People cared very much about apartheid in South Africa, which is a country and regime that Israel actually supported, as did the U.S.—and which is why there was a divestment movement, similar to BDS. … The reason so many people are focused upon Israel & Gaza now is because of how interdependent we are. As someone once asked me in comments on Facebook: “is Israel the U.S. 51st state?”

Yes, apparently, it is, because it is perhaps a number one recipient of US funding. Plus we all somehow know people who are attached to Israel and so it feels like we are intimately related.

And yes, there was a heck of a lot of media coverage on October 7, when Israel wanted everyone to care deeply about “Jihadist attacks.”

Is it racist then to want us to care about Israelis under attack? But we should not care about Gazans, also subject to a counter-attack that has broken records for child deaths? … This whole piece feels like an anti-Islamic diatribe.

We can also talk about what Orthodox Jews are doing in the West Bank. Or fundamentalists here in the US behind Trump. Maybe the problem is religion itself, and not one type or another.