I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately about what conditions are actually like for people in the West Bank and Hebron. It seems like in almost every one, there's the inevitable encounter with the extremist settler type who lectures the film crew about how Palestinians aren't a real 'people', how Jews are the rightful inhabitants blah blah blah.

At the end of the diatribe, the crews ask, "and where are you from?" and almost every time it's something like, "I arrived 2 weeks ago from Brooklyn." I think 30%-60% of these settlers are US citizens who just flew to Israel last week, and then claim they own the place. As this article's title says, it would actually be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic.

It seems that some of the most extreme and worst actors of these settlers are American, including Baruch Goldstein - the terrorist who opened fire in the mosque in Hebron in 1994. I think when classic American arrogance, entitlement, and exceptionalism is fused with Zionist ideology and religious nationalism, it creates a shockingly vitriolic flavor of fanatical extremism which borders on mental illness. These people are deranged.

Of course, the US backs and funds this to the hilt which is appalling. Not only directly through US aid to Israel, but also private donors who funnel money to these illegal settlements through a bunch of murky money laundering networks masquerading as tax-free 'charities'.

The US connection to these illegal settlements is blatant. I think one of them is literally called, "Trump Heights" or something stupid like that.

I can't begin to imagine how frustrating this must be for Palestinians who have to deal with these colossally obnoxious and violent interlopers claiming they have more connection to the land despite being born and raised in New York City all their lives. It's idiotic.

And this is just the illegal settlers in the West Bank. I'm sure the same mentality exists among many Israelis who immigrated from the US or Europe.

It's funny how upset and triggered they get when you point out their real Polish or Ukrainian names, or the fact that the IDF soldier harassing a Palestinian farmer and waving a gun in his face is just some indoctrinated 18yo kid recruited from Chicago who thinks playing IDF soldier would be a fun 'life experience'. He can't play out this fantasy of menacing others who aren't his religion on the streets of his actual home town in the USA without suffering serious repercussions; but in the West Bank, it's perfectly normalized.

But according to the pro-Zionist propaganda mill, none of this farce has anything to do with 'settler-colonialism', colonization, apartheid, or US/Western Imperialism whatsoever. It's just people 'returning' from New York and North Carolina 'de-colonizing' their 'ancestral homeland' based on strained claims from thousands of years ago. Nothing delusional about that at all...