I think my intense reaction to anti-Zionism has multiple sources.

My positive tribal loyalty only accounts for some of it.

Sadly, much more of it is a negative reaction to other tribes. More specifically, it is a bad reaction to the collective mind of these tribes — as it manifests in the personalities of members of these tribes. It is not even in the content of their beliefs, as expressed in opinions or ideological stances. The collective mind is most influential in in how thinking is thought, not what thoughts are produced or what facts are believed. The What is symptomatic of the How.

I don’t like any of the biggest, strongest tribes at large today who concern themselves with Israel, for or against.

And of course, Israel is always an object of intense concern for precisely the worst tribes. The tribes who claim to be the true heirs of the Jewish covenant are always a powder keg, even when they seem momentarily friendly. Their benevolence can always reverse in an instant, and with little warning.

And those latterday puritans who mistake themselves for secular, who imagine themselves above religious disputation, will have no god apart from their own ideoidol. To them this ideoidol is just self-evident, commonsense truth and morality, and not even an ideology at all. It is to be obeyed, not questioned.

There are other things going on, too. But watching so many people around me get picked up by these mental tornados and spun into generic strangers has been unpleasant and upsetting.

And those whose feet are still on the ground have done so through the magic of compete, alienated indifference.

One other thing I am anxious about. The more right-wingers make Israel their own cause, the more the enemies of the right will make hating Israel their cause. Zionism and anti-Zionism will become another signifier of tribal allegiance, like wearing an N95 mask, getting a vaccine, adopting new pronouns.We should not cultivate prejudices for and against different categories of person, but when we proudly adorn these prejudices as tribal emblems, no good can possibly come of it.