There’s not really anything you can put past Israel’s supporters at this point. They will lie. They will manipulate. They will pretend to believe things they do not believe. They will pretend to feel things they do not feel. And they will do these things to facilitate some of the worst atrocities you can possibly…

Caitlin Johnstone

July 18, 2025

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

 

Sometimes I think it’s astonishing how aggressively Israel’s supporters work to stomp out criticism of Israel. Then I remember that these people also support mass murdering children; trying to take away my speech rights is one of their less evil goals. It shouldn’t shock me.

I saw someone talking online about how crazy it is that music groups who speak out against Israel’s atrocities are starting to form alliances with each other in an effort to counteract the campaign to silence them and destroy their careers, saying it shouldn’t be necessary to form an alliance in order to oppose an ongoing genocide. And that’s true, it shouldn’t be necessary. But it also shouldn’t surprise us that people who think bombing hospitals is fine would try to cancel musicians for criticizing Israel.

One mistake westerners keep making is thinking of Israel’s supporters as normal people with normal moral standards just because we happen to know them and interact with them in our communities. They look like us, speak like us, dress like us and act like us, so we assume they must think and feel a lot like us as well.

But they don’t. If you’re still supporting Israel in the year 2025, there’s something seriously wrong with you as a person. You do not have a normal, healthy sense of empathy and morality.

It’s 2025. Israeli soldiers are telling the Israeli press that they’re being ordered to massacre starving civilians trying to obtain food from aid centers. Countless doctors have been telling the world that Israeli snipers are routinely, deliberately shooting children in the head and chest throughout the Gaza Strip. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and all the leading genocide experts and human rights authorities are saying that a genocide is being perpetrated in Gaza. The New York fucking Times just published an op-ed by a Zionist genocide scholar who’s finally admitting that it’s a genocide.

There’s no way to deny what this is anymore. If you still support Israel in the year 2025, it’s not because you don’t believe Israel is committing horrific atrocities. It’s because you believe those horrific atrocities are good, and you want to see more of them.

Most Israel supporters will deny that this is the case, because they lie. They lie constantly. They have no moral problem with lying. They have no moral problem with burning children alive, so of course they have no problem with lying. 

That’s where people go wrong. They assume Israel supporters can’t possibly be lying about their concerns about “antisemitism” in order to promote the information interests of Israel, because nobody could be that evil. But Israel supporters think it’s fine to intentionally starve babies by blockading baby formula from entering Gaza. Of course they are that evil.

People assume Israel’s supporters wouldn’t deliberately stage fake antisemitic incidents or artificially inflate antisemitism figures in their own countries so that their governments will implement authoritarian measures to stomp out criticism of Israel in the name of fighting antisemitism, because they assume nobody could be that depraved. But these people think it’s fine for the IDF to systematically assassinate Palestinian journalists to stop them from telling the truth. Of course they are that depraved.

Of course they’d try to silence our speech. Of course they’d try to send our kids off to war with Iran. Of course they’d work to manipulate our government. Of course they’d pollute the information ecosystem with mountains of lies. They support a live-streamed genocide. They’re bad people.

Supporting Israel and its actions is not some political opinion like your position on property taxes or marijuana legalization. It’s not just some people having a point of view we need to respect and treat as equal to our own view on the matter. They’re working to make it possible to conduct an extermination campaign of unfathomable horror. That’s as political as a gang rape, and just as worthy of respect.

There’s not really anything you can put past Israel’s supporters at this point. They will lie. They will manipulate. They will pretend to believe things they do not believe. They will pretend to feel things they do not feel. And they will do these things to facilitate some of the worst atrocities you can possibly imagine.

This is who Israel’s supporters are. They’re showing you who they are every single day.

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