I just wanted to let y’all know that whenever one of them sees even the smallest expression of Palestinian solidarity it absolutely wrecks their shit.
My Zionist coworkers have worked themselves up into a frenzy about not just the phrase Free Palestine (“genocidal”), but also keffiyehs (“genocidal”), and even cartoon watermelons (“reminds them of Germany in the 1930’s”). These aren’t grifters or online trolls. These are seemingly normal people, some of whom I’ve worked with for most of a decade, who are absolutely losing their fucking minds, and are completely convinced that any reference to Palestine is by definition anti-Semitic and a direct attack on them personally. They have complained to our boss, they have complained to our union, they have snuck into someone’s room and taken down a pro-Palestinian display. They are refusing to enter a room that has a watermelon displayed. They feel unsafe. They are losing sleep, they are bursting into tears. Its genuinely bizarre to witness.
I have a small watermelon up in my room and felt guilty that I wasn’t doing more, but apparently this seemingly mild gesture has the power of a thousand Hamas supersoldiers. Keep it up comrades.
If it sounds like I’m making this up, I honestly can’t blame you. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t been watching this play out.
I’ve been wearing a keffiyeh every day since October 7th and haven’t gotten anything, not even a glance. Closest I’ve gotten is a coworker out of nowhere asking me if I’d heard of Palestine before, since it was the first time he’d heard of the place. He didn’t seem instantly hostile, since he had never heard of Israel either. That’s the level of people I’m dealing with.
However I’d probably get skinned alive here for displaying a current Vietnamese flag (lots of Vietnamese gusanos here. Is there a better term for that?)
I remember Luna Oi using the term “three-stripe” because of that dogshit flag they love to pair with the stars and bars
I live adjacent to an extremely rich area in California. I wore a shirt with a faded Palestine flag on a walk to the library and back through those neighborhoods and the first person I ran into was a young guy, maybe high school age, who gave me a full up-down look and then mean-mugged silently as we passed on the sidewalk. For a split second I wasn’t sure what that was about, but then I looked down and realized. Shameful that anyone could support Israel in the US though. Even more shameful that anyone supports our government.
There’s a church down the street from me that flies an Israeli flag. I’ve biked past them twice a day, clearly wearing a keffiyeh that’s sometimes fully wrapped around my face, and even they haven’t said or done anything even when there are people milling about outside.
I’ve been practicing what I’d say or do if I encounter a rabid Zionist in the wild but so far it hasn’t occurred