Yasmine Mohammed ياسمين محمد  🦋

A lot of ppl have asked me about my personal feelings towards #Israel, so here goes: I grew up in a fundamentalist Islamic home where I was taught to hate Jews to an irrational degree. The hate was divinely ordained.

It was my duty as a Muslim and as the daughter of a Palestinian to hate them, though I never had any personal reason to. Every Jewish person I met was lovely to me (I wore hijab at the time) and some would refer to me as their cousin.

But I was taught that they were lying and pretending and that secretly they were poisoning us all etc. When I became an atheist, the hate for all Jewish ppl was no longer divinely ordained, but I was still sure Israel deserved my hate.

I continued in my brainwashed stupor until I saw a puppet on Palestinian television teaching kids about killing Jews. I saw shops called Hitler that had mannequins w knives duct taped to their hands.

I saw how the Palestinian ppl lived in squalor as their politicians lived in extravagant luxury. In short, I saw that the black and white bad guy oppressing the good guy narrative was absolute garbage.

It should come as no surprise that there are good and bad ppl on both sides of this issue. Not all Israelis are the bad guy and not all Palestinians are the good guy. But you must have known that already. You’ve heard of Hamas.