Hi y’all! I’m a Jewish anti-Zionist (former liberal Zionist) and I just co-published this guide to deprogramming Zionists with my Muslim best friend and business partner. He’s the one who educated me about Palestine, and now we live together and do a lot of organizing for Palestinian liberation.

I chose to speak honestly to my Zionist cousin-in-law at Thanksgiving. It was challenging, but I still recommend it.

Are you planning to talk to your Zionist friends or family about Palestine this Hanukkah? If so, how are you going to approach it? If not, what’s stopping you?

Some of our friends have given up because they’ve tried to reason with their loved ones, but it doesn’t work. It feels like a waste of time.

I get it. At the same time, being honest is important to me. I try to move the Zionists in my life, even a little, because I know they’ll hear me in a way they would never hear Palestinians. It feels like the least I can do.

I asked my friend to help me prepare for the conversation at Thanksgiving, since he has IRL experience in cult deprogramming and effectively broke through my conditioning and my dad’s. We’ve spent countless hours and late nights talking about how this ideology functions and why it’s so hard to change. He showed me the research about why reasoning alone often doesn’t work with Zionism, as well as what you actually can do to make progress.

We’re both in the media industry, so we decided to publish a free/pay-what-you-can ebook building on the work of Peter Beinart, Alex McDonald, Simone Zimmerman, etc., with our most useful takeaways about how to talk to Zionists about Palestine, specifically at holiday gatherings.

We think moving our Zionist loved ones to consider anti-Zionism is likely the most important thing you could do to free Palestine this holiday season (we explain why in the guide, but basically, we think if enough Jewish Americans publicly support Palestine, there’s actually a way it could make the U.S. veto in the UN Security Council untenable). We’re already almost to the finish line, as evidenced by the number of us who recognize the genocide today.

This community was a huge inspiration and a refuge to us, so we thought we’d share it with y’all and see if you find it helpful. Although we tend to be lurkers mostly, we’d love to offer y’all an AMA about what we’ve learned and our experience moving Zionist loved ones. And if you find it valuable, please consider sharing with others who may appreciate it.

tl;dr

Are you going to talk to your Zionist loved ones about Palestine this Hanukkah? If you are dreading the conversation, I want to encourage you to try. I know it’s a challenge, but they’re predictable and you can make progress with counter-intuitive but empirically-backed approaches. If you want help, my Zionism deprogramming expert friend and I can empower you to break the cycle 💪