"In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands"
Even before the Holocaust, there was plenty of support for that: the Inquisition, pogroms, the Ghetto, expulsion from various countries throughout the Middle Ages.
It resonates even more now: first the Holocaust, then a stream of wars against the new state of Israel, and then a campaign of PLO terrorism. The Holocaust leaves a lot of highly personal reminders: relatives with tattoos, Holocaust Torahs kept in synagogues because they were wiped out.
This is reinforced in schools and synagogues, but it begins in the family.
It's impossible to ignore, because it is a genuine problem. This is not just a fiction; the oppression is real. "Eradication" means just that: it was in living memory that a global power came very close to global genocide, and Hamas has genocide written into its charter.
That does not excuse the current horrors of the Israeli government. I was brought up with all of this, and am very predisposed to be understanding of the Israeli fears. But I cannot excuse this any more.
It is very recent that the West was favorable to Jewish people at all, on a country by country basis. With the most inroads occurring after some sects of Christianity latched on to the recreation of Israel as being part of their own prophecy.
So there is an understanding that even this is thin acceptance and symbiotic where both groups are pawns to the other without much care for understanding each other.
But there are people that question the government policies of Israel without questioning its right to be a government at all.
I can see why it’s ambiguous to distinguish, and the best defense is to invalidate opinion. Its just disingenuous when the stated opinions they are invalidating are the same opinions they and others hold within Israel and some Jewish communities: The military campaign is unpopular. The coalition government has no coherent way to meet its goals. Every choice the IDF makes isn’t “Hamas’ fault”.
> A lot of Jewish and Israeli people are taught [that non-jewish people worldwide are thinly hiding a goal of eradication] from a young age
this works? I'm not Jewish or Israeli, and would like to understand whether it's taught through religion or culture. And what "eradication" means in this context.