I've generally stayed out of this particular discussion, but I want to say a couple things here.
First off, with regards to this particular news story: I looked into news articles and despite the many blue check marks elevating horrific stories to the top of the comments section, it seems that they're not accurate.
"On 25 March 1986, Israeli forces arrested Walid Daqqah, then 24, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. In March 1987, an Israeli military court sentenced him to life imprisonment after convicting him of commanding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-affiliated group that had abducted and killed Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984. Daqqah was not convicted of carrying out the murder himself, but of commanding the group, an accusation he always rejected, and his conviction was based on British emergency regulations dating back to 1945, which require a much lower standard of proof for conviction than Israeli criminal law."
So, he definitively was not convicted of murder (not even considering his denial of the charges against him, because admittedly, that is not concrete evidence and it's entirely possible what he IS being held for is accurate). Yet, all of these blue check marks of Twitter (which are amplified because Elon believes more money equals more free speech) seem to be repeating the same story about horrific torture committed SPECIFICALLY by Walid. So why is that? I mean, if you don't go out of your way to read the actual backstory on the case, you're going to see all of those posts saying the same thing and believe they're true, because if everyone is repeating it, it must be a fact.
For readers like you, Nanis, the effect of this is twofold. First, repeating the same mistruth about why Walid was imprisoned paints him as a monster, and whether intentional or not, it carries with it a broad spanning implication. The message it sends is that "This one Palestinian tortured and killed an Israeli soldier, therefore it's like Palestinians want to torture and kill Israelis, full stop." So suddenly, the actions of one individual (which again, I want to stress, are not being reported accurately by blue check marks on Twitter) smear the collective. But second, and we saw this with your reaction...it creates a mindset that this person is a monster and therefore anyone defending him must either be a monster themselves, or so stupid that they're not worth listening to. It forces you to retreat back into yourself as though you're personally under attack, because these monsters and idiots keep speaking out against your country and they're evil and wrong, and it prevents you from considering anything they have to say.
Now, I understand that you are in a very tough position. I understand that Israel is a very unique country in that it was created as a haven for those who had unspeakable acts of evil committed against them in World War II, and there isn't another strictly-Jewish nation on Earth, compared to countless Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. nations. And additionally, I understand that Israel's conscription laws mean that you had to enlist and serve in the IDF as part of your citizenship, so when you see people criticizing the actions of the IDF, that feels like a personal attack since that's part of who you are; that's part of what being an Israeli citizen is.
I feel like a lot of progressives (and I want to make this very clear to the progressives who can't seem to understand why we haven't unilaterally abandoned Israel as an ally: a lot of Americans still support Israel hardcore for a variety of reasons) see the conflict going on and feel like it's a chance to make a difference in a way that they never could with regards to American acts of international aggression. It's a lot easier to look abroad and criticize another country's actions than to get your own country to shape up...hence twenty years in Afghanistan.
It does feel like a lot of the outrage is just broadly painting Israel in a bad light, even though it's very clearly the fault of Netanyahu, who specifically propped up Hamas as Palestinian opposition so that he could appear as a strong man when he took a harsh stance against them. And recent weeks have certainly seemed to start tilting things a bit more harshly towards anti-semitism, as we've even seen islamaphobic right wing pundits getting in on the action (Candace Owens, Alex Jones). But at the same time, criticizing Israel's leadership (who ARE exacerbating the problem and have created the conditions for Hamas' rise in the first place) is not anti-Semitic. There are horrible atrocities being committed by the IDF at the behest of the the Israeli government, and the people outraged at that are feeling the same emotion you felt reading those comments about Wahid being a torturous terrorist.
Touch fuzzy. Get fuzzier.
Inviso