Natalie,

I thank you for writing this. As a Palestinian, I have long wrestled with the need to confront the Jewish supremacy of the Zionist state, on the one hand, and the risks of running afoul of anti-Semitic tropes I had to study in order to understand. I hope the day would come soon when racism is called out everywhere, including anti-Palestinian racism, even if it is a Jewish Zionist ideology that is driving it. The following passage in your excellent exposition of the problem resonated with me greatly.

"I learned that the Palestinian issue, unlike say the issue of Tibet, was somehow deemed controversial and was a minefield, where at any moment you could be accused, as an antiracist, of being a racist. I had to learn fast that there were all these tropes that existed that I had not been aware of previously, frankly, because I was never taught about them. Prior to becoming involved in the movement, there were 2 things I knew about the Jewish community: that the Nazis attempted to annihilate them during the Holocaust, along with the Roma and that many did not celebrate Christmas. In terms of tropes, I only knew of the crude jokes & stereotypes around having big noses and being tight, although being from Jersey the latter was also applied to islanders and actually the Scottish! However, I also came to realise that even if you had come to be educated about tropes and did what you could to ensure you did not accidentally fall foul of any of these, this was not enough to safeguard you from accusations of antisemitism."