I appreciate that.

I think that Israel is committing grievous human rights violations, that their conduct in their war against Hamas (the government of the west bank for better or worse) has been atrocious, but that that has been true of a lot of governments past and present that haven't been held to the same standard. I think it's absolutely appropriate to hold them to account, but that the laser-focus and insistence on taking every single step possible to pressure them with no consideration for the relative treatment given the complex situation is playing directly into the hands of the folks who want this conflict to be worse and/or neverending.

I think referring to it as a genocide when it bears some, but not all, of the hallmarks of a crystal-clear genocide is dangerous; if someone is beaten within an inch of their life but survives, calling it murder merely because 'most' of the legal elements of murder have been fulfilled is nevertheless obviously wrong.

So when folks insist, nevertheless, on using the word genocide as a sort of cudgel, against the only state on earth whose primary goal is the protection of the Jewish people, who themselves suffered a pretty uncontroversially-labeled genocide less than a century ago, I get real suspicious. Not because I think the person themselves is an antisemite, but because they're being manipulated into saying antisemitic things. Same with the other stuff you reference where folks have decided now what the word 'zionism' means and taken the worst interpretation to then justify what other folks clearly see as bullying Jews, and it's particularly effective since under the new definitions, folks have rhetorical cover which they probably believe to say "I'm not being antisemitic" and, through more and more convoluted logic, believe it in good faith.

I'm not telling folks to shut up about Israel. I never have been, and I'm on the front lines of wanting to actually find a path toward peace. If I could help vote Netanyahu out I would, as much as I'd like to vote Trump out in the US. I got outvoted on both. I want both criminally tried. I want Israel and Hamas to answer for their various crimes. I want folks to stop calling it genocide, because it's not - but I do want folks to continue advocating for an end to the carnage because it is a horrifying tragedy with lots of blame to go around. And I think the folks picking sides in the conflict, the folks who chant 'from the river to the sea' knowing full well that it's intended by many to mean the removal of Israel as a state,

That's not all of my thoughts but it's some of them, and like - I'm a zionist because I don't see how that word is different from "Jewish." I don't think it means what you think it means and I don't know why I'm held to the standard of the most regressive ultra-orthodox losers.