I respect Neil Gaiman a lot. Heck I can say he's the living writer I most respect, and that aside from he fact that his books and stories are among my favorite. He's got kindness and a care about him, from the way he treats fandom to the way he campaigns for refugees. He's a pretty decent guy.
But oh boy, I do notice that when the Israel-Palestine conflict is back in full swing (in the news. I'm aware it's always been an ongoing thing) he's been eerily quiet. Pointedly avoiding mentioning it, even as it's the topic everyone is talking about, even though he's the kind of guy who's known to lend a hand to humanitarian crises.
And then he answered that question on his Tumblr (I also attached the tweet mentioned in the question). And it results in people calling him, to quote, "genocide supporter". Which is probably a hyperbole, but the implication is calling him a zionist i.e. supports the existence of the state of Israel and their attempt to rout the Palestinians out of their land.
Is that what's going on here? Is he a zionist? Idk, I might be biased because I've heard Neil spoke, to great length, about supporting the oppressed, but neither of his statement screams genocidal to me. It just tells me he wants all the fighting to end and why is it so hard for there to be two separate not-at-war states anyway? Saying that "Israel has the right to exist" doesn't necessarily imply he wants the state of Israel with its colonialist ideology to remain. There are people born and raised in Israel, and a good chunk of them are against the apartheid that Israel the state is doing. He probably doesn't want those people chased out of where they were born, the same way he probably doesn't want the Palestinians people to be chased out.
His statement from 2015 is a bit nastier, I admit. "Palestine needs to be a country, or Palestinians need full Israeli citizenship." Which implies he'd much rather have the state of Israel persisting and the Palestinians absorbed than the two-state solution. But, one, this is eight wholeass years ago. He likely doesn't remember the exact things he said, just a hazy idea of what his stance was years back ("Israel has the right to exist and Palestine should be recognized as a state"). Or he might be deliberately leaving out the part of his tweet that makes us all heated, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Thing is, to someone who's not well-informed, his take might sound reasonable. Like, anything to end the violence, right? But to someone who is, they can sound pretty bad. He wants Israel to exist? Israel the colonizer? Israel the apartheid state? Israel who took Palestinian land by force? He wants Palestinians to become Israel citizens? Israel, who famously treat Palestinians like dirt? Who randomly imprison them (if they didn't shoot them first)? Who will never ever ever let them have any sort of governmental power whatsoever?
Equipped by good faith and the benefits of the doubts, I'm going to assume he's just not well-informed. He's ignorant. A fucking dumbass, if you will. A well-off person with a milquetoast safe centrist opinion, who after eight years still hadn't learned more to budge from his position, to take a stand for something.
Which is, honestly, something I'm very disappointed in him for. I thought he'd be better than this, but ah well, never put your heroes on a pedestal, eh?
But also this doesn't really make him a bad guy, at least to me. Just a dumbass. I still respect the guy and values his opinions, just not on this. And honestly, him not engaging with the topic might be a blessing for us all. He might actually realise he's not the best at understanding the situation, so instead of voicing an opinion based on flimsy premises, he shut the fuck up. I sure wish more famous people are like that.
I mean, entirely possible he's actually a closet zionist and he's just careful to not show his ass, but I'm giving him the benefits of the doubt.
