“Israel has lost Gen Z. There’s no way Israel can rebrand after a genocide like this. No way they can go back to being ‘the startup nation.’”
—Jehad Abusalim, co-editor of “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire” and Executive Director of the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA told Drop Site. He said:
“All the attempts in the past to paint Israel as what it is not… you know, a secular tech hub that’s LGBTQ-friendly on the Mediterranean… marketing Tel Aviv as this culinary capital of the Middle East… sending food YouTubers to do fun programs eating falafel on the streets of Tel Aviv—this doesn’t work anymore.
And the Israelis realize that. The most recent attempt at normalizing Israel with certain Gulf states didn’t really work in terms of making Israel accepted in the region.
So now, the only way Israel can survive and assert itself—and preserve its survival as the settler-colonial, genocidal entity that it is—is through the continuation of the state of war. Against Palestinians. Against neighboring countries. On a regional scale, as we saw with the war on Iran.
It’s hard to see how this will unfold in the next 10 years. But in terms of Israel’s position in the West—it has suffered greatly. In public opinion. In how it’s viewed as a state.
This war is being brought to places like the United States, where people are getting arrested, kidnapped—suspended from colleges, harassed at airports. There’s this Israelization of everything, to preserve the entity in its current shape and form.
But all of this comes at a heavy price. And for now, the political class in the United States seems willing to pay that price.
We’re seeing interesting changes not only on the left, but also on the right—certain voices emerging that are calling for rethinking this so-called special relationship between the U.S. and Israel.
Israel has lost Gen Z. There’s no way Israel can rebrand after a genocide like this. No way they can go back to being “the startup nation.”
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