Israel/Palestine

Some are(and are to be denounced for it)some aren't. It serves no purpose to collectively demonize all of them.

The PSC did kick out Atzmon, for example. A lot of other antizionists dislike and denounce the guy(it's not as if you are the only one who ever said anything about him) and a lot of them are committed universalist anti-racists and anti-bigots who oppose nationalism and just feel that the Zionist project became an irreparable injustice to the Palestinian people. You can't assume they all speak with one voice and in any case antizionists aren't going to be deciding the issue.

The best way to combat antizionism is to address the injustices Israel is doing to Palestinians and to work to end as many of those wrongs as possible. The first step is to recognize that, as a support of Israel's existence you can't just take the Israeli government's word for it that everything they do to Palestinians is unquestionably justified by "security". Israeli politicians are not that different than politicians anywhere else...they don't like giving up power and they don't like being any more accountable than they have to be...you need to take what they say with a huge grain of salt.

You also need to acknowledge that, while some Palestinians are antisemites, antisemitism isn't the BASIS for the Palestinian resistance to the Occupation. Any people who are under a military occupation are going to resist that occupation if resistance is at all possible...there's never been a case where a people under occupation that retained the capacity to resist simply chose not to as a gesture of good faith. In the case of the postwar Allied occupations of Germany and Japan that some like to invoke, those were two nations that had been utterly defeated in a war, and in a war in which there side's position had no moral legitimacy and was based on no legitimate grievances. The Palestinians haven't been militarily defeated, military victory is impossible for either side in the conflict, and they DO have legitimate grievances about how they've been treated by the Israeli occupiers since 1967(and not trivial grievances either). It's absurd to believe that those grievances don't matter and the only issue involved is religious or ethnic prejudice against their occupiers. As a defender of Israel, it's crucial that you acknowledge that the Palestinian position is based on reality, and that, whatever you can say about their tactics, they do have a right to their anger. Only when you do that can you work for the kind of changes needed to break the deadlock and actually make peace.

This will sound like a paradox to you, shira, but the best way to defend Israel is to acknowledge the common humanity of ordinary Palestinians and accept that their resistance does have validity to it. Pretending that their actions are based on nothing but irrational prejudice is the way to avoid EVER ending the violence.