Anatomy of a mind-change
michael pollan mode…
NMJC: Theres been an ongoing conversation with nmjc hq about how people arrive at the opinions they have, and by extension, how do those opinions change? Of course, the backdrop of this conversation is the recent eruption of violence in Palestine and Israel.
If there is an earnest underpinning to nmjc it is that the alchemy of actually talking and connecting with people does something good and worth trying to articulate. This applies here. Much has been said about how divided everything is on this topic…how complex it is (great way to avoid the totally uncomplex reality of bakeries getting exploded by israeli rockets)...things like that. Here are some thoughts about how to change someone’s mind.
RS: It has been two weeks. Over 4,000 Palestinians have been killed. Israel has not allowed food, water, medicine, or fuel into Gaza. The United States is continuing to send weapons to Israel – a Director in the State Department resigned over it. I have found myself grasping at ways to share my culture as it is being wiped off the planet.
Yesterday, I was flipping through a Gazan cookbook and found a page about my family’s sweet shop:
Shortly after, I received a text from my uncle saying that the home of one Saqallah family had been bombed, and everyone inside had been killed. The patriarch, Saeed Khurshid Saqallah, was an Optometrist. There is a gruesome video showing community members pulling the family’s bodies out of the rubble.
I never knew that specific family personally, but the Sakallah family is not that big. Anyone born before 1983 is on the family tree below. Last night, my dad found the branch with the family we lost.
I hope that readers of our newsletter don’t need to be convinced that bombing civilians is not “self-defense.” But I suspect that you all know people who believe what Israel and the United States are doing is justified. My one ask is that you try to change their minds.
I recognize that it’s not fun or easy, and it may not happen overnight, but every conversation or experience adds up over time. I’m not asking you to get into fights over bad faith arguments on Instagram DMs. What I am asking is this – next time you’re hanging out with someone and they sigh and say something about “both sides” or “what about Hamas” – tell them you have a Palestinian friend whose parents are refugees. Tell them that Israel controls all the resources, even water, that go into Gaza. Tell them that you can criticize the state of Israel without criticizing Jewish people.
Positions of power and influence in the United States are disproportionately occupied by people who are pro-Israel. As a result, it’s likely that when you think of Israel, you feel positive feelings. You might think of it as a beautiful country with hot people, gay rights, high tech, and good food. And that is by design.
As a consequence of where I live and what I do, I end up hanging out with a lot more Jews than Arabs. I end up at more Shabbat dinners than Ramadan Iftars. I constantly get asked if I am Jewish, and feel the air leave the room when I say no, actually, I am Palestinian. In my communities, being Jewish is an advantage, a point of camaraderie, and being Palestinian is awkward.
Things are changing. More people support Palestine now, especially young Jews. But sometimes I still find myself listening to how much fun someone had on Birthright or what a great job candidate someone is because they worked in security for the Israel Defense Forces. I know you guys have been in conversations like this too, and I hope next time you’ll ask questions and speak up.
I only make this about me to give you, a reader of my newsletter, something to grasp onto. People with my blood and heritage are dying every few minutes in Palestine. I hope this inspires you to do something about it. You can donate here and send an automated email to your rep here. You can follow Gazans on the ground instead of relying on Western media. You can change minds.
HK:
I wanna add a bit about how MY mind was changed.
I grew up going to a private Jewish day school in San Francisco. We sang the Israeli national anthem every Monday. (that’s so insane). I’ve been to Israel 3 times. Once in middle school, once as part of the Maccabi games, and once on birthright. I have memories of being like 11 years old and talking to my classmates about “a two-state solution.” With all this in mind, growing up I had generally positive feelings about Isreal….to the degree that a 15-year-old can have coherent feelings about anything…
I wanna share a bit about how my mind changed, it’s a circuitous route, but maybe that’s exactly why it’s worth sharing. There are two moments that stick with me.
The first moment was a conversation I had my sophomore year of college. I got into a strange argument with a woman I was hooking up with about a campus debate raging at the time about whether Michigan should allow the movie American Sniper to be played on campus. The conversation shifted to Isreal-Palestine and I essentially treated her critique of the Israeli government as hysteria. I left that night vaguely pleased with my arguing skills and unwavering in my feelings about Israel.
The second moment is one many people experienced, it was the Tuesday Trump was elected. That morning I was walking to class listening to an episode of the Ringer political podcast “Keepin’ it 1600”. Shortly after the election the Keeping it 1600 folks would rebrand as Pod Save America. The sentiment coming out of that Tuesday morning election podcast was “Hil Dog has this one locked up”
The next day I found myself wandering around the diag at Michigan thinking about how these ex-Obama guys could have been so wrong. I felt like an idiot.
I started to bounce around different media apparatuses after that and found a whole world of ideas and communities of people very critical of the mainstream democratic party.
I won’t bore you with my Chapo-fueled leftist political turn, but the point was that after these ideas seeped into my brain but for whatever reason, perhaps the shock of the Trump presidency, I found it very easy to move on from the mainstream dogma of the democratic party.I was easily able to see all the money and power behind democratic politicians who postured as being “for the people.” For Israel, though, my support remained uninterrogated.
This is where that first moment came back to me. I thought back to that argument often. Honestly, I think it’s just not that often that you end up arguing with someone you’ve kissed three times. Over time, in some kind of alchemical way, it started to feel obvious to me that the same gymnastics I used to do with support for mainstream democratic values, I was doing with my support of Israel. And so my position flipped. It happened that sweaty night at a co-op my sophomore year. It just took 3 years to happen. I think this kind of thing is common, and why we should all heed Randa’s message and continue to try to change people's minds.
Beautifully put, Harry. 👏🏼 👏🏼 👏🏼