Theme
“This website is Zionist propaganda.”
The site lives on a domain called listentojews.org, defends Israel's right to exist, traces the genocide list instead of accepting it, and says 'Pallywood' is sometimes real. Whatever it claims about balance, it's hasbara with extra steps.
Why people find it convincing
- The domain is listentojews.org, and the site is part of that project.
- It argues against the claim that Israel has no right to exist (see 'Israel is evil and illegitimate — it has no right to exist.'), and many of its toolkit cards were prompted by arguments common in the pro-Palestinian movement.
- The documented corrections record it highlights, in the BBC's and the New York Times' coverage, runs mostly one way.
- It traces the list of voices behind 'genocide' rather than accepting it (see 'The citation map of the genocide claim').
What's true
The site isn't neutral. It takes a side.
It takes the side of a solution: any solution that lets both peoples live. It starts from two premises and says so: the Jewish people and the Palestinian people each have a legitimate claim to live in safety and self-determination in this land. If 'Zionist' means accepting the first premise, the site is Zionist. It is just as firmly committed to the second, and it isn't pro any political camp, government or movement.
What's left out
What a propaganda site wouldn't do.
It concedes, in full and in its own voice, what the pro-Israel side often avoids: the Nakba and Deir Yassin, settler violence, the eliminationist statements of Israeli officials, the famine conditions, the killings near aid sites, the pre-war genocide charge's real grievances. It states every argument the way its strongest advocates would, and its toolkit cards catch the pro-Israel versions of each trap as well as the pro-Palestinian ones. It publishes its own verification numbers, generated from its database, including how few sources have been checked against the original so far; it describes the bias of the AI model that helps write it and which way that bias runs; and it corrects itself in public. You can check any of this: pick a page and look for what it leaves out. If you find something, tell us.
The picture
Who makes this site, and where I stand.
Sidenote is part of the listentojews.org project. It is made by one person, with the help of an AI model whose biases are described on the method page. I'm not Jewish or Israeli myself, but I work together with people who are. I became a Zionist because it was the only community that let me be pro-Palestinian without hatred; every pro-Palestinian space I tried asked me first to hate Israel, a purity test (see 'The purity loop'). I don't do hatred. I call myself a Zionist partly to help defuse the argument, at the core of antizionism, that Zionism is one violent movement. So this site starts from what I found missing there: both peoples have a legitimate claim to live in safety in this land, and every argument, from either side, deserves its strongest form and an honest check.
Pushed, not persuaded.
My story isn't unusual, and it runs both ways. Many people end up on a side not because an argument convinced them but because the other side's fanatics pushed them away, or because of what they were shown. Some are pushed toward Israel by antisemitism and purity tests; others are pushed against Israel by the footage from Gaza. Either way the result is a side chosen by reaction. This site tries to offer the other route: the arguments, in full, so that whatever you end up thinking, you chose it.
Where it leads if pressed
Where it leads: judge the pages, not the domain.
'It's propaganda because of who made it' is the genetic fallacy (see 'Judging by origin'), the same move as 'it's false because Al Jazeera reported it' or 'because MEMRI translated it'. The mirror accusation, that the site is 'pro-Hamas' or antisemitic because it grants Palestinian points, is heard from the other side. Being accused from both directions is only weak evidence of fairness. The real test is the content: whether the concessions are real, whether the strongest arguments are really the strongest, and whether the site corrects what it gets wrong.
Traps here:◆ Judging by origin