Dear Fellow Anti-Zionists: By Telling the CLASS Truth that the Mass Media Censor, I Persuaded My Passionately Pro-Israel Jewish Neighbor to Change Her Mind and Become an Anti-Zionist.

If you tell this truth, then the Zionist accusation that you're antisemitic will lose all credibility and you'll gain the support of the VAST majority of the general public including most Jews

I have a very nice neighbor I’ll call Susan (not her real name, to protect her privacy.) Susan is my age, 77, and Jewish. Susan is very friendly; I’ve enjoyed several loaves of pumpkin bread that she has baked for me over the years starting the week we became neighbors. Susan is also quite proudly Jewish; when I moved into my home next to hers 14 years ago she must have told me she was Jewish a dozen times within the first two weeks. And Susan was, not surprisingly, very pro-Israel; she displayed an Israeli flag decal facing outwards on her window.

In conversations with Susan over the years I learned that Susan’s late parents had often visited Israel and that Susan herself was very sentimentally attached to Israel. While Susan herself was working class (she was a file clerk/receptionist for a department of the state of Massachusetts before retiring) she happened to be a distant relative (3rd or 4th cousin I believe) of the mega-billionaire Sheldon Adelson (recently deceased) who was the richest Israeli billionaire (his wife now is that) and a powerful Zionist who owned the largest circulation newspaper in Israel and who was also known as a kingmaker in the U.S. Republican party. One year Adelson invited his large extended family to stay for a week in his Las Vegas casino/hotel for a lavish bar mitzvah of one of his relatives, all on his dime, of course, including travel on his private luxury jets. Susan went and had the time of her life. Then several years later, for his 80th (I believe) birthday, Adelson again invited his extended family to enjoy a luxury celebratory week with him, this time at his Singapore casino/hotel. Susan again went and again had the time of her life and told me all about it.

Susan is not “political.” She gets her news from the TV and is not an avid reader and certainly not a person who has ever read radical or even mildly anti-establishment material. But simply from being a working class person she knows that the rich run things for their interests and not for the interests of people like her, and she sees the world this way despite having twice been wined and dined by her rich cousin. Because of her working class outlook on life, I had numerous conversations with Susan about my egalitarian revolutionary ideas, and she responded very positively to them. For example Susan is one of the many people who have signed This I Believe (read its egalitarian revolutionary words here.) In this regard, Susan is typical of most people, not at all exceptional.

Knowing that Susan and I disagreed about Israel, I decided to ask Susan to read my article about Israel, titled “Israel’s Government Attacks Ordinary Jews As Well As Palestinians” shortly after I wrote it in 2021. Guess what happened? Susan read my article and said she agreed with it 100%. Susan is now anti-Zionist. There is no longer an Israeli flag decal on Susan’s window, although she still has a mezuzah (a traditional Jewish thing) on her front doorpost.)

If you read my article that Susan read you will see that it explains the Israel/Palestine conflict in CLASS terms, not as a conflict between “the Jews versus the Palestinians” (as the mass media frame it) but rather between the billionaires versus working class people both Jewish and non-Jewish. You will see that my article doesn’t just make this assertion; it PROVES it with numerous mainstream (many Israeli) sources. But in addition to its use of mainstream sources, what makes my article persuasive to people like Susan is that it resonates with what they already know about the world—the class nature of our society and the conflict between working class and upper class values.

Dear fellow anti-Zionists: think about what would happen if the anti-Zionism movement broke free from the ruling-class-imposed framework that says the conflict is between “the Jews versus the Palestinians,” and instead framed anti-Zionism as a movement that championed the interests and values of BOTH ordinary Palestinians AND ordinary Israeli Jews, and opposed the contrary oppressive interests and values of the billionaires who control BOTH the Israeli government AND Hamas.

Think about what would happen if the anti-Zionism movement told the general public that Israel has been for decades funding Hamas and working to keep it in power for the purpose of making the bogeyman Palestinian enemy maximally frightening to Israeli working class Jews in order thereby to control, oppress and get rich off of them, as I prove in my article here (also linked to from my article that Susan read.)

What would happen is this. The Susans—and there are millions of them—would be won over to the side of the anti-Zionism movement! Furthermore, the even more MANY millions of non-Jewish people—who, because of their good sympathy for Jews based on their horror at the Holocaust, want to be on the side of the Jews and for that reason currently support Israel and oppose the anti-Zionism movement—would see that the Jewish Susans were anti-Zionist and therefore they should be too. They would CHANGE THEIR MIND LIKE SUSAN DID and support the anti-Zionism movement as well.

The Zionist accusation that anti-Zionism is antisemitic in effect if not intent would no longer be credible because people would understand that Zionist violence against Palestinians was NOT at all about making Israeli Jews safe, but about OPPRESSING Israeli Jews.

Do you now see why the class framework is so absolutely censored by the mass media?

Do you see now why Big $ funds the anti-Zionism organizations and makes that funding conditional on their not using the class framework but only the ruling-class-approved framework of “The Jews versus the Palestinians”?

Do you now understand why Jewish Voice for Peace expelled me (both the local and the national JVP leadership) the moment I mentioned during a local chapter zoom call my article that Susan read? Read all about this here.

I have had many conversations with rank-and-file student anti-Zionists at Harvard and Boston University (before October 7, 2023). I explained to them what I have said above. They listened politely, even nodded their heads in agreement. But they did not ACT on this message. No! They just continued to follow the leadership of the anti-Zionism leaders. Why? Well, it’s very hard to oppose the establishment leaders of a movement that you want to be a part of. (Remember how I got expelled from JVP for disagreeing with the framework that such leaders use.)

Despite the fact that it is hard to change the framework of the anti-Zionism movement, the following fact remains. Until the anti-Zionism movement in countries like the United States (where many people know about the Holocaust and thus want to remain “on the side of the Jews”) switches to using the truthful CLASS framework, it will never win over the VAST MAJORITY of the general public¹; it will only be able to win over the minority of people who will oppose Zionism despite the fact that they wrongly believe (because NOBODY has told them the CLASS truth) that Zionist violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of making Israeli Jews safe.

The Zionists understand that that the false “Jews versus Palestinians” framework prevents anti-Zionism from becoming a truly majority movement, and they count on it. The U.S. ruling class that controls the mass media also understands this. It is time that anti-Zionists understood it too, and ACTED on this understanding by adopting the truthful CLASS framework.

1. In contrast, the United States movement against South African apartheid DID gain the support of the vast majority of Americans and this is why it was able to force the U.S. government to switch from supporting apartheid in South Africa to condemning it with sanctions. The reason this movement against South African apartheid was able to gain such large support is because there was no persuasive (to Americans) argument in defense of this apartheid. In contrast (again) there IS a persuasive (false, but persuasive) argument in defense of Zionist apartheid, namely the Zionist assertion that it is only for the purpose of making Israeli Jews safe. Only by refuting this Zionist lie, by expressing the CLASS truth, can the anti-Zionism movement become a majority movement as the anti-South-African-apartheid movement did.