withdrawn.
I think that soldiers and indoctrinated people should have varying degrees of empathy and sympathy, but we shouldn't mollycoddle them, and I think it's better to be on the safe side, when in doubt.
When someone uses their indoctrination as an excuse to greatly harm others, or at the very least doesn't start an actual reform and accountability, recovery and retributive process, I don't think they deserve any excess sympathy or empathy.
Ultimately, most of the time it's actions that matter more, because they speak louder than words.
I think you can and should blame people for being indoctrinated, in various circumstances and various degrees and contexts. Now, that simultaneously doesn't mean that they can't work towards the greater good, or can't slightly ameliorate or mitigate things, or that maybe eventually they don't deserve forgiveness.
But always remember that forgiveness for indoctrination and atrocity, fundamentally isn't required or owed to anyone.
That's why I maintain that communists should be very willing to educating, reforming and working with indoctrinated people or current/former imperialist military, depending on the context. But we shouldn't mollycoddle them.
To answer your question, I don't think you can fully blame many people in Israel for falling for the better part of a century of racist lies and propaganda. But that doesn't mean that they should be mollycoddled.