Are these somewhat extreme views?

[confusedthirtysomething2]

I’ve changed a few details…

My niece (let’s call her Stella) visited for the summer. She’s just graduated from Oxford and spent a lot of time protesting for Palestine. I’m half Ashkenazi but I completely understand the backlash against the Israeli govt and what they’re doing. However, some of her views concerned me and I don’t know whether I’m being over dramatic.

Firstly, something about Palestinians being the original levantines and Jews in Israel are European converts.

It’s a myth that democracy is the right/only way to run a country.

The Islamic revolution in Iran was a backlash against American imperialism so the pictures of women in Iran prior to the Islamic revolution was never what the people wanted and it’s only the past ten years they’ve had a fascist government.

Japan are only rebelling against China for independence because they’ve forgotten their own heritage and have been brainwashed by the west.

She’s always been very left but I found these views quite fringe. She’s a lovely, intelligent woman (always had straight As) but I’m worried she’s on a slippery slope. Or AIBU because I’m not really used to having my worldview challenged? I live in a rural town and never went to uni.

That’s quite scary really: that intelligent young people can spout such nonsense. I agree with apps that she’s likely not studied politics and her views are from videos on TikTok/Reddit that were aimed at the gullible.

My Israeli born Jewish friend’s family were originally from Iraq, not Europe!

It's worrying how much propaganda is shaping young minds, there is a real lack of critical analysis of material (worrying for an Oxford student).

Well to be fair China for all its faults has been investing impressively in infrastructure in recent decades. For example its high speed rail network is larger than the rest of the world combined and services 2.5 billion journeys each year. Similarly impressive investment in green energy etc. That said of course China shouldn’t be praised by a socialist - it’s state capitalist. A funny kind of socialism with gargantuan extremes of wealth, no universal healthcare, no workers rights, no welfare safety net etc etc. In terms of lived experience of its citizens it’s far to the right of all major Europeans countries.

China is officially a communist nation isn't it? Which is funny given how it operates.

“with Chinese characteristics”. Translation: state capitalist (with rampant corruption)

You can be nice/lovely and still believe/spout political horseshit. I mean that applies to at least 90% of people who voted Brexit (and the vast majority of that group didn’t even have the excuse of being young).

It sounds like she has been on a Chinese-Russian state sponsored TikTok rabbit hole without realising it.

The propoganda is also clever, targeted and escalating. Utilizing social media algorithms to radicalise specific groups.

Sounds like she's a very intelligent young person who is extremely passionate about political theory and hasn't yet lived enough life to know:

1. In all things political, the practical reality is enormously different to the academic theory
2. The human cost of enforcing ideology is greater than it feels from Oxford (and easy to dismiss when you're enjoying big ideas)
3. Everything is nuanced; the cons to any big idea are bigger than they feel when you're pro them (and vice versa)

I am left wing and knew heaps of people who had very similar views to her in uni. Because they're ultimately kind, compassionate people who have let their brains run away with them, they generally settle down to a still leftist yet more middle of the road kind of thinking.

I think the best and kindest thing to do is simply let her be. Engage her on topics you both enjoy, let her nut out the huge political theory elsewhere.

there is no historical evidence that Palestine existed BEFORE the creation of Israel. Historians look at most religious books as historical records (beside the spirituality element) and each book calls the land of Israel (that exists now) Israel. Every historical religious book confirmed the name of Israel and that Jews lived there.

Even Islam calls Jews ‘Bani Israel’ which means children of Israel. The issue is that Muslims don’t believe Jews should have access to the land anymore because they disobeyed Allah.

This is primarily a religious war, they believe it religiously wrong for Jews to still have the land. THAT BEING SAID - I personally just want them to all get along and exist in the land peacefully.

As a Jewish person and fervent opposor of Netanyahu, as well as rather ambivalent to say the least about zionism, I still do oppose the idea that 'Jews are just European colonialists oppressing brown people' and think it's a dangerous direction to take. Some on the left are using this as a quick win to get people to totally delegitimise Israel's existence.

Whatever the answer to the Israel issue is, it's not 'chuck all the Jews out of the area, they can go back to Poland or wherever, LOL!' I think Israel needs to change. A lot. And the Palestinians should have a homeland. But to simplistically claim Jews have no connection to the land, or inaccurately that all Ashkenazim are converts is a nonsense.

For one thing 40% or or so of Israel's Jews are middle Eastern, many from countries where being Jews there is genuinely unsafe. Are they supposed to 'go back' to Iran and Iraq for example.

I agree. Every culture and country has a diaspora and every individual is generally made up of many nations (thanks to our ancestors). Telling someone of African descent they can’t live in Africa because their families down the line had lived in Europe is crazy.

In the West it is thought to be racist to tell people to "go back to your own country." I'm not sure why that doesn t apply to Jewish people especially if their own country is dangerous for them (most of the Middle East).

I agree with you. It's a huge over simplification.

It is certainly true that many Jews were migrants or refugees to Palestine in the period leading up to 1948, but not that they're all European. Many Arab and North African Jews too.

I also agree that the only point of it is to imply "and they should go back", which obviously there's like 3-4 generations of Jewish people born in Israel/ historical Palestine since the Nakba, so it's not a realistic or just solution.

I think all OP's niece's views are silly and fall down with even the slightest look at the facts, but also not atypical of young, very bright, very left wing university students.

She is what we on the left call a tankie. She probably both-sides Urkaine and Russia (or even supports Russia) and thinks the US is the biggest force for evil in the world. She might even excuse Stalin, one of the biggest monsters in human history.

She will no doubt believe that Israel is an illegitimate settler colonialist state, ignoring the vast displacement of Jewish people from the rest of the middle east.

"The Islamic revolution in Iran was a backlash against American imperialism." This is true. Iran was a fledgling but slightly dodgy democracy, but when they nationalised British oil interests, the US and British enacted a coup and reestablished the Shah as the ruler. But they are very much worse off now. The rest of what she says on this subject is nonsense.

Tankies are irritating, but most of them temper their views.

Oxford? Bloody hell. I find that quite disturbing. Yes, extreme and misguided views. Worrying.

As it's your niece you can't really challenge too hard else you risk alienating her. Sometimes it is best with some people to just keep off political subjects else you risk falling out which you don't want with a relative.
Wisdom comes with age, as she gets older and looks elsewhere for her news (rather than her uni peers and TikTok etc) hopefully she'll gain a more balanced view of the world.
My sister left uni a full on Marxist, praising the USSR as it was at the time, ended up a normal contributing member of society paying £50k of tax a year into the system, so all is not lost for your niece.
It beats me why all these Palestinian protesters, uni student protest camps, Hamas and Hezbollah supporters etc can't see that they are merely Nazi puppets of the Iranian state. Iran destabilises the whole region in a massive way, albeit Israel doesn't help itself with illegal settlers etc. But between China and Iran your daughter along with millions of others has been truly indoctrinated to cause division and anti semitic hate.

I get that people are angry about Colonialism. I get why, on the surface of it, people would think Israel is an open-and-shut case of Colonialism that is as bad as any other. But, as I said, that is on the surface of it.

I think Israel kind of had to happen when it did, there were millions of displaced Jews, many of whom could not or would not return to where their neighbours had waved them off to their deaths. Britain never really had the right to just give away Palestine to them, but I feel as though that is hardly the fault of Jews living in Israel now.

I don't think Israel has to remain in the form it was set up in, that there should be a place for Jews in the region, but there are no easy answers and I sure as hell don't know them.

Guess there's a fine line between far left and far right 😂
Oxford you say!

I guess it does sound a bit extreme.

Is it part of secondary (and further/higher) education to have sessions on propaganda, radicalisation and critical thinking? Of all the things the government is insisting schools teach this should be top of the agenda.

Trouble is if you open that can of worms we might also start questioning our own corrupt structures - Monarchy, the House of Lords, how 70% of British land is owned by 1% of the population and so on.

I don't know about the other stuff but my experience (via DCs) is that university campuses in the UK are extremely antisemitic at present. What may have started as valid criticisms of the Israeli government and a critique of the 1948 mandate that created the state of Israel has morphed over the last year into a lionisation af all things Palestinian and an unmitigated hatred of Israel and Israelis. There may be some kind of theoretical separation in their heads between that and antisemitism but the result on the ground is indistinguishable. The Israeli flag is hated and so are visible markers of Judaism eg the star of David or the yarmulke.

I have been shocked by some of the antisemitic crap that has come out of my DCs mouths in recent months, and I am personally quite critical of the state of Israel, though definitely not antisemitic. I have also been surprised by how naively supportive they are of just taking all the land away from the Jews and giving it back to the Palestinians, as if anyone serious thinks it is or ever could be that simple. These are smart, educated, left-wing kids, who have been much better informed in recent years about global politics than me, and I'm no slouch. I can only conclude that the antisemitic propaganda doing the rounds on campuses and on the sort of social media students tend to use is just so all-pervasive as to be irresistible eventually. I challenge everything they come out with, but it's led to some very unpleasant conversations. Whatever techniques are being used, they are similar to cultic brainwashing. (I think this about trans ideology too fwiw.)

One of my DCs (very annoyingly, but he is at that age) insists on live "fact checking" everything I say in any kind of discussion, by googling quickly on his phone to see if he can catch me out in any kind of error or imprecision. I did the same recently to give him a taste of his own medicine, only to find that his "facts" are often from extremely contested sources and tend to have been curated by others to support a particular view rather than giving a rounded impression. I confronted him with this, but the response (in the moment, at least) was to be defensive and dismissive, and to position me as "part of the problem". Internet disinformation and the battle lines it has drawn between generations and communities is the great scourge of our age.

No I agree- those are weird antisemitic conspiracy theories. Sadly all too common these days

On a global scale of inert gas to TNT I think the UK is fairly low on the scale.