I’m sad to say that, like most Jews who were once enrolled in the “Zionist Indoctrination Program” (ZIP), I have no recollection of the sessions.  

Perhaps the most insidious aspect of ZIP is that it evidently includes a memory erasing procedure which renders the subject unable to recall even a broad outline of what the experience was like.  

I mention this in the context of an event last night, sponsored by the Palestine Society of the University of London’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), called “Palestine: Resistance and Occupation”, which included Joseph Dana, an anti-Israel blogger for +972 Magazine.

Dana characterizes himself as an American Israeli Jew who was brought up in America in a Zionist Indoctrination Programme but who was able to free himself.

Per Richard Millet:

After completing a degree in Israel, also in Jewish history, [Dana] found that the “predominant nationalist rhetoric in Israel was at odds with the secular Judaism” he was trying to explore, specifically the idea of “life on the periphery, marginality and dispossesion”.

Instead, he said, he opened up to the Palestinian narrative and started to visit the West Bank and “observed the protests around the wall and settler violence”. To deal with the “emotional discharge” he started his blog.

He now lives and works in Ramallah reporting and tweeting full-time on the protests.

Of course there is no “predominant nationalist rhetoric” in Ramallah where they name streets after suicide bombers, where children are taught in school to hate Israel and where two Israeli soldiers were lynched, but Dana obviously feels more comfortable there than in Israel for some mystifying reason.

In the Q&A Dana was asked whether Zionism is “the work of the devil”

So, Dana, the secular Jew, evidently nonplussed by such a pathological query predicated on the most intolerant, and religiously extreme, understanding of the world, answered as follows:

Dana, unlike me and countless other wretched souls, was able to free himself from Zionist Indoctrination Program, and develop his Jewish identity in an evidently philosemitic Palestinian culture which, to the untrained (ZIP graduate) eye, only seems pathologically antisemitic. 

Palestinian "Judeophiles" lynch Israeli Jews

When asked by Richard Millett about the Hamas charter which calls for the killing of Jews, and cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as “proof” that Jews indeed are trying to take over the world, Dana responded:

“Almost everything we can accuse Hamas of we can find the equal and sometimes worse situation inside of Israel.”

So, in summary, in the world according to +972′s Joseph Dana, a true free-thinker and liberal multiculturalist, unburden by the malevolent Zionist grip:

Most Jews are victims of a stealth community re-education program to indoctrinate them with Zionist values.

Palestinian culture is uniquely hospitable to those seeking to develop their Jewish identity.

Hamas Islamist ideology is morally equivalent, or superior, to Jewish nationalism. 

In fairness, though, the sober, thoughtful Dana is not yet prepared to characterize Zionism as “the work of the devil”.

UPDATE on Nov. 20: Dana questioned the veracity of Millett’s account of his answer about Hamas, during the Q&A at the SOAS event, (during a Twitter exchange today) so, here is a link to the audio proving the accuracy of Millett’s post.)

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