I don't think people realize how deeply embedded the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the heads of many around the world. Most don't even understand the real nature of the conflict and simply internalize anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or both, since a very young age.

Indonesia is insanely rife with anti-Semitic sentiments. Judaism isn't legally acknowledged. Anti-Semitic texts were (are?) openly taught in schools. The word "Jew" is used as a mockery. Explicitly anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are very popular.

Most Indonesians have never met a single Jewish person in their life. The idea that there are many anti-Zionist Jews fighting for Palestine is just beyond us. Your race and inherited religion fixes your side for you.

Does this also happen with the perpetuation of Islamophobia? Obvs I can only speak of what I went through, but I can't help but feel like many of these racist sentiments are perpetuated through global machines of distorted spectrality.

The way that most people still reduce Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a problem of identitarian religiosity and blood-and-soil affiliations instead of a complex history of land rights and colonialism has brought nothing but harm to so many of us. It has to stop.

I want to be clear that the complex part is how its repercussions have contributed to various machineries of racism worldwide. But the key conflict itself is not all that obscure. Here's a great thread that frames it very well: https://twitter.com/butchanarchy/status/1391901940552925184?s=19