University Protests against the Israeli Incursion into Palestine

[Belacqua]

All of that is wrong, except the ‘Free Palestine’ bit.

Boru

Actually, the majority of the youth are against the genocidal old generation of Biden.
But agreed on Zionism, probably it's way older.

As I understand it, Zionism started in the late 19th century. Its first noticeable advocate was Theodore Herzl, a journalist who worked in Vienna and Paris. He was a secular Jew, who didn't speak Yiddish or Hebrew, but he was troubled by the Dreyfus Affair and began a movement. Early Zionism worked for a Jewish homeland but not necessarily in Palestine -- in fact, after considering many different locations, Herzl worked for a new state in Uganda. Zionism has only been exclusively about Palestine since 1948.

I'm sure you're right that current events are pushing people away from sympathy for the modern state of Israel and the old guard that support it. Especially once you get out of the Anglophone media, more and more people associate current Israeli policies with colonialism, violent American interventions, and injustice for non-white people. 

I think that Israel's current genocide is going to have serious long-lasting effects. Netanyahu and his supporters appear to have decided to go for broke, damn public opinion, and wipe out the Palestinians once and for all. More and more they're talking openly about Amalek (a Hebrew Bible story about ethnic cleansing). For the first time ever I have heard modern people, speaking American English, declaring that Eretz Israel should go from the Nile to the Euphrates -- this is what God promised Abraham, after all. 

Supporters of Israeli policy are making a terrible mistake by conflating Zionism with Jewishness. They do this every time they say that opposition to the current genocide in Gaza can only be motivated by antisemitism. In fact this is an old antisemitic trope -- that real Jews only belong in Palestine, and if they are in Vienna or New York they are not really a part of those cities. Even Biden recently said that Jews can only be safe in Israel -- effectively declaring that they can't be safe in the US. This is very stupid. 

In the long run it serves to polarize further the whole world, in a way that is picking up speed fast. Africa, large parts of Asia, what they call the "Global South," are all sick of Western colonialism and turning to Russia and especially China. The more the US is seen as encouraging the oppression of Palestinians, the more that looks like a wise choice. I don't think this gets reported in English much, but it's happening fast.