Your liberal democracy just shut down El Jazeera and confiscated equipment and cell phones - the same liberal democracy that gave the world Pegasus so autocrats around the world could use it to surveil, arrest, torture, jail, and disappear its own citizens. Your liberal democracy is just one razor thin Supreme Court line of defense away from becoming a theocracy.

I’m loathe to assume, but you must be an American Jew. I’ve lived in the US most of my life but I still have dual American-Israeli citizenship. I grew up in central New York where there are a lot of Jews like you whose belief in the state of Israel is unshakable to the degree that it’s baked into their identity as Jews. You simply couldn’t Jew if your belief in the state of Israel was in any way challenged. In that sense, you’re a lot like MAGA.

Trump and the GOP understand that they can always count on the loyalty of their ignorant base. As much as liberals can’t stand MAGA, Trump and his cadre have an even greater sneering contempt for its supporters, in the way that all grifters have contempt for their marks. I imagine Netanyahu and his ministers feel the same about their loyal American Jews.

But then again, why am I wasting my time and energy here in the comments when I could be researching and writing my own opinion piece. Of course, you and the gang will deploy one of your favorite stock exhortations: self-loathing Jew! but I think it’s a lot harder to categorically dismiss the opinion of a Jew born in Israel to a first generation Sabra mother and Holocaust survivor father with a stock phrase. And I have to keep in mind that I’m not writing for you: like MAGA, nothing I write, regardless of how well researched is going to change your perception; the degree of cognitive dissonance is too great. But there will be Jews here and there who have been uncomfortable with, and maybe beginning to question the narrative they’ve been fed about Israel who just might be ready to have some hard conversations.