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
In the specific example of Zionism and young Jewish people, it is directly in their material interests to fully "buy in" on Zionism. Free land, free homes, subsidies... the price for admission is only your soul.
For liberals in walls: This applies to American colonists all the way back and, in a different sense, still applies today. All the "free land" is claimed now, but the descendants of those who stole land have profited greatly in a personal way. Thus it directly against the material interests of a large portion of white Americans to ever question much less oppose the status quo in the USA. This is not yet the case fully in Israel, but as they steal more Palestinian land (Gaza annexation seems fairly imminent. Not being a pessimist, just... I mean, look what Israel is doing and saying) they will also grow a population that moves from material interests being conquering land (early USA colonies and America broadly equivalent) to defending and demanding a never changing status quo where ever ceding "Israeli" land (or, likely, it'll be framed cynically as "Jewish land") is fully off the table- as it is now in the USA, Canada, etc.
I don't think blame has anything to do with it, basically. If that's the word you want to apply, then ok. But Zionists in Israel or with family there are acting primarily on material interests backed up secondarily with ideology that proclaims them to be righteously stealing land and wealth. (Same as other colonial societies)