I believe that quite often, people are stupid. I believe this because I see them act without any self-preservation instinct way too many times. However even the most obtuse and dense people can be brought to the light so to speak. You just have to find the argument that resonates with them.
The Arabs, I believe, have made a massive mistake. They have tied their entire struggle to perpetual victimization.
The issues with this are two-fold: One, people do not respect victims, they pity them. This means that even though someone might feel twinges of pity and do something about it based on that feeling, it’s not deep or really connected. This is why you see so many so-called “pro palestinians” change sides completely when you do reach them.
Secondly, it’s very difficult to portray yourself as a victim when almost your entire history was spent as a victimizer. It requires massive amounts of both ignorance and mental gymnastics to maintain that aura of victimhood.
The victimhood narrative really at this point only has two audiences, the regressive left in the West and the Muslim world. Everyone else is starting now to pay attention to facts and history.
It’s not going to be immediate, and it is going to require herculean effort to educate people but the simple truth is that when you examine the history of the Middle East and, in specific, the Jewish people, one basic thing stands out.
The Jews have only been ascendant intermittently. Their entire history is an underdog story and even texts that are foundational for the western culture such as the new testament , the histories of Josephus and others make it clear that the Jews were never imperialistic or colonialist. Outside of the Levant there were only a few Jewish cities and even those cities were often created from displaced Jewish communities. Other than a couple of Jewish cities on the Hejaz, you just didn’t see Jewish communities outside of the Jewish homeland that were stand alone communities.
Now back to the myriad of reasons that making your entire narrative about victimhood is problematic.
I think the main one is that by claiming victimhood, you have to actually be a victim or it simply doesn’t work long-term. Examples of actual victims are North American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, South Pacific natives and Melanesian and Polynesians, all peoples who were victimized by the dominant European culture. Muslims and Arab Muslims in particular like to complain because after almost 1600 years they found their culture going against a technologically superior culture in the European culture. The Muslim culture had been dominant, and had even almost overtaken European culture pre renaissance, going so far as to conquer much of Eastern Europe. However, as Muslim culture and technology stagnated, European culture gained momentum. When the two cultures clashed again, it was the Muslim culture which found itself on the bottom. It’s basically and ebb and flow.
Most people are surface thinkers and emotional tweaking and switch flipping will work easily on them. The Arabs know this and have used it to their advantage. However, when you do this you run a risk, because people do not like to feel manipulated, and when they feel manipulated they often react very strongly. As more and more people see the ridiculousness of the Arab position, as they see Pallywood video after Pallywood video being debunked, as they see the truth about Hamas hiding rockets behind children to attack other children, they feel manipulated.
It helps that the Arabs are slow to adjust. They got away with such abject bullshit for so long that they didn’t realise that people were starting to see through it. So they continued with ridiculous propaganda that relies strongly on a bias against Jews to even seem legitimate.
I find it ironic that the social justice movement is what is starting to destroy the Arabs’ credibility. They used the language of the liberal left to create the social justice movement, they just didn’t realise that they had created a Golem, a monster that they couldn’t control. Words like “justice,” “peace,” “human rights” were bandied about by them to attack the Jews and a lot of the left embraced it because it allowed them to give free rein to their internal Jew hate and still feel like decent people.
But herein lies the rub. When you spout constantly about human rights and peace and justice, but then advocate for positions inimical to those concepts, some of the people who are not brainwashed start to ask questions.
For instance, “Why is it the “palestinians” make demands just to come to the negotiating table to make demands?”
“Why is it that Jews, who demonstrably indigenous, are the only people who these so-called indigenous rights activists deny indigenous rights to?”
“If all you want is peace and justice, why do you chant things like “death to jews” and “heil hitler” or even worse “hitler was right”? that doesn’t seem very much like something a genuine human rights activist would say.
If you cared about human rights wouldn’t you advocate for everyone’s human rights? Wouldn’t you advocate against Muslims changing declarations of humans rights to say “As long as it doesn’t contravene the Koran?” Shouldnt basic human rights trump any belief system?
I believe the “pro palestinian” movement has had its day. It’s still kicking but it’s dying and it’s dying because it is a movement that uses language it has no right to use, that in fact goes directly against. Justice? I would argue that the return of the Jews to their ancestral home was absolute justice. Peace? I would argue that the Jews have been willing to do almost anything for peace. Human rights? Does it even need to be said that Israel is literally the only country in the Middle East that has a decent human rights record? Where women are not property and gays can live openly?
We talk a lot about these things, but we are starting to make these arguments in public where people can see, so remember, perception matters, optics matter, so choose your words carefully but truthfully. That’s OUR advantage and because we have been using it intelligently we are winning. We just have to understand that this is a generational conflict, it won’t be over soon.
The pendulum is swinging and the other side knows it, so they will get more and more radical and stupid out of desperation. As they do, it drives more and more people to look at the truth.
So stay strong, be active and visible and the world will change. It has to.
