caitlin describes her experiences debating zionists;

If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably seen me engaging with Israel supporters to address their arguments, but please don’t take this as a suggestion that engaging with Israel supporters is a good idea generally. It isn’t.

I engage Zionists online in order to make sure their hasbara damages Israel more than it helps it by using their comments to show everyone that these people always lie about everything, and to familiarize myself with the hasbara talking points of the day so that I can attack them. I do this because I’m a visible figure who writes about this stuff every day for a living, and I’ve found a very energy-efficient strategy for doing so which doesn’t consume too much of my time and focus. For most people there’s no good reason to ever engage these freaks at all.

Israel supporters are never, ever engaging in good faith — at least not the ones you’re likely to encounter in online spaces. Their goal is never to communicate or to have a conversation, it’s to advance the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state. They will say whatever they need to say, and pretend to believe whatever they need to pretend to believe, in order to accomplish this. If you engage them you’re not having a normal conversation with a normal person, you’re having a conversation with a psychological operation aimed at manipulating public perception. You’re dumping your mental and emotional energy into a black hole, and they are happy to have you waste your energy in that way..............more.......