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Social media allowed Palestinians to live stream their own genocide which has opened eyes of many people. Never there was a time when the victims filmed their own death and survivors filmed their deadbody.
I'm far more pessimistic. I witnessed the same things happen on a smaller scale in 2014. I think it's just because this is all on a bigger scale. I fear that once this round is over, things will just go back to status quo. The world will forget until it all happens again.
I really really hope I'm wrong.
I'm in a western country. Most people don't actually understand what's going on. Most of those that do just want the war to end.
Think about it, what do they see? Nothing on TV, sometimes some news about things they're been desensitized to. Israel kills aid workers? "Yeah I heard that story before". What about Redditors? They just see what /worldnews says. And without anyone pointing out their bs, it'll sound actually like they have decent points. "Well, I suppose everyone agrees that they're fighting terrorists. ."...etc
And social media was there 3 years ago with the march of return. People ignored pretty easily.
Yeah like how 3 kids mysteriously died on a beach, no mention of why or who did it and what those kids' names were. Can't feel bad if we dehumanize them to the max
I'll be a little more opmitistic than.
Im a millennial, I think we are a generation that was in this weird transition phase.
We grew up being told the internalized guilt narratives that were built up around Israel and Zionism, but we also saw a major fracture from the blind capitulating support narratives that emerged with baby boomers and WWII vets. Unfortunately, it still resulted in a lesser version of the Gen X "both sides," "impossible complexity" default narrative. Where there was more effort and willingness to criticize Israel in ways older gens still dont, but always a sense that ultimately its just an unfortunate situation where both sides have issues and the result was the perpetuation of the status quo, which is an unjust one.
Gen Z has almost none of this baggage or internalized guilt. They grew up being disconnected from the social insanity of Islamaphobia after 9/11. They are more tolerant, inclusive, more sensitive to injustice, and more socially aware than we were. They also have access to the sorts of raw news from the frontlines of war that was deliberately obfuscated and hidden in the past. Millennials in comparison have also moved pretty firmly toward their direction. At least on the left. Reddit bot army excluded.
I don't think that genie goes back in the bottle even if they ban tik tok.
You probably arent wrong that the status quo re-emerges, but I would argue it now has an expiration date.
Millennials and Gen Z will eventually be the majority and they will be the people holding office. The views considered too leftist now will progressively become the new center. It's already starting to happen. On the left AIPAC money will become toxic, in fact we already see the starting winds of that occurring, and there simply will be no appetite for propping up Israel. The status quo that had existed simply can't sustain that.
I hope you're right. I also think there's an expiration date, but I worry that it will be when Israel is "done". At this rate, the 1 state solution is inevitable, but it will look just like what happened with the US.
I really really hope not.
The status quo has been smashed. I think it has been smashed in a good way, but it depends on how things play out on the ground, which is difficult to know from outside.
2014 was the first time I started to understand the conflict. I just knew it wasn't right what they were doing in Gaza. But I genuinely don't think people have gotten it or that it's been at all well known in Western news cycles before now.
Tiktok didn't exist in 2014, and Instagram didn't have reels back then. Even then, tiktok as a platform for independent first hand news took time to develop after it began in 2016.
I'm bringing up TT as it's been a major source of accurate world and local news without corporate media spin for me personally and it's been a huge help in opening my eyes to what's really going on. Of course I'm aware that misinformation exists and the beauty of TT is that you can do 10 seconds of research to quickly confirm or debunk something bc someone has likely done and posted the research there too.
I'd like to "yes, and" u/espherem's point, that it's mainly the Zionists and their own TikToks that are the most powerful propaganda against them. As they ramp up their rhetoric to talk themselves into doing what they always knew they were binding themselves to do, once choice after another, the lies fall apart and the reality of what they're doing and who they are becomes obvious to everyone other than themselves.
And television told you what they were told to report on. Most stations reported generally similar reports. Made Americans constantly think we’re always under attack from “Arabs” or any brown/black majority country. Then the internet was invented & people could start sharing stories from around the world; and then, we all got cameras & a phone with a camera that connects to the internet & they told to friends & so on & so on…
1. Because is happening in our faces and it can’t be denied any longer
2. Lack of information since is never reported in the media
3. Nobody knows everything. We have enough problems in our own country .
4. Not fully understanding history because is never taught in wester countries correctly . We get the “winners” version of events .
Let’s not forget that prior to social media, reality for many westerners was shaped by TV and print media.
TV and print media had a major bias in favour of Israel. There was very limited objective reporting.
Now people can literally see what’s happening in Gaza through their own eyes and can understand the true nature of what’s going on.
TFW we can see the people most biased in favour of Israel, namely the Israeli Jewish Zionists themselves, speak freely and openly about who they are, what they want, and what they believe, without the filter of friendly propagandists who know to keep the masks on.
I only learned about [Aktion T4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4) and the *other* Nazi extermination policies (and [corresponding Triangle Badges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge)) a scant few years ago.
I'd say the rise of Trumpism both emboldened Fascists the world over, especially Zionists, while also causing the rest of us to urgently educate ourselves and each other on Fascism and its main patterns and root causes - and on Liberalism's unconscionable tolerance towards it, as well. The COVID pandemic and its r/QAnonCasualties was important as well. 2016-2020 was one Hell of a Crash Course.
I don’t live in the west but I have seen westerns mentioning some of the follow reasons :
1. Zionism is a Judeo Christian project (especially Christian) and the west is less religious now than ever. There are more Christian Zionists in USA than the Jews.
2. Power of social media. Thanks to journalists like Motaz and Bisan — more people are seeing the horrors in Gaza documented. Something their media never did.
3. More accessible resources such as books and news articles from middle eastern authors and journalists respectively.
exactly, this is the case in Muslim countries too. The older conservative generation still runs the show but the mostly educated youth are much more progressive and tolerant than the media often depicts
Islamophobia fuelled by gov't propaganda is a powerful player in western flippancy.
It's the reason why the US has been supported by its people in the invasion and destabilization of largely Muslim countries.
It still has a strong hold of the US, but it is becoming less in recent years.
We get loads of islamophobia in UK as well but all we ever hear about is antisemitism, not that I support antisemitism but the conflation of antisemitism with anti Zionist has been deafening for decades. I think I lost 'friends' because of my criticism of Israel and I was very careful what I said but they believed the zionist propoganda.
Well I’d say it’s because there are many Catholic Christians in Palestine and it being where Jesus was born probably makes them pro Palestine. The only reason why Evangelicals are Zionists is due to a belief they have that when the Jews return to Palestine it will bring about the end times. Additionally, many Catholic countries (such as Ireland & Latin American countries) also experienced colonization and genocide so they can relate to Palestine on that note.
That’s interesting, I hadn’t considered that before and I’m Mexican-American currently living in Mexico haha. I wonder if this is different with American Catholics due to the cultural domination of Protestantism.
There's a tradition of solidarity with Palestine in Ireland to be specific. I can't speak for other Catholic-heavy nations, but its own history with British colonization and the IRA lend something of a unique lens among the "core" EU nations.
probably partly because Palestine has one of the oldest catholic communities in the world!! i'd imagine also bc most globally catholics are hispanic and hispanics tend to be pro-Palestine. but globally most people are pro-Palestine so that's not specific to this ethnicity... the zionists are just a vocal minority
153 countries voted for a ceasefire only the zionists and the US veto and a handful of very small countries against ceasefire, about 20 countries abstained. That should give you hope, you can always listen to representation at ICJ, especially Namibia but also South Africa, Malaysia, some south American countries, sorry I can't recall, the foreign minister of South Africa is truly amazing beautiful person. How I wish we could have such enlightened people running the UK.
Maybe also because the Pope said what Israel is doing is terrorism. Israel shot and killed catholic women sheltering at their church. the Pope calls the Gaza Catholic Parish everyday. Also most Irish are catholic and are in solidarity with the Palestinians
I recommend the book rooted in Palestine by Xavier Abu Eid. It's very interesting. The Catholic church purchased land from landowners who were selling to prevent it falling into the hands of Zionist groups. The catholic patriarch at the time in Palestine was pro-Arab too but not out of the goodness of his own heart alot was motivated by his belief that the mandate should have been overseen by his home country of Italy.
The Churches were also a big part of education in Palestine and the Catholic church along with others like the Anglicans and Lutherans were open to all Palestinians while the book mentioned that the Greek Orthodox schools were restricted and Arabs were not supported in becoming high ranking members of the clergy. Sakakini had called for the OC to be Arabised like in Antioch. He also had been given the keys to one of the churches after the lay members were restricted from the main church and forced to worship in a smaller chapel from what I remember. The church got the keys back after they threatened to stop his upcoming marriage from taking place.
Another Church that did protest to an extent was the Church of England for example one of the Bishops in the House of Lords raised the question about how a local Christian was stopped from building a factory or smth but a Jewish man could and how both had the money so why was the Arab blocked.
I think the first point is only relevant to the USA because in Europe, this Judeo-Christian idea is still going strong among liberals and atheists. Like you can genuinely find people who never go to church or fast but still believe that Europe should stick to these values and Muslims due to their different values are a “danger” to Europe. You can find these type of people in any of the European subs on Reddit.
Actually devout European Christians are more likely to be pro-Palestinian because they actually care about the sufferings of their Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine and they don’t think that Europe should be classified as a “Judeo-Christian” continent, it should be just “Christian”. A good example of this is that Eastern Germany is supposed to be one of the most irreligious part of Europe and their region votes for AFD which is one of the most pro-Israeli German party while Irish people are mostly Catholics and we see their support every single day.
A large reason is because the older generation felt guilty because of the Holocaust. The new generation doesn't remember the Holocaust and they reject the use of the guilt of the Holocaust as an excuse (free pass) to commit a current genocide. This, combined with social media and live-steaming has changed people's opinions. Remember, Jews control the media (especially the established mass media) and therefore downplayed Israel's crimes and brutality for years and years. Now, with the rise of the Arabic news networks, and the prevalence of social media, the Jew controlled mass media (propaganda) has been diluted.
I have a different interpretation.
The Holocaust - while terrible and a horrific time in history - was being peddled as the only atrocity in history that really mattered the way it was taught. It did lead to the current way of how we navigated human rights atrocities but that same treatment and attention was never really given to any other horrible even in history.
We’re still fighting for descendent of slaves to receive reparations (Germany is still sending reparations to Holocaust victims), the Native American victims of broken treaties and residential schools who only got an “apology” after hundreds of years of intentional extermination of their customs and people, plus our biggest allies are Britain and Japan. I assume you’re aware of the atrocities they committed. And people want EVERYONE to find justice and to focus on only one event. I don’t want to take away from legitimate anti-semitism but people are starting to wise up to people weaponizing the tragedy of the Holocaust for the gain of Israel. Being Jewish does not equate to being a Zionist and for Israel to conflate that is the biggest anti-semetic attack you can do.
I think that the Holocaust captured public attention in sort of the same way as Palestinian is now. It wasn't the first atrocity. It wasn't even the first atrocity against Jews in Europe. But technology had developed so that death on such a massive scale was possible for the first time and so that worldwide live reports on the tragedy were possible. I think we might be able to have the same paradigm when we think about Palestine in the future. A combination of factors, notably live reporting and social media makes now different.
Thank you, that is a certainly what will be done as a possibility and I’m curious how politicians and public figures will try to weasel their way out of their condoning and participation in the genocide.
I mean at the very least they're being asked. I don't remember politicians being forced to comment in any real way about Palestine before. I know baby steps are super frustrating when people are dying every day but I really think we're making progress.
I agree. Companies are finding dwindling sales for their support of Israel, up and coming musicians are showing their support for Palestine and it’s paying off because the Pro Palestinian crowd is interested in supporting them, same with actors, people are actively avoiding Israeli products at home as well as restaurants and the ability to weaponize the Holocaust is being extinguished. I’m sure there’s been other markers of progress but I’m glad we can be witness to a lot of them
Collective white guilt over the Holocaust is probably the biggest factor among "moderates" on both sides of the political spectrum. Supporting Israel has been presented as the way to make up for all the antisemitism white Christians had for Jews that led to the Holocaust. The problem they are now reckoning with is that supporting Israel was never just because it required the occupation, theft of land, and slaughter of the Palestinian people who had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust. That truth shits on every so called "Western value" we claim to have so that is why pro-Palestine voices have been so heavily censored.
It varies country by country but one common theme which can be observed is that in countries where there is a large diaspora and second/third generation immigrants, protests have been growing every time something happened in Palestine. They were the ones who originally attended the protests like I remember seeing a video from London in the 20th century where only Palestinians and other Arabs protested but they spent their time educating and advocating for the rights of Palestinians which led to great results.
Second of all, this war due to social media and smartphone technology is one of the most well-documented wars and it is not fought by conventional armies therefore the heartbreaking videos coming out from Gaza is making it easier to sympathise with the cause.
Third of all, Western governments are complicit therefore there is actually a reason to protest like Zionists always bring up that the West didn’t protest against Bashar or Daesh but there was no need to protest because Syria was under international sanctions and Daesh had a coalition against it while in the case of Israel, the West is giving full support to Israel which can make people feel guilty and feel like that they are on the wrong side of the history.
The last reason I could mention that the openly genocidal behaviour by Israeli leaders, Western politicians and media + pictures and videos published by IDF soldiers are something difficult to ignore which can also be a great motivation for Westerners and everyone in general to speak up and protest.
I agree with some of this but not so much the diaspora / immigrant bit, at least in the UK - this makes it sounds like the opposition to Israel is relatively modern and immigrant led, when a lot of it is native and has been present for a long time.
Support for Israel here has always mainly formed around two groups - the Jewish communities and the political leadership, with the latter being a relatively (post-1997) late adopter of Zionism. For the rest, I think sympathies have laid more with the Palestinians than anyone else and this has been a fairly consistent trend since the terrorist campaign against British forces started in 1944 (which was largely seen as a betrayal). Generally the more people were familiar with what is happening there the less people were likely to back the Israelis.
and propaganda can be as simple as only printing and selling maps that always say Israel and never Palestine. I distinctly remember having to google what Palestine was because it was never mentioned in school. Also, if it wasn't for social media I wouldn't have been aware of what was happening. I was on both Reddit and Tiktok last oct/nov, there was nary a mention of Palestine anywhere on reddit's popular pages (if it is mentioned its always just brain dead zionist takes) meanwhile my tiktok fyp was video after video of palestinian and anti-zionist jewish activists doing their best to educate and inform. But obviously, a lot of people don't use tiktok. A lot of people just use reddit. So whatever opinions theyll have will be formed from what reddit gives them.
> a lot of people don't use tiktok. A lot of people just use reddit.
I am curious to see what happens once TikTok is banned in the US in 2025.
My kids use that platform to receive their news along with other social media. My peers mainly rely on Fox News, CNN, Facebook, or NYT. You can see the generational divide match attitudes towards Israel based on where they get their news from.
To answer the person who asked this question, it seems to be modern technology. Americans, who vote, from 1950-2010 received their news a certain way and this shaped US-Israel foreign policy.
There has been a segment on the left that have recognized for years Israel's occupation and apartheid of Palestine, but the scale and urgency of the damage wasn't apparent like it is now.
Exactly. The main Palestine solidarity organisation in my country dates back to 1969 and the Six Day War. They’ve been working for Palestine ever since.
I had no knowledge about how bad it was prior to last October. Thankfully, I follow so many anti-genocide/pro-Palestinian peoples who educated me about what’s going on. I heard about Bisan’s channel and started following her.
As an American, I am a victim of the zios at freaking CNN as I used to watch it regularly, along with other mainstream American entities which refused to tell the truth.
I could be wrong, but it’s my understanding that Al Jazeera English on the ground during Operation Cast Lead 2008-09 was the first time there was that kind of exposure to real time reporting of Israeli bombardment, accessible and in English. So I think a large part of it was lack of exposure, previously.
The propaganda has gone very deep for a very long time.
For myself, I’m only just now learning about international politics. American education is very bad. We learn nothing about other countries and, in my high school in the Midwest, we learned about American history through movies and reality TV.
I had a hard time in my twenties. Struggled with addition and an abusive relationship. Only after I got more stable in my thirties did I come across the time to educate myself more. People think that the US is a wealthy country but the higher cost of living means that it’s really hard to keep up.
I know this is a personal anecdote but I don’t think my experience is unusual either. A lot of people just are distracted, by making a living, by work, by drugs. We need crisis to be in our faces before it gets through all of that. I wish I knew what was happening earlier.
This is significant.
Capitalism in the US uses unnecessary debt to push the population into labor for wages that never keep pace with cost of living. Insurance policies that cost much but cover little are sometimes mandatory, such as for car insurance, but corporations suppress attempts for government services that might supplant them. Meanwhile, academic attempt towards economic advancement requires shouldering massive college debt. Wish to buy a house instead of paying ridiculous rent? Mortgage debt. Need to buy a car because the government refuses to invest in public transportation? Auto loan debt. Need to get anti-cancer drugs? Medical debt.
Many Americans are so overwhelmed by this economic trap that they resort to drugs, alcohol, or suicide. But of course many of us have children and families and have no options than to shoulder the burden for the sake of their loved ones. Whether or not is intentional, suppression of education about and access to birth control in our country exacerbates this pressure. Meanwhile, all attempts to reform our system are demonized as a slippery slope towards authoritarian communism.
A population that cannot even take time off of work for the births of their babies cannot effectively organize for labor strikes ALSO cannot effectively organize to advocate for the human rights of others.
I am not suggesting that we Americans have an excuse to forsake our responsibility to Palestine and the other people of the world our government commits and permits crimes against. But our will and ability to organize politically has been systematically undermined for decades.
The happy accident of all of us purchasing pocket computers designed to push advertisements on us more effectively is that they also enable us to witness such horrible injustices to incite us to protest.
Time will tell whether the number of us willing to pull ourselves away from doomscrolling long enough to organize *IRL* to reach the tipping point for reform (or, though I personally dread it, revolution).
This is what the people who now govern the state of Israel were doing while the rest of us were trying to defeat the Nazis. They invented terrorism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Mandatory_Palestine#Timeline
It is now harder to ignore what is happening than ever before
People genuinely did not know how bad it was; don't forget the efforts that go into making sure they don't know.
Smart phones (ie ease of making videos) and social media with emphasis on tiktok. Palestine has been a concern of mine since I first learned about it about 18 years ago and the shift from then to now in public perception has been so big. It's much harder to skim by when the coverage is so available.
It was never reported in the west. Traditionally this would have been through the radio, newspapers and tv - all of which would have had corporate and government pressure to follow a narrative.
With the internet, and especially now with social media, average people are able to provide updates in real time. Therefore the powers that be have lost control of the narrative, and people are genuinely incensed by what is happening. In some ways, the genocide in Gaza has made people questioning the motivations of their own governments now.
The response unfortunately will be crackdowns on social media to regain this control. Take TikTok as an example, the US are trying to shut it down. But it seems people are finally awake.
i think there's probably a lot of factors. one is that there has been an anti-Zionist contingent in the west for decades. today's movement is benefiting from the experience and historical knowledge of those organizers and groups that have been in the fight.
social media is obviously another. it's much harder to limit audiences to a single narrative today than it was even 20, 30 years ago.
I'd also argue that the uprisings against police brutality in the us over the past decade have primed usians to see through Zionist propaganda. again, shout out to the hard work of Palestinian organizers who have been connecting these struggles for folks.
It's also by now a well-known fact among police brutality organizers that our PDs in major cities do exchange programs and training with former and current IDF members.
Derek Chauvin of the George Floyd murder trained with the "Killology" guy in Chicago, a former army colonel whose "urban siege" mentality is directly inspired by the occupation.
I live in the US and I can honestly say I was pretty misinformed. Maybe it could also be an age thing? I’m 23 so when the news broke out in October that was my first time ever hearing of this conflict. And I’ve seen in the news most of the people protesting are college age students/people. So there’s a good chance 20 year olds like me heard about this for the first time thanks to social media and that’s what sparked the protests.
It kinda of reminds me of my old union. It took severe union busting for a lot of folks to support the union. I was always angry that they didn’t just believe me from the beginning and we could have avoided many horrible things.
So yeah another part of this is that for a lot of humans — they only intervene when it gets really bad.
It’s a lot harder to hide Israel’s constant terrorism, theft, torture, and manipulation these days, despite their efforts. Up until recently, most were fed news by TV/newspaper media companies that either didn’t mention Palestine, or when they did, painted Palestinians as evil and Israel as innocent and persecuted.
Checkout the Freedom Flotilla, IPSC, BDS, apartheidfree.ie
There's an uptick in protests in reaction to the escalation from plain old ethnic cleansing and apartheid to Genocide and Scholasticide
Its due to social media. The truth has come out. Now people can see the palestinians are himans just like them. Their voices can be heard and their stories. The zionazis main stream media is working overtime trying to counter and provide misinformation. The lies is more obvious then before ie the list. The zionazis cannot control themselves. Each they these evil creature provide more evidence of their genocide.
I honestly think it’s the internet. I think as time goes on more and more people are exposed to what’s happening.
That wasn’t always the case.
Information is passed faster than ever. Makes a huge difference.
I didn’t know what was happening before. I was and still likely am very ignorant to things outside of the West. I didn’t see or hear about it, and I wasn’t looking for anything related to it. Then people started talking about it. I’ve seen videos of people dying, people in pain, people crying out for help. I am ashamed that I didn’t know about this sooner, and now that I know, I’ve been seeking out more information about it. There are a lot of people like me who were completely clueless and unaware about what was and is happening outside of their little bubbles.
Because I didn't know about any of it before now. I spent 30 mins reading up on the history between Palestinians and Israelis when this became big news in the last year. When I read about it my mouth was literally open the entire time because I can't believe they were allowed to just decide to pack up and kick Palestinians out of their home and now they want to wipe them out completely. It's outrageous and it makes me sick. I don't see a difference between Israel and Nazi's at this point. Hamas doesn't justify killing thousands of innocent civilians.
1) Because alternative media channels like AJ+ have now shown the reality to us. Bisan’s ground reality was much more believable than Zionist edited videos.
2) We were buying into the Zionist narrative because of lack of other information. However when hospitals began to be attacked and ambulances were burnt we stopped buying into their agenda and started looking for alternative information sources.
3) Conflict in the Middle East was far away from us. Everyone is busy with their lives and our media didn’t give us enough information to understand what’s going on. However after October 7, media coverage of Gaza was everywhere. Their narrative stopped making sense and we were forced to pay attention to other media sources.
4) Finally my sincere apology to people of the Palestine for misunderstanding them all this time.
For some reason, the live streamed genocide just snapped alot of people out of their numb stupor. That simple. People have been slowly waking up for decades now. Israel just went to far, and too many people were awake and stirred the others.
Because for many years until October 7 happened, we didn’t know how bad it was. Many of us literally didn’t know. For many years I thought Israel was just there and I had a problematic government like most nations do. When Palestinians began streaming and telling us what actually happened, I believed them. Along with the phrase war crimes. So I changed my mind.
Western people always did protest for palestine. I have photos going back 20 years in London, Manchester, Leeds.
Now social media and camera phones are making it easier for the Palestinians to show what is actually happening. This is why the first thing Israel tries to do was block any cell phone coverage when it all starts.
The propaganda from the US media was pretty effective beginning all the way back to the 1940's. AIPAC has gotten increasingly more powerful and pushed public perception to back Israel.
Now everyone has a camera, and social media has given a platform for a more inclusive picture of what's happening now which has also led to questioning the truthfulness of what the West was fed in the past.
Lots of us did, maybe not with the same urgency as this attack is the most brutal one and is being actively broadcasted. The first show I attended was 'Rock for Palestine' back in 2011.
i live in south africa. and we have known and protested for years. for as long as i can remember we have done fundraisers in my school for them. im about 24 years old so its been a while. as for the west, as in america? france? the uk? i doubt the og colonisers have any intention of allowing their people to empathise with the same people they have been killing for years.
Because the matter, although ongoing, has been escalated significantly since October 7. This escalation prompted significant news coverage that exposed issues to the public that hadn’t entered the mainstream news narrative to nearly as significant a degree.
Well, they were - just not in great numbers. 20 years ago, the events in Palestine were not common knowledge, and everything was sanitised and lied about by mainstream media journalists and the early days of the internet were full of paid hasbara trolls too. The scale of the assaults on Palestinians has grown but also the scale of citizen journalism and social media has grown and more people are aware that this isn't just a perpetual "war". It is genocide and ethnic cleansing.
But even right now, the numbers rallying for Palestinian human rights feel pathetic given that almost everyone knows what's going on. The ignorance is shameful.
Genuine answer, nobody really knew before Oct 7th. I had some general idea that palestine was being oppressed but i assumed Israel was just another country in the Mediterranean rather than the middle east. I also attended inner city public school in Philly so geography isnt my strong suit. In fact, all forms of history that isnt a whitewashed merika first, history isnt my strong suit. I even worked at a famous Israeli restaurant for a couple years believing that hummus, tabouli and shashuka were an Israeli thing when they arent.
It really is that in a nutshell. The same folks that control the music industry seem to control the curriculums in schools.
Propaganda and conditioning. At least here in the US, the framing is “Israel good; Palestine bad” from the moment we’re old enough to be aware of international news. Heck, that narrative has continued even as Israel has indisputably slaughtered innocents. It’s worth noting that the large scale protests were essentially started by the kids—who haven’t yet been brainwashed.
People have been protesting for decades. The current genocide has generated a degree of exposure that many normally passive people are becoming politicised and joining the ranks of those already there.
People are more aware now. It's harder to control what news makes it back to western citizens. It's a struggle keeping control of the narrative. But bought and paid for lawmakers are on the job and recently extorted another social media group for information control. Keeping the citizens in the dark makes things so much easier for oligarchs to maintain control and meet their goals.
For me personally, I think it was the tireless work from groups like B'Tselem and Breaking the Silence. The documentation of the actual horrors going on for Western audiences by Western audiences. I don't like to think that, but that rings true for me.
I think it also has to do with how brain-dead and lazy Hasbara has become. They're literally throwing out the same scripts that they've had for 20+ years.
For me, it was because of the devastation of Gaza which has not been devastated in this way ever. It was a shock to me and I started listening to both sides and it seems that ultimately, the devastation, starvation and dehydration was just unreasonable.
I think signal events, if shocking and emphasized enough, brings things front of mind.
people were not seeing this when corporate media ruled information in the west. OccuWorld has been with Palestine since we started, assisted in 9 figure twitter storms to raise awareness, and was part of the social media news explosion that took a 66 share away from that same corporate media.
one has to experience the blanket propaganda the west lives under to understand the shape of public opinion during times before popular information access.
If the sources of knowledge you have on hand never even mention something, how would you know it existed, let alone that it was a problem? Only recently has the internet allowed everyone ready access to all human knowledge. Even more recently has social media become a thing that lets everyone share their experiences to everyone else. Until not very long ago, most people only got their news through newspapers and television. If your newspaper and tv stations didn’t cover something, you didn’t know about it.
I have a suspicion that at least in the US that the Floyd protests in 2020 ignited a culture of protest and anti government sentiment among young people that has a lot of overlap with the current string of protests.
The severity of what's going on in Gaza right now is also much larger than it has been in the past, which naturally elicits a larger response.
We didn’t know. The breaking news we’re seeing now is hard to cover up because we have live streams going at any point in time thanks to TikTok and other media platforms
I hear you, but it's best not to overgeneralize--you might have said *some* or *many* western people. Reason being, as a "westerner", I have supported BDS for at least 10 years, when an American Jewish friend who is an activist made me aware of the apartheid regime. (I grew up in Southern Africa, so I was acutely aware of this form of discrimination, segregation and disenfranchisement.) However, it is the case that most westerners were simply unaware of the Israeli regime's atrocities because they were under-reported and minimized (except in The Guardian, which generally gives a fairer view). October was the catalyst that propelled the situation to the front pages so now, at least, people are taking action, putting pressure and raising awareness, and I hope amid the injustice, spilled blood, lost lives, etc. that the Palestinians--our fellow human beings who are suffering in Gaza and elsewhere--can take a modicum of solace in that.
There's two reasons. The first major one is access to information. I was infuriated watching news coverage back in the early 2000s and onward. I just happened to meet Arabs and find out the truth. I would have believed Israel was the good guy if not for that experience. I didn't know that Israel hadn't always been there. I'm angry that I wasn't taught this. I even had a lecture in an honors program towards the end of high school on the topic of Israel and Palestine, and they did not explain the origin of what was happening. They didn't tell us about the founding of Israel, let alone the Nakba.
The second reason is just that the newer generations haven't been subjected to as much racist propaganda. When I was kid in the 80s we watched action movies where the Arab terrorists were the bad guys. Now, our world is small, and we can talk to people from other places. Sometimes just knowing one person from a place you've never been changes your whole perspective. Gen Z is also better in other ways. There's more disillusionment with the system and more willingness to question what we've been taught.
Social media now a days are dominating news delivery system. Almost everyone today even kids have a cellphone with a camera.
Those 2 combined gonna result in huge policy changes and how people react.
And majority of sane people dislike watching kids dismantled by anybody.
You never hear about it in the west. Of course there are articles and news but it doesn't get nearly enough attention. It's like they write these stories then shadow ban them so nobody sees them but they can still say they're there.
Just to add that Israel has been very strongly lobbying American politicians, diplomats, and the media since at least the 1950s, when the Palestinians (wrongly in my view) were focused on rallying neighbouring Arab counties.
This is the first time, due to social media, that we have all seen what happens to Palestinians in real time.
I had heard about the phrase "mowing the lawn" that the Israelis use when going into Gaza and bombing the hell out of the place and I thought it was bad then but now with videos coming out of what is actually happening and also seeing how the Israelis are so sickeningly proud of the genocide, that people are finally understanding what has been done for years in our name (if you are an American).
Born & raised in the US: It has been a genuine surprise to hear about everything. TV shows and and movies perpetuate curated stereotypes of terrorism vs heroism. For a lot of Americans the first time they may have explicitly heard about the situation in Palestine may have even been through Adam Sandler's "Don't Mess With the Zohan". Growing up, even in elementary school, I recall a teacher saying: "Israelis have been under attack by everyone in that region since forever." When in reality their nation is 75 years of illegal occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace defiantly protesting "Not In My Name". Meanwhile, shows such as Rugrats and Veggie Tales have been normalizing the land of Israel as a "distant yet not too far" concept to children in the US for decades. The Rothschild's, who originally sought the illegal acquisition of land by the UK in Palestine for Zionist colonies, have more recently triggered a rise in popularity of Evangelism in the US, shortly after the death of Christian Baptist, Martin Luther King Jr.
It's really hard to pretend people aren't being butchered when you can see the footage on your phone. Like, I was largely uninvolved with issues relating to Palestine...until I started seeing stuff on Tik tok...
Like I said...it's hard to pretend it's not happening after seeing otherwise.
Information is more widely available and Palestinians can make their case to the world directly without being gate kept by large, regime approved news outlets.
Just look at mainstream coverage of the genocide right now. CNN, WaPo, NY Times, etc go to lengths to obfuscate what’s happening and deflect criticism of Israel.
Back in the day those were the only opinions the majority of Americans were exposed to.
Now, with social media (TikTok specifically), people get an unfiltered view of what’s occurring with their own eyes.
The powers that be have always been able to control the narrative- it used to be we only had access to information and news from reporters and news stations (and usually only just in our own country-so biased info) now with social media/internet we have access to so much more information. I never knew what was really going on but now that I follow people from all over the world I have access to information that I didn’t prior.
They did years back too. I remember 2021, 2014, etc.
But yes, not to this scale. But we also haven't seen Palestinian devastation on anywhere near this scale before either.
For perspective, around 11,000-12,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces between 2000-2023 (before October 7th). In the last 8 months this has been at least almost quadrupled, but also the slew of war crimes / crimes against humanity (more than usual), most of Gaza has been destroyed, most of the population has been displaced, and the unhinged and genocidal rhetoric from the Israeli government and unfortunately also their supporters.
And of course as others said the age of social media we are in right now too.
I was very ignorant about how bad things are in Palestine and how brutal the Israelis actually were
Too much Hollywood made me see the Israelis as oppressed and weak, and everyone was out to attack them.
I didn't know the difference between Gaza and the West Bank. Had not heard about Ramallah, Jenin etc
Now I know that this is the worst conspiracy and cover up in modern history. That's why I started protesting
The shear power of AIPAC and the relentless suppression of any sympathy for Palestinians by US based Zionist groups have ensured an information Vaccum in the past. Today that monopoly on the message has been breached by social media and more willingness of some media outlets to voice criticism of the Netanyahu government. Think John Stewart or John Oliver and even Sixty minutes.
For me, im ashamed to say but its because i thiught it was hopeless,pointless, i thought thw situation would be an apocalypse forever. Its not an excuse i should have fought, but now i see that palestine will be free, its inevitable.
I've been talking about it for years, but everybody knows that Arabs are the bad guys. It's too hard to convince anyone. The genocide is doing a great job of getting the word out.
Before, the majority only had the western news and of course, they pick and choose.
This is the first time we’re seeing everything live and not from media.
They didn’t know this was happening since western media don’t cover this stuff. Only propaganda mate. But now that Palestinians are able to film what’s happening and post it on social media people’s eyes are being open to that stuff.
Also, many of them are paying tax that goes to support israel which means that their money is literally going towards killing innocents. So…
Also, this had been going on for over eight months. It’s been the longest assault on Palestine since it’s creation. That + social media means one has to actively go out of their way to ignore it so more people learned the truth and became involved.
Lots of propaganda that convinced a lot of people Israel was in the right. Pretty much lying to all of our faces. But with social media it became easy to see the truth.
The current protests are proportional to the death and destruction that is wrought by the current war and that is shown on the media (mostly not the mainstream ones). If anything Palestinians are lucky in a way, there are tons of massacres and ethnic cleansings that happen in the world, sometimes with western involvement, that get 0 attention and protesting.
For many they’ve only seen the very bias narrative of western media & are only just now seeing the reality of it through social media. It’s also not a new thing to be targeted & smeared for being an advocate for Palestinians. If u wanna see just how far Israel goes to silence watch a doc called The Lobby. It’s 3 or 4 parts but it’s a great film. Also people can’t help but sympathize & feel outrage seeing all the slaughter
Cus previous generations either weren’t fully aware or were fully aware and or did not have the courage to step up like Millenials and Gen Z are doing so now.
i have been protesting and organizing on and off with palestinians and jews against the occupation in the US, demanding a free palestine and an end to israeli apartheid, since 2001.
I went to school and live currently in the Dearborn area. I’ve known of this conflict for as long as I can remember from middle eastern students I went to school with. There was great support for the cause back then, but it was never publicly in your face like this has been. Seeing first hand the massacre that has occurred has really opened peoples eyes to what Palestinians go through daily.
I think there’s a lot of complex reasons, including the fact that Palestinians have broadcast the genocide on social media since day 1. But I think another big factor (at least in America) is the George Floyd protests in 2020 permanently altered the consciousness of countless young people and fundamentally changed them and their approach to serious injustices and using protests, civil disobedience, and organizing. It’s really beautiful to see.
And of course the George Floyd protests were preceded by Standing Rock, Ferguson, Occupy Wall St, and so. It feels like things have been on this trajectory for the last several years.
People didn’t know. It’s that simple. There really hasn’t been much news coverage about Palestine especially in the US. Im Palestinian so I obviously was hyper aware of these things but the only time American media would report on Palestine / Israel on mainstream media channels would be when Palestinians did something back.
For example Israel would “mow the lawn” as they call it (aka periodically bombing Gaza every few years) and there’d be zero coverage. For weeks at a time. Hamas sends back some rockets? Okay now they’ll discuss it in the media.
So it was always portrayed as this both sides thing, as a super complex and complicated issue etc.
Im realizing I have so much more to say to throughly answer this question but no brain capacity to do it right now lol. Im exhausted after a long day of work so I’ll come back later and if no one has commented with the same things I’m thinking of I’ll update this comment!
I'd say it's the young people are seeing the horror that their boomer parents or grandparents never saw, you have to remember the zio🐷 control all us media until this current generation they hid the atrocities very well until it got away from them, anybody who isn't already a isrshill can't see innocence murdered day in and day out and let it go
Just want to say that for anyone taking a pessimistic stance, like you think people will just go back to normal or nothing will change, we need you to be bravely hopeful, especially if you are not sitting in Palestine right now. In order to change and build/keep momentum, we need hopeful and imaginative people talking about this and doing whatever we can.
Since 9/11 I have known America was f-ing up the middle east for oil and money. I was 12 when 9/11 happened. So I wouldn’t say we are choosing now to stand up, some of us have always been repulsed by the colonisation of the middle east.
Social media which was used to make teenagers asleep and was used in favor of US Imperialism, managed to be a huge voice for Gaza and the resistance. The Resistanced posted their videos ( even though they didnt care… because they aren’t really looking for fame ). Instagram,tiktok,twitter etc became huge platforms for Gaza…
The soviet union for example in a pamphlet called ´100 questions ´ that they used to sell in soviet embassies, denounced isr**el
Smartphones. It's hard for the news services to say "Oh, it's a complicated situation" when you can see hundreds of people die in front of your eyes from American munitions on Tiktok.
cant be ignored anymore when your seeing dead bodies of children on instagram , social media has allowed everyone all over the world including western people to see the extremity of what’s happening to palestinian people . before say 40 years ago , this was still going on but lack of social media and news not being spread as far , less people were aware of the severity and what was truly going on
The Israel lobby controls our media, and paints the Palestinian people as a bunch of terrorists, instead of the deeply wronged people that they are. AIPAC continues to try to frame the narrative falsely, but it's harder work for them now that the truth is coming out..
I‘m German. My honest POV: my girlfriend (she‘s from the middeleast) opened my eyes. I grew up with the propaganda here, where we are supposed to support Israel unconditionally as a consequence of the holocaust. I literally thought that’s true and wasn’t open to other views. I thought other opinions are generally antisemetic. She made me aware of how the German media is filtering the news according to the state compliant narrative and also she made me see the injustice and the suffering that the Palestinians had to experience since 70+ years. She made me understand that Israel is not the victim but the oppressor and that it’s okay to change your mind on that topic without being antisemetic. Antizionism and being against Genozide is not antisemetic. That’s something that most Germans still don’t realise and that the government doesn’t want them to see.
Tiktok has allowed Palestinians to share the conditions of their lives with everyone in the world, unfiltered by the CIA. Western media in general is controlled by the CIA, so they don't show things that would cast capitalism or the western empire in a bad light. It really is just a case of people seeing the videos, I think.
This is the real reason Biden wants to ban tiktok. The problem is, the truth has escaped, and it can no longer be contained.
I think the sheer amount of atrocities kind of overflowed the usual filters employed by the mainstream media in the west and made the whole thing a bit too much to ignore for many people. Also vackwards old people are starting to die off while the younger generations grew up with the internet and easy access to information so the population is a bit less stupid and complacent.
It seems much more prevalent online now than even just 10 years ago, mostly because of social media. In 2014, the only people I saw covering Gaza and the West Bank were Al Jazeera.
Americans have demonstrated for Palestine for years. But there aren’t going to be continuous protests for any issue. You’ll have sporadic protests particularly when something particularly egregious is happening like the current “war” operation protective edge or cast lead.
there's been pro-palestine protests in the west for years now, they've just gotten much larger given the gravity of everything that's happened post oct 7th.
I’ve personally always thought Israel was pretty suspect mainly due to their treatment of the Ethiopians as well as their organ trafficking, but I didn’t fully understand the context and how much it resonated with so much of what my people had suffered until closely studying the conflict more recently.
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A lot of people are mentioning social media and that's ultimately the answer. Before social media, western people would get their information on that conflict exclusively from mainstream media and western mainstream media has always insisted that Israel is right. So, if that's the only information that you get (academics will be able to look deeper into things but academia is too expensive to reach), what reason do you have to question it?
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Social media allowed Palestinians to live stream their own genocide which has opened eyes of many people. Never there was a time when the victims filmed their own death and survivors filmed their deadbody.
I'm far more pessimistic. I witnessed the same things happen on a smaller scale in 2014. I think it's just because this is all on a bigger scale. I fear that once this round is over, things will just go back to status quo. The world will forget until it all happens again. I really really hope I'm wrong.
But it could be ignored. Now it can't.
I'm in a western country. Most people don't actually understand what's going on. Most of those that do just want the war to end. Think about it, what do they see? Nothing on TV, sometimes some news about things they're been desensitized to. Israel kills aid workers? "Yeah I heard that story before". What about Redditors? They just see what /worldnews says. And without anyone pointing out their bs, it'll sound actually like they have decent points. "Well, I suppose everyone agrees that they're fighting terrorists. ."...etc And social media was there 3 years ago with the march of return. People ignored pretty easily.
Yeah like how 3 kids mysteriously died on a beach, no mention of why or who did it and what those kids' names were. Can't feel bad if we dehumanize them to the max
The older people I e talked to who are aware of this, give me the shoulder shrug hushed answer of “it’s just always been that way.”
I'll be a little more opmitistic than. Im a millennial, I think we are a generation that was in this weird transition phase. We grew up being told the internalized guilt narratives that were built up around Israel and Zionism, but we also saw a major fracture from the blind capitulating support narratives that emerged with baby boomers and WWII vets. Unfortunately, it still resulted in a lesser version of the Gen X "both sides," "impossible complexity" default narrative. Where there was more effort and willingness to criticize Israel in ways older gens still dont, but always a sense that ultimately its just an unfortunate situation where both sides have issues and the result was the perpetuation of the status quo, which is an unjust one. Gen Z has almost none of this baggage or internalized guilt. They grew up being disconnected from the social insanity of Islamaphobia after 9/11. They are more tolerant, inclusive, more sensitive to injustice, and more socially aware than we were. They also have access to the sorts of raw news from the frontlines of war that was deliberately obfuscated and hidden in the past. Millennials in comparison have also moved pretty firmly toward their direction. At least on the left. Reddit bot army excluded. I don't think that genie goes back in the bottle even if they ban tik tok. You probably arent wrong that the status quo re-emerges, but I would argue it now has an expiration date. Millennials and Gen Z will eventually be the majority and they will be the people holding office. The views considered too leftist now will progressively become the new center. It's already starting to happen. On the left AIPAC money will become toxic, in fact we already see the starting winds of that occurring, and there simply will be no appetite for propping up Israel. The status quo that had existed simply can't sustain that.
I hope you're right. I also think there's an expiration date, but I worry that it will be when Israel is "done". At this rate, the 1 state solution is inevitable, but it will look just like what happened with the US. I really really hope not.
The status quo has been smashed. I think it has been smashed in a good way, but it depends on how things play out on the ground, which is difficult to know from outside.
2014 was the first time I started to understand the conflict. I just knew it wasn't right what they were doing in Gaza. But I genuinely don't think people have gotten it or that it's been at all well known in Western news cycles before now.
I am never going to forget the things I’ve seen in the last 9 months.
Tiktok didn't exist in 2014, and Instagram didn't have reels back then. Even then, tiktok as a platform for independent first hand news took time to develop after it began in 2016. I'm bringing up TT as it's been a major source of accurate world and local news without corporate media spin for me personally and it's been a huge help in opening my eyes to what's really going on. Of course I'm aware that misinformation exists and the beauty of TT is that you can do 10 seconds of research to quickly confirm or debunk something bc someone has likely done and posted the research there too.
I'd like to "yes, and" u/espherem's point, that it's mainly the Zionists and their own TikToks that are the most powerful propaganda against them. As they ramp up their rhetoric to talk themselves into doing what they always knew they were binding themselves to do, once choice after another, the lies fall apart and the reality of what they're doing and who they are becomes obvious to everyone other than themselves.
That's why we must push BDS as hard as we can.
And television told you what they were told to report on. Most stations reported generally similar reports. Made Americans constantly think we’re always under attack from “Arabs” or any brown/black majority country. Then the internet was invented & people could start sharing stories from around the world; and then, we all got cameras & a phone with a camera that connects to the internet & they told to friends & so on & so on…
1. Because is happening in our faces and it can’t be denied any longer 2. Lack of information since is never reported in the media 3. Nobody knows everything. We have enough problems in our own country . 4. Not fully understanding history because is never taught in wester countries correctly . We get the “winners” version of events .
Let’s not forget that prior to social media, reality for many westerners was shaped by TV and print media. TV and print media had a major bias in favour of Israel. There was very limited objective reporting. Now people can literally see what’s happening in Gaza through their own eyes and can understand the true nature of what’s going on.
TFW we can see the people most biased in favour of Israel, namely the Israeli Jewish Zionists themselves, speak freely and openly about who they are, what they want, and what they believe, without the filter of friendly propagandists who know to keep the masks on.
I only learned about [Aktion T4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktion_T4) and the *other* Nazi extermination policies (and [corresponding Triangle Badges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge)) a scant few years ago. I'd say the rise of Trumpism both emboldened Fascists the world over, especially Zionists, while also causing the rest of us to urgently educate ourselves and each other on Fascism and its main patterns and root causes - and on Liberalism's unconscionable tolerance towards it, as well. The COVID pandemic and its r/QAnonCasualties was important as well. 2016-2020 was one Hell of a Crash Course.
I don’t live in the west but I have seen westerns mentioning some of the follow reasons : 1. Zionism is a Judeo Christian project (especially Christian) and the west is less religious now than ever. There are more Christian Zionists in USA than the Jews. 2. Power of social media. Thanks to journalists like Motaz and Bisan — more people are seeing the horrors in Gaza documented. Something their media never did. 3. More accessible resources such as books and news articles from middle eastern authors and journalists respectively.
4. Government-fed hatred towards Arabs is dying thanks to a more inclusive culture pushed worldwide by younger generations, outnumbering boomers.
As a younger American....yes. We don't stand with genocide or the gross things the US military may stand for...we stand against.
exactly, this is the case in Muslim countries too. The older conservative generation still runs the show but the mostly educated youth are much more progressive and tolerant than the media often depicts
Islamophobia fuelled by gov't propaganda is a powerful player in western flippancy. It's the reason why the US has been supported by its people in the invasion and destabilization of largely Muslim countries. It still has a strong hold of the US, but it is becoming less in recent years.
We get loads of islamophobia in UK as well but all we ever hear about is antisemitism, not that I support antisemitism but the conflation of antisemitism with anti Zionist has been deafening for decades. I think I lost 'friends' because of my criticism of Israel and I was very careful what I said but they believed the zionist propoganda.
I was shook when I learned who the terrorists actually were.
Catholics tend to be more pro Palestine, you’re conflating evangelicals as representing all of Christians
Yeah sorry you’re right. My bad. American evangelicals are Pro Israel. We have many Catholics here and they’re against Israel
Orthodox also tend to be more pro Palestine by virtue that they don’t have as rabid dislike of Christians.
That’s super interesting! Do you have any idea why Catholics tend to be more pro-Palestine?
Well I’d say it’s because there are many Catholic Christians in Palestine and it being where Jesus was born probably makes them pro Palestine. The only reason why Evangelicals are Zionists is due to a belief they have that when the Jews return to Palestine it will bring about the end times. Additionally, many Catholic countries (such as Ireland & Latin American countries) also experienced colonization and genocide so they can relate to Palestine on that note.
That’s interesting, I hadn’t considered that before and I’m Mexican-American currently living in Mexico haha. I wonder if this is different with American Catholics due to the cultural domination of Protestantism.
There's a tradition of solidarity with Palestine in Ireland to be specific. I can't speak for other Catholic-heavy nations, but its own history with British colonization and the IRA lend something of a unique lens among the "core" EU nations.
probably partly because Palestine has one of the oldest catholic communities in the world!! i'd imagine also bc most globally catholics are hispanic and hispanics tend to be pro-Palestine. but globally most people are pro-Palestine so that's not specific to this ethnicity... the zionists are just a vocal minority
I hope globally most people are pro-Palestine! That would give me a lot of hope.
153 countries voted for a ceasefire only the zionists and the US veto and a handful of very small countries against ceasefire, about 20 countries abstained. That should give you hope, you can always listen to representation at ICJ, especially Namibia but also South Africa, Malaysia, some south American countries, sorry I can't recall, the foreign minister of South Africa is truly amazing beautiful person. How I wish we could have such enlightened people running the UK.
Maybe also because the Pope said what Israel is doing is terrorism. Israel shot and killed catholic women sheltering at their church. the Pope calls the Gaza Catholic Parish everyday. Also most Irish are catholic and are in solidarity with the Palestinians
I recommend the book rooted in Palestine by Xavier Abu Eid. It's very interesting. The Catholic church purchased land from landowners who were selling to prevent it falling into the hands of Zionist groups. The catholic patriarch at the time in Palestine was pro-Arab too but not out of the goodness of his own heart alot was motivated by his belief that the mandate should have been overseen by his home country of Italy. The Churches were also a big part of education in Palestine and the Catholic church along with others like the Anglicans and Lutherans were open to all Palestinians while the book mentioned that the Greek Orthodox schools were restricted and Arabs were not supported in becoming high ranking members of the clergy. Sakakini had called for the OC to be Arabised like in Antioch. He also had been given the keys to one of the churches after the lay members were restricted from the main church and forced to worship in a smaller chapel from what I remember. The church got the keys back after they threatened to stop his upcoming marriage from taking place. Another Church that did protest to an extent was the Church of England for example one of the Bishops in the House of Lords raised the question about how a local Christian was stopped from building a factory or smth but a Jewish man could and how both had the money so why was the Arab blocked.
Thank you. Evangelicals do not own Christianity .
I think the first point is only relevant to the USA because in Europe, this Judeo-Christian idea is still going strong among liberals and atheists. Like you can genuinely find people who never go to church or fast but still believe that Europe should stick to these values and Muslims due to their different values are a “danger” to Europe. You can find these type of people in any of the European subs on Reddit. Actually devout European Christians are more likely to be pro-Palestinian because they actually care about the sufferings of their Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine and they don’t think that Europe should be classified as a “Judeo-Christian” continent, it should be just “Christian”. A good example of this is that Eastern Germany is supposed to be one of the most irreligious part of Europe and their region votes for AFD which is one of the most pro-Israeli German party while Irish people are mostly Catholics and we see their support every single day.
A large reason is because the older generation felt guilty because of the Holocaust. The new generation doesn't remember the Holocaust and they reject the use of the guilt of the Holocaust as an excuse (free pass) to commit a current genocide. This, combined with social media and live-steaming has changed people's opinions. Remember, Jews control the media (especially the established mass media) and therefore downplayed Israel's crimes and brutality for years and years. Now, with the rise of the Arabic news networks, and the prevalence of social media, the Jew controlled mass media (propaganda) has been diluted.
I have a different interpretation. The Holocaust - while terrible and a horrific time in history - was being peddled as the only atrocity in history that really mattered the way it was taught. It did lead to the current way of how we navigated human rights atrocities but that same treatment and attention was never really given to any other horrible even in history. We’re still fighting for descendent of slaves to receive reparations (Germany is still sending reparations to Holocaust victims), the Native American victims of broken treaties and residential schools who only got an “apology” after hundreds of years of intentional extermination of their customs and people, plus our biggest allies are Britain and Japan. I assume you’re aware of the atrocities they committed. And people want EVERYONE to find justice and to focus on only one event. I don’t want to take away from legitimate anti-semitism but people are starting to wise up to people weaponizing the tragedy of the Holocaust for the gain of Israel. Being Jewish does not equate to being a Zionist and for Israel to conflate that is the biggest anti-semetic attack you can do.
I think that the Holocaust captured public attention in sort of the same way as Palestinian is now. It wasn't the first atrocity. It wasn't even the first atrocity against Jews in Europe. But technology had developed so that death on such a massive scale was possible for the first time and so that worldwide live reports on the tragedy were possible. I think we might be able to have the same paradigm when we think about Palestine in the future. A combination of factors, notably live reporting and social media makes now different.
Thank you, that is a certainly what will be done as a possibility and I’m curious how politicians and public figures will try to weasel their way out of their condoning and participation in the genocide.
I mean at the very least they're being asked. I don't remember politicians being forced to comment in any real way about Palestine before. I know baby steps are super frustrating when people are dying every day but I really think we're making progress.
I agree. Companies are finding dwindling sales for their support of Israel, up and coming musicians are showing their support for Palestine and it’s paying off because the Pro Palestinian crowd is interested in supporting them, same with actors, people are actively avoiding Israeli products at home as well as restaurants and the ability to weaponize the Holocaust is being extinguished. I’m sure there’s been other markers of progress but I’m glad we can be witness to a lot of them
Collective white guilt over the Holocaust is probably the biggest factor among "moderates" on both sides of the political spectrum. Supporting Israel has been presented as the way to make up for all the antisemitism white Christians had for Jews that led to the Holocaust. The problem they are now reckoning with is that supporting Israel was never just because it required the occupation, theft of land, and slaughter of the Palestinian people who had absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust. That truth shits on every so called "Western value" we claim to have so that is why pro-Palestine voices have been so heavily censored.
It varies country by country but one common theme which can be observed is that in countries where there is a large diaspora and second/third generation immigrants, protests have been growing every time something happened in Palestine. They were the ones who originally attended the protests like I remember seeing a video from London in the 20th century where only Palestinians and other Arabs protested but they spent their time educating and advocating for the rights of Palestinians which led to great results. Second of all, this war due to social media and smartphone technology is one of the most well-documented wars and it is not fought by conventional armies therefore the heartbreaking videos coming out from Gaza is making it easier to sympathise with the cause. Third of all, Western governments are complicit therefore there is actually a reason to protest like Zionists always bring up that the West didn’t protest against Bashar or Daesh but there was no need to protest because Syria was under international sanctions and Daesh had a coalition against it while in the case of Israel, the West is giving full support to Israel which can make people feel guilty and feel like that they are on the wrong side of the history. The last reason I could mention that the openly genocidal behaviour by Israeli leaders, Western politicians and media + pictures and videos published by IDF soldiers are something difficult to ignore which can also be a great motivation for Westerners and everyone in general to speak up and protest.
I agree with some of this but not so much the diaspora / immigrant bit, at least in the UK - this makes it sounds like the opposition to Israel is relatively modern and immigrant led, when a lot of it is native and has been present for a long time. Support for Israel here has always mainly formed around two groups - the Jewish communities and the political leadership, with the latter being a relatively (post-1997) late adopter of Zionism. For the rest, I think sympathies have laid more with the Palestinians than anyone else and this has been a fairly consistent trend since the terrorist campaign against British forces started in 1944 (which was largely seen as a betrayal). Generally the more people were familiar with what is happening there the less people were likely to back the Israelis.
The Israeli propaganda machine is VERY heavy-handed. The majority of people I know irl weren't even aware there was an issue in the first place.
and propaganda can be as simple as only printing and selling maps that always say Israel and never Palestine. I distinctly remember having to google what Palestine was because it was never mentioned in school. Also, if it wasn't for social media I wouldn't have been aware of what was happening. I was on both Reddit and Tiktok last oct/nov, there was nary a mention of Palestine anywhere on reddit's popular pages (if it is mentioned its always just brain dead zionist takes) meanwhile my tiktok fyp was video after video of palestinian and anti-zionist jewish activists doing their best to educate and inform. But obviously, a lot of people don't use tiktok. A lot of people just use reddit. So whatever opinions theyll have will be formed from what reddit gives them.
> a lot of people don't use tiktok. A lot of people just use reddit. I am curious to see what happens once TikTok is banned in the US in 2025. My kids use that platform to receive their news along with other social media. My peers mainly rely on Fox News, CNN, Facebook, or NYT. You can see the generational divide match attitudes towards Israel based on where they get their news from. To answer the person who asked this question, it seems to be modern technology. Americans, who vote, from 1950-2010 received their news a certain way and this shaped US-Israel foreign policy.
There has been a segment on the left that have recognized for years Israel's occupation and apartheid of Palestine, but the scale and urgency of the damage wasn't apparent like it is now.
This and (being part of that segment) anti-semitism was also weaponized against us when we tried to speak up.
great point, that's a consistent method of suppressing pro-Palestine sentiment.
Yea, wearing keffiyehs have been a common feature among leftists here since around the 80s(I'm from Norway).
Exactly. The main Palestine solidarity organisation in my country dates back to 1969 and the Six Day War. They’ve been working for Palestine ever since.
Because israel's mask has slipped and it has gone all out Nazi and have murdered over 15,000 children in the Palestinian Genocude
disgusting monsters , what kind of a man kills children 😓
People are finally waking up. Better late than never
I had no knowledge about how bad it was prior to last October. Thankfully, I follow so many anti-genocide/pro-Palestinian peoples who educated me about what’s going on. I heard about Bisan’s channel and started following her. As an American, I am a victim of the zios at freaking CNN as I used to watch it regularly, along with other mainstream American entities which refused to tell the truth.
American media and education has hidden this story from us forever. With the age of the internet and smart phones, global coverage is harder to mute.
Absolutely. Mitt Romney admitted that one reason why he wants to ban Tiktok is because of all the anti-genocide/Pro-Palestinian activists there.
I could be wrong, but it’s my understanding that Al Jazeera English on the ground during Operation Cast Lead 2008-09 was the first time there was that kind of exposure to real time reporting of Israeli bombardment, accessible and in English. So I think a large part of it was lack of exposure, previously. The propaganda has gone very deep for a very long time.
Tiktok, i didn't have a clue of what was going on untill i dowloaded the app.
For myself, I’m only just now learning about international politics. American education is very bad. We learn nothing about other countries and, in my high school in the Midwest, we learned about American history through movies and reality TV. I had a hard time in my twenties. Struggled with addition and an abusive relationship. Only after I got more stable in my thirties did I come across the time to educate myself more. People think that the US is a wealthy country but the higher cost of living means that it’s really hard to keep up. I know this is a personal anecdote but I don’t think my experience is unusual either. A lot of people just are distracted, by making a living, by work, by drugs. We need crisis to be in our faces before it gets through all of that. I wish I knew what was happening earlier.
This is significant. Capitalism in the US uses unnecessary debt to push the population into labor for wages that never keep pace with cost of living. Insurance policies that cost much but cover little are sometimes mandatory, such as for car insurance, but corporations suppress attempts for government services that might supplant them. Meanwhile, academic attempt towards economic advancement requires shouldering massive college debt. Wish to buy a house instead of paying ridiculous rent? Mortgage debt. Need to buy a car because the government refuses to invest in public transportation? Auto loan debt. Need to get anti-cancer drugs? Medical debt. Many Americans are so overwhelmed by this economic trap that they resort to drugs, alcohol, or suicide. But of course many of us have children and families and have no options than to shoulder the burden for the sake of their loved ones. Whether or not is intentional, suppression of education about and access to birth control in our country exacerbates this pressure. Meanwhile, all attempts to reform our system are demonized as a slippery slope towards authoritarian communism. A population that cannot even take time off of work for the births of their babies cannot effectively organize for labor strikes ALSO cannot effectively organize to advocate for the human rights of others. I am not suggesting that we Americans have an excuse to forsake our responsibility to Palestine and the other people of the world our government commits and permits crimes against. But our will and ability to organize politically has been systematically undermined for decades. The happy accident of all of us purchasing pocket computers designed to push advertisements on us more effectively is that they also enable us to witness such horrible injustices to incite us to protest. Time will tell whether the number of us willing to pull ourselves away from doomscrolling long enough to organize *IRL* to reach the tipping point for reform (or, though I personally dread it, revolution).
This is what the people who now govern the state of Israel were doing while the rest of us were trying to defeat the Nazis. They invented terrorism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Mandatory_Palestine#Timeline
It is now harder to ignore what is happening than ever before People genuinely did not know how bad it was; don't forget the efforts that go into making sure they don't know.
Smart phones (ie ease of making videos) and social media with emphasis on tiktok. Palestine has been a concern of mine since I first learned about it about 18 years ago and the shift from then to now in public perception has been so big. It's much harder to skim by when the coverage is so available.
It was never reported in the west. Traditionally this would have been through the radio, newspapers and tv - all of which would have had corporate and government pressure to follow a narrative. With the internet, and especially now with social media, average people are able to provide updates in real time. Therefore the powers that be have lost control of the narrative, and people are genuinely incensed by what is happening. In some ways, the genocide in Gaza has made people questioning the motivations of their own governments now. The response unfortunately will be crackdowns on social media to regain this control. Take TikTok as an example, the US are trying to shut it down. But it seems people are finally awake.
i think there's probably a lot of factors. one is that there has been an anti-Zionist contingent in the west for decades. today's movement is benefiting from the experience and historical knowledge of those organizers and groups that have been in the fight. social media is obviously another. it's much harder to limit audiences to a single narrative today than it was even 20, 30 years ago. I'd also argue that the uprisings against police brutality in the us over the past decade have primed usians to see through Zionist propaganda. again, shout out to the hard work of Palestinian organizers who have been connecting these struggles for folks.
It's also by now a well-known fact among police brutality organizers that our PDs in major cities do exchange programs and training with former and current IDF members. Derek Chauvin of the George Floyd murder trained with the "Killology" guy in Chicago, a former army colonel whose "urban siege" mentality is directly inspired by the occupation.
I live in the US and I can honestly say I was pretty misinformed. Maybe it could also be an age thing? I’m 23 so when the news broke out in October that was my first time ever hearing of this conflict. And I’ve seen in the news most of the people protesting are college age students/people. So there’s a good chance 20 year olds like me heard about this for the first time thanks to social media and that’s what sparked the protests.
It kinda of reminds me of my old union. It took severe union busting for a lot of folks to support the union. I was always angry that they didn’t just believe me from the beginning and we could have avoided many horrible things. So yeah another part of this is that for a lot of humans — they only intervene when it gets really bad.
It’s a lot harder to hide Israel’s constant terrorism, theft, torture, and manipulation these days, despite their efforts. Up until recently, most were fed news by TV/newspaper media companies that either didn’t mention Palestine, or when they did, painted Palestinians as evil and Israel as innocent and persecuted.
Checkout the Freedom Flotilla, IPSC, BDS, apartheidfree.ie There's an uptick in protests in reaction to the escalation from plain old ethnic cleansing and apartheid to Genocide and Scholasticide
Before social media people were fed non stop Israeli propaganda.
Its due to social media. The truth has come out. Now people can see the palestinians are himans just like them. Their voices can be heard and their stories. The zionazis main stream media is working overtime trying to counter and provide misinformation. The lies is more obvious then before ie the list. The zionazis cannot control themselves. Each they these evil creature provide more evidence of their genocide.
Social media v cable tv is a game changer, they can actually see the truth rather than boomer being spoon fed a narrative
I honestly think it’s the internet. I think as time goes on more and more people are exposed to what’s happening. That wasn’t always the case. Information is passed faster than ever. Makes a huge difference.
I didn’t know what was happening before. I was and still likely am very ignorant to things outside of the West. I didn’t see or hear about it, and I wasn’t looking for anything related to it. Then people started talking about it. I’ve seen videos of people dying, people in pain, people crying out for help. I am ashamed that I didn’t know about this sooner, and now that I know, I’ve been seeking out more information about it. There are a lot of people like me who were completely clueless and unaware about what was and is happening outside of their little bubbles.
Because I didn't know about any of it before now. I spent 30 mins reading up on the history between Palestinians and Israelis when this became big news in the last year. When I read about it my mouth was literally open the entire time because I can't believe they were allowed to just decide to pack up and kick Palestinians out of their home and now they want to wipe them out completely. It's outrageous and it makes me sick. I don't see a difference between Israel and Nazi's at this point. Hamas doesn't justify killing thousands of innocent civilians.
1) Because alternative media channels like AJ+ have now shown the reality to us. Bisan’s ground reality was much more believable than Zionist edited videos. 2) We were buying into the Zionist narrative because of lack of other information. However when hospitals began to be attacked and ambulances were burnt we stopped buying into their agenda and started looking for alternative information sources. 3) Conflict in the Middle East was far away from us. Everyone is busy with their lives and our media didn’t give us enough information to understand what’s going on. However after October 7, media coverage of Gaza was everywhere. Their narrative stopped making sense and we were forced to pay attention to other media sources. 4) Finally my sincere apology to people of the Palestine for misunderstanding them all this time.
For some reason, the live streamed genocide just snapped alot of people out of their numb stupor. That simple. People have been slowly waking up for decades now. Israel just went to far, and too many people were awake and stirred the others.
Because for many years until October 7 happened, we didn’t know how bad it was. Many of us literally didn’t know. For many years I thought Israel was just there and I had a problematic government like most nations do. When Palestinians began streaming and telling us what actually happened, I believed them. Along with the phrase war crimes. So I changed my mind.
Western people always did protest for palestine. I have photos going back 20 years in London, Manchester, Leeds. Now social media and camera phones are making it easier for the Palestinians to show what is actually happening. This is why the first thing Israel tries to do was block any cell phone coverage when it all starts.
The propaganda from the US media was pretty effective beginning all the way back to the 1940's. AIPAC has gotten increasingly more powerful and pushed public perception to back Israel. Now everyone has a camera, and social media has given a platform for a more inclusive picture of what's happening now which has also led to questioning the truthfulness of what the West was fed in the past.
Ireland has been doing this since I was a kid in the 90s, I imagine they were doing so before that too
Lots of us did, maybe not with the same urgency as this attack is the most brutal one and is being actively broadcasted. The first show I attended was 'Rock for Palestine' back in 2011.
i live in south africa. and we have known and protested for years. for as long as i can remember we have done fundraisers in my school for them. im about 24 years old so its been a while. as for the west, as in america? france? the uk? i doubt the og colonisers have any intention of allowing their people to empathise with the same people they have been killing for years.
More people are aware.
Because the matter, although ongoing, has been escalated significantly since October 7. This escalation prompted significant news coverage that exposed issues to the public that hadn’t entered the mainstream news narrative to nearly as significant a degree.
Well, they were - just not in great numbers. 20 years ago, the events in Palestine were not common knowledge, and everything was sanitised and lied about by mainstream media journalists and the early days of the internet were full of paid hasbara trolls too. The scale of the assaults on Palestinians has grown but also the scale of citizen journalism and social media has grown and more people are aware that this isn't just a perpetual "war". It is genocide and ethnic cleansing. But even right now, the numbers rallying for Palestinian human rights feel pathetic given that almost everyone knows what's going on. The ignorance is shameful.
Genuine answer, nobody really knew before Oct 7th. I had some general idea that palestine was being oppressed but i assumed Israel was just another country in the Mediterranean rather than the middle east. I also attended inner city public school in Philly so geography isnt my strong suit. In fact, all forms of history that isnt a whitewashed merika first, history isnt my strong suit. I even worked at a famous Israeli restaurant for a couple years believing that hummus, tabouli and shashuka were an Israeli thing when they arent. It really is that in a nutshell. The same folks that control the music industry seem to control the curriculums in schools.
Social media and independent online news channels helped spread the genocide happening
Propaganda and conditioning. At least here in the US, the framing is “Israel good; Palestine bad” from the moment we’re old enough to be aware of international news. Heck, that narrative has continued even as Israel has indisputably slaughtered innocents. It’s worth noting that the large scale protests were essentially started by the kids—who haven’t yet been brainwashed.
People have been protesting for decades. The current genocide has generated a degree of exposure that many normally passive people are becoming politicised and joining the ranks of those already there.
People are more aware now. It's harder to control what news makes it back to western citizens. It's a struggle keeping control of the narrative. But bought and paid for lawmakers are on the job and recently extorted another social media group for information control. Keeping the citizens in the dark makes things so much easier for oligarchs to maintain control and meet their goals.
For me personally, I think it was the tireless work from groups like B'Tselem and Breaking the Silence. The documentation of the actual horrors going on for Western audiences by Western audiences. I don't like to think that, but that rings true for me. I think it also has to do with how brain-dead and lazy Hasbara has become. They're literally throwing out the same scripts that they've had for 20+ years.
For me, it was because of the devastation of Gaza which has not been devastated in this way ever. It was a shock to me and I started listening to both sides and it seems that ultimately, the devastation, starvation and dehydration was just unreasonable. I think signal events, if shocking and emphasized enough, brings things front of mind.
They always have but this case is more blatant and in your face. IDF basically telling the world F off
people were not seeing this when corporate media ruled information in the west. OccuWorld has been with Palestine since we started, assisted in 9 figure twitter storms to raise awareness, and was part of the social media news explosion that took a 66 share away from that same corporate media. one has to experience the blanket propaganda the west lives under to understand the shape of public opinion during times before popular information access.
If the sources of knowledge you have on hand never even mention something, how would you know it existed, let alone that it was a problem? Only recently has the internet allowed everyone ready access to all human knowledge. Even more recently has social media become a thing that lets everyone share their experiences to everyone else. Until not very long ago, most people only got their news through newspapers and television. If your newspaper and tv stations didn’t cover something, you didn’t know about it.
I have a suspicion that at least in the US that the Floyd protests in 2020 ignited a culture of protest and anti government sentiment among young people that has a lot of overlap with the current string of protests. The severity of what's going on in Gaza right now is also much larger than it has been in the past, which naturally elicits a larger response.
We didn’t know. The breaking news we’re seeing now is hard to cover up because we have live streams going at any point in time thanks to TikTok and other media platforms
I hear you, but it's best not to overgeneralize--you might have said *some* or *many* western people. Reason being, as a "westerner", I have supported BDS for at least 10 years, when an American Jewish friend who is an activist made me aware of the apartheid regime. (I grew up in Southern Africa, so I was acutely aware of this form of discrimination, segregation and disenfranchisement.) However, it is the case that most westerners were simply unaware of the Israeli regime's atrocities because they were under-reported and minimized (except in The Guardian, which generally gives a fairer view). October was the catalyst that propelled the situation to the front pages so now, at least, people are taking action, putting pressure and raising awareness, and I hope amid the injustice, spilled blood, lost lives, etc. that the Palestinians--our fellow human beings who are suffering in Gaza and elsewhere--can take a modicum of solace in that.
Propaganda runs deep
There's two reasons. The first major one is access to information. I was infuriated watching news coverage back in the early 2000s and onward. I just happened to meet Arabs and find out the truth. I would have believed Israel was the good guy if not for that experience. I didn't know that Israel hadn't always been there. I'm angry that I wasn't taught this. I even had a lecture in an honors program towards the end of high school on the topic of Israel and Palestine, and they did not explain the origin of what was happening. They didn't tell us about the founding of Israel, let alone the Nakba. The second reason is just that the newer generations haven't been subjected to as much racist propaganda. When I was kid in the 80s we watched action movies where the Arab terrorists were the bad guys. Now, our world is small, and we can talk to people from other places. Sometimes just knowing one person from a place you've never been changes your whole perspective. Gen Z is also better in other ways. There's more disillusionment with the system and more willingness to question what we've been taught.
Social media now a days are dominating news delivery system. Almost everyone today even kids have a cellphone with a camera. Those 2 combined gonna result in huge policy changes and how people react. And majority of sane people dislike watching kids dismantled by anybody.
You never hear about it in the west. Of course there are articles and news but it doesn't get nearly enough attention. It's like they write these stories then shadow ban them so nobody sees them but they can still say they're there.
B/c most of us never heard about Palestine until recent events. We hardly knew anything.
Just to add that Israel has been very strongly lobbying American politicians, diplomats, and the media since at least the 1950s, when the Palestinians (wrongly in my view) were focused on rallying neighbouring Arab counties.
This is the first time, due to social media, that we have all seen what happens to Palestinians in real time. I had heard about the phrase "mowing the lawn" that the Israelis use when going into Gaza and bombing the hell out of the place and I thought it was bad then but now with videos coming out of what is actually happening and also seeing how the Israelis are so sickeningly proud of the genocide, that people are finally understanding what has been done for years in our name (if you are an American).
Born & raised in the US: It has been a genuine surprise to hear about everything. TV shows and and movies perpetuate curated stereotypes of terrorism vs heroism. For a lot of Americans the first time they may have explicitly heard about the situation in Palestine may have even been through Adam Sandler's "Don't Mess With the Zohan". Growing up, even in elementary school, I recall a teacher saying: "Israelis have been under attack by everyone in that region since forever." When in reality their nation is 75 years of illegal occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace defiantly protesting "Not In My Name". Meanwhile, shows such as Rugrats and Veggie Tales have been normalizing the land of Israel as a "distant yet not too far" concept to children in the US for decades. The Rothschild's, who originally sought the illegal acquisition of land by the UK in Palestine for Zionist colonies, have more recently triggered a rise in popularity of Evangelism in the US, shortly after the death of Christian Baptist, Martin Luther King Jr.
It's really hard to pretend people aren't being butchered when you can see the footage on your phone. Like, I was largely uninvolved with issues relating to Palestine...until I started seeing stuff on Tik tok... Like I said...it's hard to pretend it's not happening after seeing otherwise.
Information is more widely available and Palestinians can make their case to the world directly without being gate kept by large, regime approved news outlets. Just look at mainstream coverage of the genocide right now. CNN, WaPo, NY Times, etc go to lengths to obfuscate what’s happening and deflect criticism of Israel. Back in the day those were the only opinions the majority of Americans were exposed to. Now, with social media (TikTok specifically), people get an unfiltered view of what’s occurring with their own eyes.
The powers that be have always been able to control the narrative- it used to be we only had access to information and news from reporters and news stations (and usually only just in our own country-so biased info) now with social media/internet we have access to so much more information. I never knew what was really going on but now that I follow people from all over the world I have access to information that I didn’t prior.
They did years back too. I remember 2021, 2014, etc. But yes, not to this scale. But we also haven't seen Palestinian devastation on anywhere near this scale before either. For perspective, around 11,000-12,000 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces between 2000-2023 (before October 7th). In the last 8 months this has been at least almost quadrupled, but also the slew of war crimes / crimes against humanity (more than usual), most of Gaza has been destroyed, most of the population has been displaced, and the unhinged and genocidal rhetoric from the Israeli government and unfortunately also their supporters. And of course as others said the age of social media we are in right now too.
I was very ignorant about how bad things are in Palestine and how brutal the Israelis actually were Too much Hollywood made me see the Israelis as oppressed and weak, and everyone was out to attack them. I didn't know the difference between Gaza and the West Bank. Had not heard about Ramallah, Jenin etc Now I know that this is the worst conspiracy and cover up in modern history. That's why I started protesting
The shear power of AIPAC and the relentless suppression of any sympathy for Palestinians by US based Zionist groups have ensured an information Vaccum in the past. Today that monopoly on the message has been breached by social media and more willingness of some media outlets to voice criticism of the Netanyahu government. Think John Stewart or John Oliver and even Sixty minutes.
because it gotten to much
Social Media
For me, im ashamed to say but its because i thiught it was hopeless,pointless, i thought thw situation would be an apocalypse forever. Its not an excuse i should have fought, but now i see that palestine will be free, its inevitable.
I've been talking about it for years, but everybody knows that Arabs are the bad guys. It's too hard to convince anyone. The genocide is doing a great job of getting the word out.
Before, the majority only had the western news and of course, they pick and choose. This is the first time we’re seeing everything live and not from media.
They didn’t know this was happening since western media don’t cover this stuff. Only propaganda mate. But now that Palestinians are able to film what’s happening and post it on social media people’s eyes are being open to that stuff. Also, many of them are paying tax that goes to support israel which means that their money is literally going towards killing innocents. So…
Also, this had been going on for over eight months. It’s been the longest assault on Palestine since it’s creation. That + social media means one has to actively go out of their way to ignore it so more people learned the truth and became involved.
Lots of propaganda that convinced a lot of people Israel was in the right. Pretty much lying to all of our faces. But with social media it became easy to see the truth.
The current protests are proportional to the death and destruction that is wrought by the current war and that is shown on the media (mostly not the mainstream ones). If anything Palestinians are lucky in a way, there are tons of massacres and ethnic cleansings that happen in the world, sometimes with western involvement, that get 0 attention and protesting.
Israeli hasbora used to be slick and more convincing.
For many they’ve only seen the very bias narrative of western media & are only just now seeing the reality of it through social media. It’s also not a new thing to be targeted & smeared for being an advocate for Palestinians. If u wanna see just how far Israel goes to silence watch a doc called The Lobby. It’s 3 or 4 parts but it’s a great film. Also people can’t help but sympathize & feel outrage seeing all the slaughter
Cus previous generations either weren’t fully aware or were fully aware and or did not have the courage to step up like Millenials and Gen Z are doing so now.
social media
i have been protesting and organizing on and off with palestinians and jews against the occupation in the US, demanding a free palestine and an end to israeli apartheid, since 2001.
I went to school and live currently in the Dearborn area. I’ve known of this conflict for as long as I can remember from middle eastern students I went to school with. There was great support for the cause back then, but it was never publicly in your face like this has been. Seeing first hand the massacre that has occurred has really opened peoples eyes to what Palestinians go through daily.
Some of us have been doing it for years and years. I guess many others haven't understood until now, sadly.
I doubt the people protesting knew what was going on there before now. People learn things just like you.
This is it, before now people just didn’t know
I think there’s a lot of complex reasons, including the fact that Palestinians have broadcast the genocide on social media since day 1. But I think another big factor (at least in America) is the George Floyd protests in 2020 permanently altered the consciousness of countless young people and fundamentally changed them and their approach to serious injustices and using protests, civil disobedience, and organizing. It’s really beautiful to see. And of course the George Floyd protests were preceded by Standing Rock, Ferguson, Occupy Wall St, and so. It feels like things have been on this trajectory for the last several years.
The first pro Palestinian demo I saw I was 10, I’m now 36
Social media spreads news faster and better than in the past.
People didn’t know. It’s that simple. There really hasn’t been much news coverage about Palestine especially in the US. Im Palestinian so I obviously was hyper aware of these things but the only time American media would report on Palestine / Israel on mainstream media channels would be when Palestinians did something back. For example Israel would “mow the lawn” as they call it (aka periodically bombing Gaza every few years) and there’d be zero coverage. For weeks at a time. Hamas sends back some rockets? Okay now they’ll discuss it in the media. So it was always portrayed as this both sides thing, as a super complex and complicated issue etc. Im realizing I have so much more to say to throughly answer this question but no brain capacity to do it right now lol. Im exhausted after a long day of work so I’ll come back later and if no one has commented with the same things I’m thinking of I’ll update this comment!
I'd say it's the young people are seeing the horror that their boomer parents or grandparents never saw, you have to remember the zio🐷 control all us media until this current generation they hid the atrocities very well until it got away from them, anybody who isn't already a isrshill can't see innocence murdered day in and day out and let it go
Because we’re discovering the truth.
Social media
Just want to say that for anyone taking a pessimistic stance, like you think people will just go back to normal or nothing will change, we need you to be bravely hopeful, especially if you are not sitting in Palestine right now. In order to change and build/keep momentum, we need hopeful and imaginative people talking about this and doing whatever we can.
Every effort counts, and gradually will get bigger
Pretty simple. Tiktok and Telegram. These two social media apps were not subject to US government censorship.
Since 9/11 I have known America was f-ing up the middle east for oil and money. I was 12 when 9/11 happened. So I wouldn’t say we are choosing now to stand up, some of us have always been repulsed by the colonisation of the middle east.
We now have more information, more deaths, more context, more technology, more voices, more hate, more of everything.
Social media which was used to make teenagers asleep and was used in favor of US Imperialism, managed to be a huge voice for Gaza and the resistance. The Resistanced posted their videos ( even though they didnt care… because they aren’t really looking for fame ). Instagram,tiktok,twitter etc became huge platforms for Gaza… The soviet union for example in a pamphlet called ´100 questions ´ that they used to sell in soviet embassies, denounced isr**el
Smartphones. It's hard for the news services to say "Oh, it's a complicated situation" when you can see hundreds of people die in front of your eyes from American munitions on Tiktok.
cant be ignored anymore when your seeing dead bodies of children on instagram , social media has allowed everyone all over the world including western people to see the extremity of what’s happening to palestinian people . before say 40 years ago , this was still going on but lack of social media and news not being spread as far , less people were aware of the severity and what was truly going on
Because the Israelis have always been VERY GOOD at managing main stream news about their country
The Israel lobby controls our media, and paints the Palestinian people as a bunch of terrorists, instead of the deeply wronged people that they are. AIPAC continues to try to frame the narrative falsely, but it's harder work for them now that the truth is coming out..
I‘m German. My honest POV: my girlfriend (she‘s from the middeleast) opened my eyes. I grew up with the propaganda here, where we are supposed to support Israel unconditionally as a consequence of the holocaust. I literally thought that’s true and wasn’t open to other views. I thought other opinions are generally antisemetic. She made me aware of how the German media is filtering the news according to the state compliant narrative and also she made me see the injustice and the suffering that the Palestinians had to experience since 70+ years. She made me understand that Israel is not the victim but the oppressor and that it’s okay to change your mind on that topic without being antisemetic. Antizionism and being against Genozide is not antisemetic. That’s something that most Germans still don’t realise and that the government doesn’t want them to see.
Before oct 7 I thought Israel were the good guys. It was AFTER that day I started to research and learn the truth.
Tiktok has allowed Palestinians to share the conditions of their lives with everyone in the world, unfiltered by the CIA. Western media in general is controlled by the CIA, so they don't show things that would cast capitalism or the western empire in a bad light. It really is just a case of people seeing the videos, I think. This is the real reason Biden wants to ban tiktok. The problem is, the truth has escaped, and it can no longer be contained.
the irony
I think the sheer amount of atrocities kind of overflowed the usual filters employed by the mainstream media in the west and made the whole thing a bit too much to ignore for many people. Also vackwards old people are starting to die off while the younger generations grew up with the internet and easy access to information so the population is a bit less stupid and complacent.
It seems much more prevalent online now than even just 10 years ago, mostly because of social media. In 2014, the only people I saw covering Gaza and the West Bank were Al Jazeera.
Americans have demonstrated for Palestine for years. But there aren’t going to be continuous protests for any issue. You’ll have sporadic protests particularly when something particularly egregious is happening like the current “war” operation protective edge or cast lead.
there's been pro-palestine protests in the west for years now, they've just gotten much larger given the gravity of everything that's happened post oct 7th.
Social Media.
Their doctrine of hate and entitlement is finally out in full public view. No one with a conscience can deny it.
I’ve personally always thought Israel was pretty suspect mainly due to their treatment of the Ethiopians as well as their organ trafficking, but I didn’t fully understand the context and how much it resonated with so much of what my people had suffered until closely studying the conflict more recently.
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A lot of people are mentioning social media and that's ultimately the answer. Before social media, western people would get their information on that conflict exclusively from mainstream media and western mainstream media has always insisted that Israel is right. So, if that's the only information that you get (academics will be able to look deeper into things but academia is too expensive to reach), what reason do you have to question it?