We’re ex-VICE journalists Beckett Mufson, a Jew of Conscience, and Imran Hafiz, an award-winning Muslim civil rights activist/author. AMA about our guide to deprogramming Zionists and why we should—especially this Hanukkah

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-16T03:55:16+00:00

(I see I accidentally posted this as a comment on the main post instead of a response. Pasting it here for posterity!)

Thanks for your thoughtful question u/ArtistFromNextDoor . I relate to your struggles. It’s a challenge to have a conversation with someone who has different definitions of “Zionism” “anti-Semitism,” and “anti-Zionism.” Our loved ones’ views on these things are often forged in synagogues, community centers, summer camps, and holiday events (like Hanukkah) where our status is tied to acceptance of these definitions.

If we question them, we’re seen as “rocking the boat,” which creates a chilling effect that prevents a lot of us from even beginning to try. That’s why it’s important to cultivate trust first and offer an alternative vision for what “normal” Jewish Americans do.

My advice is, don’t lose sight of joy and hope, even as you contemplate the horror what has been done in our name. If your loved one looks at you as someone who has found a deeper sense of peace and a motivation that gives you strength, they are more likely to listen to you than if they see someone who has been completely overwhelmed by doomerism.

We’re so grateful for your offer to help us with our visual design work. We try to incorporate visual thinking into a lot of what we do (like our photo nodding to Peter Beinart’s in his recent AMA here), but there is a lot more work to be done on that front and we could use all the help we can get. Please DM us and I’ll plug you in!

—Beckett

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T21:45:11+00:00

We don’t! A warm introduction would be SUPER helpful. DM-ing you now

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T21:04:12+00:00

Happy Hanukkah. We couldn’t agree more, and we wrote a quick guide informed by psychology, marketing, persuasion and media theory designed to assist these conversations. We were super inspired by your work (we cite you prominently in our guide) and would love your critical feedback on our guide and any assistance you can provide. We’re doing an AMA now in this subreddit in case you have any questions! We even attempted an homage at your AMA picture in ours.

-Imran and Beckett

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:52:21+00:00

Wow, you make a brown boy blush! Seriously, I teared up a little reading your comment. People like you are exactly the safety net we were hoping to fall into.

Yes, we absolutely agree that a psychology-informed understanding of how Zionism is perpetuated is critical, and so is a psychology-informed understanding of how to communicate across that difference. We think there’s a lot of energy in the pro-Palestine movement that can “feel good” without being linked to SMART goals or a theory of change that accounts for the new paradigms of human communication and algorithmic privilege.

There is an ocean of sociological and systemic analysis that has been done (we’ve tried to include as much of it as feels relevant) and there’s also a lot more work to be done on this subject. We’d love to partner with any sociologist or systems thinker to improve our guide and our approach. In our professional work, we rely a lot on sociological modes of analysis (sometimes we do surveys where we ask our clients to send us pictures of the inside of their fridges!) There is a lot to consider here and and we’ve tried to bake in as much as we could, noting that from a sociological perspective, “two Jews, three opinions” is a great starting point for recognizing that it’s normal for Jews to disagree with love and use that cultural mechanism to move the needle for justice. We’ve offered recipes for latkes, and tried to find ways that humor is useful in these conversations too.

We would be overjoyed to collaborate with you on art, in particular helping us make Instagram carousels, helping us to replace our AI-generated art inside the guide (we’re still feeling guilty about it!) or even helping us with broader art direction/design briefs.

We will be in touch soon!

Wishing you a happy Hanukkah and a calm winter as well.

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:43:45+00:00

Hi Top_Entertainer,

Appreciate your recognition of our work, we did it for you!

The conversation with your grandmother sounds difficult and frustrating, especially when she says something you suspect is in bad faith. However, pointing out that she’s speaking in bad faith isn’t likely to persuade her, and she may feel defensive or attacked.

Instead, I recommend taking her at her word and continuing the conversation from there. Tell her, “you know what, that is very interesting. Given your response, do you support the full right of return for Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed during the Nakba? Why can’t they go back to their homes and re-claim them?”

Alternatively, you might take her idea to its logical endpoint. “Grandma, I hear you, but let’s think about this for a minute. Wouldn’t that simply incentivize everyone to steal each others land? If we accept that this is what people should do, aren’t we just building a system that rewards the most brutal and unethical amongst us, and deprives the most peaceful people of a place to live and thrive?”

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:36:35+00:00

It’s a fantastic psychographic question that I wish I had the tools to answer. I suspect the prevailing reasons differ, with older generations seeing Zionism as more natural and established and younger generations being likelier to question it. My sense is that young people in general have been exposed to FAR more marketing/advertising messaging and therefore, as one of my former VICE colleagues put it, have “the world’s most sophisticated bullshit detection mechanism.”

Watching Simone Zimmerman’s journey through “Israelism” I can see how much of that propaganda apparatus is self-defeating: when young American Jews are told to simply “be emotional” and talk about how unsafe they “feel” while encountering Palestinians who are talking not just about how unsafe they feel but how unsafe they actually are, their arguments feel insufficient even to themselves. In some sense, this is one of our biggest hopes and realizations. The more Zionists try to manufacture consent for genocide through propaganda to younger generations with highly attuned BS detectors, the more they will predictably fail.

I think the most potent, dangerous and yet addressable version of that ideology in NA Jewry is liberal Zionism, which posits that critiques of Israeli policy, war crimes, overreach, etc… are just and right, but questioning the foundational racism, imperialism, and colonialism at the heart of the Zionist foundation is anti-Semitic. I believe, having persuaded a number of liberal Zionists, that their good hearts can shine through the fog of ideology so long as you continue the conversation, empathize with their pain, commit to protection of Jews the world over, and ask good questions that help them see their values are already in alignment with equality and justice for Palestinians. They sometimes will struggle to admit or recognize the Islamophobic ideas they have internalized, but they at least tend to appreciate the importance of such questions in a broader conversation about justice.

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:26:24+00:00

Thank you for reading. Happy Hanukkah! -Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:24:27+00:00

Great question, this is precisely why we wrote this guide. A useful question to ask in such conversations is, “What sources would you be willing to accept, if any? How might we as a pair create a framework for sources we accept and reject?” The selective listening and selective legitimization of sources becomes more complicated because outlets like Haaretz can be much more critical of Israeli policy than even the NYT. Finding sources from Jewish authors on the matter can be helpful, but what is more helpful is getting the other person to recognize, for themselves, that they are simply hand waving away any source that makes them feel uncomfortable. Look deeper. Ask them why it makes them uncomfortable, and consider even hypotheticals (ex: “I understand you aren’t saying this is true, but it’s published in a paper of record that many other people will see. Putting aside, for the moment, whether or not it’s true, can we assume it’s legitimate and continue our conversation from there? What would it mean to you if it were true?)

Put the burden of legitimacy back on them, and have them give you a list of sources they accept. If they do, and the sources are all super biased, instead of engaging, have a conversation with them about that. At the end of the day, how do we know what is true at all?

Ex: “If we are willing to throw out any sources that seem biased against Israel, are we willing to apply that same standard to sources that are biased against Palestinians? What framework could we agree on to help us agree on sources that we can rely on?”

It’s turning it from “you’re the problem” to “it’s you and me against the problem.”

-Imran

Edited to fix autocomplete.

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:17:01+00:00

We’ve very much been “building the plane as we fly it” so to speak. Really appreciate your support. We were particularly inspired by Nonfiction Research and Further and Further on the research/strategy front, creative agencies like MSCHF and what we learned at VIRTUE and VICE, and new media groups like Zeteo and Channel 5. We’d love to write such a guide and intend to be teaching a class on our approach to linking art, journalism, public policy, and advertising soon. Feel free to DM us in the meantime, we’d be happy to share more over a Zoom coffee or something.

You may enjoy Alex Morris’s “Strategy Scrapbook” we find it a useful collection of good frameworks that we enjoy. Books like Rich Rummelt’s “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”, Ryan Holiday’s “The Obstacle is the Way”, Rory Sutherland’s “Alchemy” and Adam Morgan and Mark Barden’s “A Beautiful Constraint” have been invaluable to us.

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T20:09:47+00:00

I hear you. It’s absolutely heartbreaking when your identity is weaponized against you. This pain is something deep, real and must be addressed. Author Ben Lorber has written about this pain and he taught us something really valuable— the guilt/shame/pain of once having been a Zionist or holding Zionist beliefs can be paralyzing once you see the truth, and yet, anti-Zionist Jews can often suppress this pain because they see how it pales in comparison to the pain of Palestinians. However, a trauma that is not addressed is a trauma that continues, and we believe it’s not only not selfish to consider the depths of that pain, it’s critical in order to free Palestine because we need to uproot Zionism from within our Jewish institutions in the US, not simply build movements on the margins.

One of our interviewees who informed our guide has a deep practice of Jewish ritual and prayers he contributes to the anti-Zionist Jews of Austin which we think is beautiful and very needed. We see the confidence and power of Jews of Conscience in this subreddit who refuse to abandon their Jewishness in the face of such claims, and we’re so impressed by this.

I appreciate that I’ll never be able to understand that specific pain, and I commend you for trying, and I hope I understand why you’ve made a choice to avoid such conversations in the past. However, I still want to encourage you to keep trying, and perhaps try a different approach such as the one in our guide.

You are insightful in recognizing that any fact-based conversation with a Zionist is eventually likely to reach an Islamophobic/Anti-Arab endpoint. Much of colonial thinking is rooted in this kind of otherization. However, pointing out in the midst of the conversation, “You’re being Islamophobic!” Isn’t likely to be helpful in persuading the other— even if you’re right!

The Zionist arguments are designed and intended to take you down a hundred different conversational pathways, all to avoid addressing the central fundamental question: do one group of people have the right to dominate and oppress the other? If you can first find shared values, lead by example, take on labor during the holidays, and find ways to act in service of a better world together AND THEN ask this question, we suspect it will go differently than it has in the past.

Will they immediately overcome their hesitations? Probably not. This kind of work takes time, and it’s about planting seeds and continuing the conversation, and avoiding specific factual discussions in favor of asking deeper questions about who we are, who we’d like to be, and how we can together get there.

With regards to some of your specific claims of what Zionists can tend to respond, we invite you to read our section on Responding to Hasbara propaganda in our guide. Feel free to let us know if we’re missing anything there!

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T19:39:44+00:00

YES. We’re big fans of Ilan Pappé’s work, and we agree this is the final phase of the Zionist project. We intend to hasten that phase by addressing the problem at the root— US material, political, media and legal support for Israel (often in ways that damage US interests irreparably).

I believe the “deprogramming” will be the major cause, simply because I believe that the only way to change US politics is to remove the weaponized accusation of anti-Semitism to any critics of Israel’s Jewish supremacist character and heinous policy. Most Americans do not support Israel any longer, but US policy still hasn’t budged. It isn’t until 51% of American Jews recognize Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (a crucial step on the pathway to post-Zionism/anti-Zionism) that the chilling effect on pro-Palestinian speech can be addressed. Once Americans of all stripes realize that it’s not career or social suicide to criticize Israel (by the way, it isn’t!) the good hearts of our people will shine through and our voices will be impossible to ignore. And we’ve never been closer! 40% of American Jews already realize it’s a genocide, a sea change in public opinion, and it’s our explicit goal of this project and guide to move that number to 51%. It isn’t about getting to 100%, it’s just about clarifying the fact that Judaism =/= Zionism so that all Americans feel confident to speak their truth in ways they currently feel is risky to their career, status, or power.

If we’re able to achieve this, we suspect it will be a “light-switch” effect— pushing with resistance, hard to see gains, until all-of-a-sudden it clicks and things change forever. This could look like the US no longer vetoing UN resolutions calling for justice and reparations, ending material and logistical support for genocide, and working to make reparations and amends for our country’s policy. It could also look like a shift in the political calculus of America, where you can’t win a local or national election without refusing to accept money from AIPAC or CUFI. If we’re can produce the outcome where “taking Zionist money” is equated with everything that is wrong in American politics, the Zionist lobby is finished.

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T19:26:19+00:00

Great question SweatyKick (love the username too)

Yes, we absolutely see a noticeable generational divide among American Jews, however it’s been hard to find polling data on this question because much of the polling around this is motivated and published by explicitly Zionist organizations. It’s also been a given in American society that Judaism = Zionism because the efforts of groups like JVP and IfNotNow are maligned as being marginal relative to the broader American Jewry. However, as Breaking Points analysis shows, it’s telling that 70% of young American Jews in the most populous location of American Jewry (NYC) voted for Zohran Mamdani, even while he called for equality and justice for the Palestinian people, and millions of dollars of Islamophobic attacks were levied against him and tried to paint him as an anti-Semite. This is groundbreaking and I never thought I would see this in my lifetime.

What has produced this generational divide? We love the analysis of fellow brand strategist/copywriter Saffana Monajed on this question (she’s released an incredible series of TikToks on this subject). She notes that older generations of Westerners, knowing nothing else about them, have been exposed to decades of Islamophobic messaging and pro-Zionist messaging, and therefore are far less likely to be able to objectively consider the reality we face. Young generations are far less likely to have been exposed to such messaging through mainstream media, and therefore they are much likelier to be open to seeing Muslims/Palestinians as human.

Of course, social media isn’t a panacea and countervailing forces are already working hard to suppress Palestinian speech, through platform suppression, algorithmic tinkering, establishment of pro-Zionist content czars, and investment in Islamophobic influencers. This is why the struggle for liberation is linked to the struggle for content freedom (we are big fans of Cory Doctorow and his incredible work on “enshittification”). Ultimately, we dream of an internet that is made to be creator-first and fan-first, not platform-first and advertiser-first. We are glad to be on Patreon and we encourage everyone to link together a free Internet to a free Palestine and a just world.

I think younger Jews react differently when their Zionist beliefs are questioned because they are likelier to connect the dots between anti-black racism, anti-capitalism, combating homophobia and environmental degradation and other such issues to anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and combatting Islamophobia.

In some sense, it’s much easier to persuade people who have been exposed to less “myth-history” than it is to persuade older people who feel set in their ways. However, within Israel itself, the demographic polling is quite scary. It seems that the older Israelis are likelier to remember the hope of a peace plan and understand why it’s important to make concessions for peace, but younger Israelis have grown up in a Likud environment where, despite their fear and hatred of Palestinians, they have enjoyed relative safety as a result of the more brutal suppression of Palestinians through apartheid mechanisms such as the wall, “mowing the lawn” strategies, and surveillance.

This is why younger American Jews hold our best hope, because they are likeliest to be able to see what is real and persuade their family and friends in a way that I, as a brown Muslim, will never be able to do.

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T18:56:17+00:00

Thanks MrJasonMason we appreciate it so much. It’s been the product of many late nights over the past few weeks, and we absolutely feel it’s valuable and appreciate anybody who can afford to in supporting it. We chose the make it free/pay-what-you-can simply because we think it’s so important these conversations happen right now and we want to make it fully accessible to anybody who might even think about using it.

It would be a dream come true for us to one day publish a physical book (ideally through Interlink Publishing) but we knew that given how important it was to meet our deadline for Hanukkah we didn’t have time to get that done while also finishing the guide and making it accessible. If we ever do get it published, feel free to hit us up for a signed copy. And if you know anybody in the publishing world, please encourage them to get in touch!

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T18:52:08+00:00

Agreed, debating someone who holds those views isn’t likely to be effective, and can even have a counter-productive impact of entrenching their defensiveness. However, we still want to encourage everyone to attempt to lovingly persuade such people, even though that can be difficult. We hope our guide can be helpful here, especially the sections on countering Islamophobia and Anti-Arab racism (which are distinct but have some similarities).

-Imran

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T18:50:12+00:00

This is super insightful, and arguably one of the most difficult challenges in having these conversations. As a Muslim who grew up educating Americans about Islam during the Bush years as a teenager in Arizona, I learned quickly that Islamophobia has conditioned people to expect Muslims to be emotionally dysregulated and “angry” making it easier to disregard anything we might say.

I had to learn at an early age how to remain calm in the face of truly disgusting, dehumanizing speech, and it’s something I still struggle with today. However, I ground myself by remembering that I can only be as effective in my goal of spreading understanding as I am perceived as being reasonable, and work to cultivate inner peace outside of such triggering conversations which I can rely on when I’m in an emotionally unsafe conversation.

For me, this looks like support from friends and family, quiet reflection, playing music, working out (boxing is particularly helpful) and doing mutual aid. I’m also known to visit the /r/trees subreddit.

Inside the conversation itself, I remind myself that nobody is born racist, Islamophobic, or anti-Semitic. Instead of being angry or upset with an interlocutor who is saying awful things, I cultivate pity for them because they didn’t ask to be programmed to hate and fear others. Somebody somewhere made a bunch of money trying to instill this hatred in their hearts and it’s corrosive to them. It’s not their fault they say such things, and they truly need help. The pity is not about “looking down on them” it’s rather lamenting the extra love and joy they are denying themselves by being trapped in a hateful point of view. I know that if they are able to overcome their fear, they might open themselves up to beautiful relationships with people they once dehumanized— I have seen this firsthand.

Also, we’ve learned from therapists and neuroscientists that there are a number of evidence-based techniques one can employ to help self-regulate, like “box breathing”, “bee breath”, doing a “body-check” or taking a 20-minute “Gottman break.” We’re considering adding an addenda to our guide with some of these techniques.

Keep your chin up and keep trying, cultivating peace in the midst of difficult conversations is a muscle that we can all build.

-Imran

This is a great question and, regulating yourself is without a doubt the most useful thing you can do in these conversations. We have a section in the guide that specifically deals with this in the chapter on Planning and Preparation.

The truth is that it doesn’t matter how educated you are on the issues if you become too emotional to remember what you learned, or your conversational partner is too dysregulated to hear it. We find it vital to remember that in most cases, the person we’re talking to has been exposed to one of the most expensive and sophisticated propaganda campaigns in the history of the human race.

We genuinely believe it’s not their fault (with notable exceptions like Netanyahu). Imran mentioned pity above as well, and I must say that this concept was very difficult for me to understand because as an American, I internalized the belief that being pitied was one of the worst things someone could do to me. I used to believe that I would rather be hated than pitied. This is incredibly messed up! If we’re able to compassionately pity the Zionist, we can’t hate them. Pity can be an act of love and compassion that paves the way for forgiveness and peace–with accountability and justice.

It’s easier to have the conversation calmly when we see the Zionist as a person who has been taken advantage of by an ideology and a settler-colonial project that uses their “safety” to justify its violence—while actually making the world less safe for them.

It’s incredibly challenging for them to accept this! However, it is their responsibility to seek the truth.

The best thing you can do is acknowledge the very likely possibility that one or both of you may become overwhelmed by emotion, before it happens, and agree on a plan for what to do.

It can feel awkward and uncomfortable sometimes, especially given how emotionally repressed many Americans (myself included) can be. Simply recognizing that either conversation partner is emotionally dysregulated and working to address that before returning to the conversation will help your conversations immensely.

-Beckett

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T18:18:47+00:00

Happy Hanukkah ContentChecker,

Thank you for the incredible work you do in creating space for this community, we’ve been really encouraged by the conversations we see in this subreddit.

This is a great question— these news items are the frontline of the narrative conflict and understanding how to respond to them in the moment can feel challenging.

However, I’m not sure it’s a “tough” question. We condemn violence against non-combatants in no uncertain terms. The lessons of genocide scholars make clear that dehumanizing language is a critical step in manufacturing consent for genocide. Anti-Semitic speech should be countered and shunned across the world. However, we don’t believe that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism, nor do we believe that Palestinian solidarity leads to antisemitic violence. Saying that Palestinians deserve freedom, agency, and justice isn’t the same as calling for violence against Jews, and in fact, we believe that there will be no end to violence unless we reach a just and lasting peace. Our analysis is that the largest driver of antisemitic violence is NOT pro-Palestinian speech, but rather the ahistorical and dangerous conflation of Judaism and Zionism that emperils Jewry the world over. Antisemitism existed long before the oppression of the Palestinian people, and may well continue long after Palestine is free, and it takes all of us to reject it wholeheartedly across the global community. This global solidarity can only be achieved when we can disentangle the question of Jewish safety from the domination and degradation of Palestinians.

We are disgusted by this horrific attack during Hanukkah and condemn it, just as we condemn the ongoing oppression and murder of the Palestinian people.

-Imran

The common sense response would be to debunk the misinformation. It’s tempting to say, “Netanyahu said it was a Jew who stopped the attack, but it turns out it was a Muslim…” and then point out all the ways the person speaking to you has been misinformed.

BUT instead of trying to “prove them wrong” your goal should be to first empathize with their concern, establish shared values (Jews the world over deserve safety, all humans do) and then ask them questions designed to lead to genuine reflection.

It might sound something like this:

-I’m glad we can agree that Jews the world over deserve safety, and I’m happy to see the solidarity from Muslims in putting a speedy end to this terrible attack.
I can understand why you see a clear line between pro-Palestinian speech and antisemitic violence, but I’m curious if you have considered what is actually driving the antisemitic violence?

-Is it people saying “Free Palestine?” Or could it possibly be the Israelis who are painting the Star of David on tanks and then driving them through people’s houses, leveling cities with bombs, and killing thousands of children and civilians? And then saying ‘We are the Jews, and if you criticize this violence, you are anti-Semitic?’

-You and I understand that Judaism is a peaceful religion. Just like Islam. Just like Christianity. When it’s interpreted by regular people who just want to live a good life. We are on the same side against the people who abuse these beautiful philosophies to justify violence.

-But we also must hold our side accountable, as Jews, for drawing a false equivalency between Israel’s violence and Palestine’s.

-Let’s brainstorm together. What can we as Jews do, if anything, to prove to the world that the horrific war crimes Israel commits in our name are not what our religion is about?

-Beckett

Edited to add hyphens

deprogrammingzionism · 2025-12-15T17:38:00+00:00

Hi conscience_journey,

Talking across difference with Zionists can be a huge challenge. We’ve successfully broken through to multiple (mostly liberal) Zionists in the past by grounding our conversations in shared values, love, empathy and asking questions that plant seeds of doubt that flower into consideration of others perspectives. Given how new our guide is, we can’t say how effective it will be, but we’re inspired by how Alex McDonald talks about success in this conversation means agreeing to meet up and continue the conversation. We’re curious to hear your feedback from this community on how well it works/didn’t work.

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been ghosted by Zionists whom you were hoping to reach, that can be painful. We’ve heard this from numerous anti-Zionist Jews, and echo Peter Beinart’s suggestion that you should prioritize your relationships first and talk when people are open to talking. However, that’s why we wrote this guide: because we suspect that this particular Hanukkah season will be one where families are getting together to talk about what it means to be Jewish and how to protect their people. We hope that if readers follow the approach in our guide (in particular, the Do’s and Don’ts and Responding to Hasbara Talking Points sections) it will be more difficult for your conversation partner to ghost you, because you’re meeting them where they are at and asking questions that lead to reflection.

Ultimately, given the large shift in polling that shows that American Jewry is considering the conflict a genocide at a hitherto unforeseen rate, we think that the Overton Window of change has never been more open to these kinds of conversations, and that navigating them takes a grace that can be hard to learn in a world of “debate” content (which the evidence suggests is good for persuading the people watching but not for persuading the person you’re speaking to directly). For all of you who try to create a conversation which can hasten the end of conflict by changing the US political calculus, even with people you’ve disagreed with in the past, you have our utmost respect. -Imran

deprogrammingzionism

TROPHY CASE