Whereas most of my friends are conservative, the other day I was seated next to a progressive acquaintance at a group breakfast. Now this gentleman, let’s arbitrarily call him, Donald, is a nice enough retired older guy, who is politically far to the left. I have sat next to him before and we get along fine as long as we do not discuss politics. When I asked him what he did on most days to fill his time, he shrugged and said that he watched a lot of television. It was only later that I discovered that he and his wife watch a lot of MSNBC, and here I mean that they watch MSNBC throughout the entire day.
At some point the conversation at the table shifted to the conflict in Gaza. Notably I did not initiate this conversation, but Donald immediately chimed in. What I found very interesting was that I was more pro-Israel when it came to the Israel-Hamas conflict, than Donald, despite the fact the he is Jewish! When I mentioned that I was pro-Netanyahu, he was shocked as he was over-the-top anti-Netanyahu. He thought that the bombing should stop as “all the continued bombing was going to do was to make the children of Gaza anti-Jewish for the rest of their lives.” When I pointed out that these young children had already been indoctrinated to hate all Jews, he just quickly skipped to the next topic, which was that Netanyahu was only in power because of hardline right wingers in Israel.
At one point he seemed a bit conflicted because there was continued rockets being fired from Gaza and aimed at Beersheba, where he had friends or relatives.
I found it especially interesting that he never mentioned the twelve-hundred or so Israelis that were ambushed and killed back on October 7th. When I alluded to this, he quickly moved on. Likewise when I mentioned the hostages that Hamas refused to turnover, it was like he never heard me.
On my drive home I thought, “A Jewish guy not supporting Israel. Did MSNBC cause this oxymoron?”
5/16/24