On Seth Rogen:

I think for many jewish people who have been fighting our communities to move the dial on Palestinian liberation, hearing someone who very recently was a Loud Zionist and has a lot of public clout question the entire narrative of Israel is very significant. /1

I certainly found he said some insensitive, questionable things during that interview. I understand some people may have been turned off by his comments about religion, but I generally think in a pluralistic society, people are allowed to have different views on religion and /2

this is not particularly problematic to me, esp. as he was raised in a religious community and isn’t simply speaking as some unaffiliated outsider.

I also found his comments about Israel being in a “volatile region” to be less-than-impressive, harkening to Hasbara tropes /3

about IDF violence being justified and necessary because Israel is in a “tough neighborhood” (see: Elizabeth Warren’s comments on Israel in the NYT interview for the same language). But I also recognize that he is in a process of *unlearning* - one which I and many other Jews /4

who are now not Zionist but were raised to be had to go through, albeit less publicly and often with much turmoil and upheaval, personally, emotionally, and often familialy or communally.

One of the extremely unfair realities of supporting Palestine is that we are held up to /5

more intense scrutiny than people who unconditionally support Israel. Every word is dissected under a microscope (see: Steven Salaita), every criticism at risk of being tarred as “antisemitic” (see: Ilhan Omar). The conversation is so jammed and unwelcoming to nuance that/6

even staunch Zionists who criticize Netanyahu (see: Natalie Portman) are castigated across pro-Israel discourse channels as “haters.”

That’s what we’re up against when we challenge the status quo on Israel, no matter how mild.

So that Rogen feels comfortable speaking in such/7

a cavalier manner about Israel - yes, he failed to speak on Palestine but he was speaking about his experience in the Jewish community; yes he said some less-than-thoughtful things - is, to me, not the end of the world but I hope is the beginning of his journey.
/8

That said, this isn’t promising https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1288373200204771329?s=21