Being forcefully pro-Palestine is the most efficient way to weed all the worst people out of your life.
It takes care of them all. Zionists. Islamophobes. Apathetic narcissists. Unthinking herd-minded right wing ideologues. Abuser-enabling “both sides” moral cowards. Emotionally stunted man-babies who turn every challenging conversation into an “allow me to play devil’s advocate” mental exercise to avoid feeling normal human feelings. Leaned-back, too-cool-for-the-current-thing victims of western meta-irony brain rot. It’s like spraying yourself with asshole repellant.
Supporting Palestine doesn’t automatically make you a good person; opposing genocide and apartheid is just the basic bare-minimum position we’re all morally obligated to take. But supporting Israel against the Palestinians absolutely does automatically make you a bad person.
Palestine is an interesting issue in that someone’s position on it doesn’t merely tell you about their politics, it tells you who they are as a person. If they can listen to you talk about all the horrific things Israel has done in Gaza and still have an objection to your position on the matter, then they’re not the sort of person you want in your life. If they can look at all those videos of shrapnel-shredded children and the satellite images showing entire neighborhoods pulverized to powder and then still think you’re the problem for opposing those things, then they’re showing you that there is something profoundly wrong with them as human beings.
I haven’t lost a single relationship I care about in these last three years. I’ve alienated a few obnoxious old acquaintances whom I’ve never liked, but all the people I actually value and want to keep in my life are fully on my side when it comes to hating Israel and supporting the Palestinians. Turns out I had done a pretty good job of surrounding myself with decent human beings in the years prior to the Gaza holocaust, but if I hadn’t I would have driven away the genocide supporters without a moment’s hesitation, and I would have been glad that circumstances forced them to expose their true nature to me.
You don’t even need to be that dramatic about it, though. Simply holding your position and refusing to be bullied out of it is generally all it takes to get such individuals to step away from you. If they know you think their whole worldview is wrong and that their values system is depraved, and they know they can’t talk you out of that perspective, then they’re probably not going to want to hang out with you.
In a world that has gone mad, it’s important to find little signposts of clarity to help you morally orient yourself so you don’t get swept up in the insanity with the herd. Palestine is one such signpost, because it’s such a blatantly obvious moral position to hold on to. But in a world that has gone mad, insisting on sanity will often turn the insane against you.
Organization are there to recruit and “change the minds” - you shouting at your uncle on thanksgiving is not productive, he won’t change his mind and stop being racist.
Thinking if you go enough ahm akshually 🤓👆 then suddenly there will be 300 new DSA/whatever members is liberalism. Basically the “save the planet”, by using paper straws but ignoring Taylor Swift’s using her private jet to get her groceries and therefore pumping out as much CO2 in one flight as a dozen African countries in a decade, but under a different name.
That’s an uncharitable strawman, to put it nicely. Nobody said changing others’ minds is easy/effortless.
Organizations can be more effective at changing minds for a variety of reasons (like educational materials, consistent ideological line, trained techniques, material help that has a positive influence, etc.) but you don’t need to wait around for an org to start learning how to persuade people. If the racist uncle is a lost cause, but you see him at thanksgiving anyway, then why not keep trying different approaches each year and see if any do better? Is the uncle gonna pull a gun on you or is he just an asshole who likes to mouth off? Discerning the difference is important for knowing whether being too overt with your views is actually dangerous, or if you’re simply dealing with western chauvinist brain (which can be unlearned).