Best Friend Supports Terrorists

Question

I am not Jewish, but I am a supporter of the state of Israel and I have been there twice. My best friend has become an active supporter of the Palestinians. He recently attended a rally in DC for a ceasefire. He is brainwashed by the propaganda and doesn’t get it what is really going on. I can’t reason with him on this. I told him that Hammas murdered thousands of Israeli children and took hundreds of hostages. His response is that two wrongs don’t make a right. What can I tell him now?

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Answers

  1. The Just Ask! - AskTheRabbi.org Team

    How immeasurably sad it is that people who regard themselves as intellectually honest are prepared to be as intellectually dishonest as one can get when it comes to the State of Israel and the Jews. The photographic evidence is undeniable. The eye-witness accounts of the barbaric murders of men, women and children are impossible to ignore. The too-ample evidence of the beheadings and the mutilations and the burnings are impossible to ignore.

    Perhaps, speaking to someone who has a loved one currently being held hostage in Gaza might help them see the truth. Perhaps, coming to Israel to visit some of the one thousand four hundred families who buried a loved one – or, in many cases, loved ones – might change their minds. Perhaps, coming face-to-face with fresh graves of entire families who were wiped out in the barbarism might speak to their hearts. But, of course, I am being unrealistic and hopelessly optimistic. Because when it comes to Israel and the Jews, the truth has never bothered them in the past, and there is no reason to imagine that it will bother them this time either.

    With regards to your specific question, there is nothing I can tell you that is going to change his mind. Even if he were prepared to view the videos that are circulating and show the extent of Hamas’ barbarism, I don’t think it will help. However sad this may sound, I don’t really see a real option for you to convince your friend that he is being fed lies. Perhaps even sadder is that he is not even open to possibility that there might be a different narrative to the one that that he has swallowed.

    Best wishes from the AskTheRabbi.org Team