Granddaughter of Holocaust Survivor Says College Changed Her View of Israel: “I’ve Been Propagandized Much of My Life”

Katherine Wela Bogen has explained in a TikTok video how she “unlearned Zionism” after going away from her family to pursue a college education, as photographs and coursework helped her understand the history of Israel differently than what she was taught in her childhood.

She opened her video by wishing everyone a happy new year.

“Chag Sameach! Happy New Year!” Bogen said. “What am I doing for the next year? That’s such a great question.”

Then she provided information regarding her upbringing and family background.

“I am continuing to be a hot Jewish girl who supports Palestine, who was raised in a Zionist household by the son of a Holocaust survivor and my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor and still unlearned Zionism,” she stated.

Bogen elaborated further on how she needed to leave her home to get information on the region’s history.

“And I’m going to tell you how I had to go to college,” she said. “I had to leave my town and my Chabad and my family system to have access to textbooks that showed me pictures of things like a bustling Palestinian city in the year 1910.”

She further said that these pictures were contradicting the history of the region that she learned since childhood.

“Even though I was told that Israel was a land without a people for a people without a land, and Jews were so wonderful, we learned how to farm the Negev as though no Palestinians had existed there beforehand. Ha ha!” Bogen remarked.

After viewing the pictures, she realized how much her education had brainwashed her.

“I had to see the pictures to realize, oh, oh, I’ve been propagandized much of my life,” she said.

She further shared her coursework in college.

“And then I took coursework in political science and in the history department about Middle East politics and Arab-Israeli conflict and Palestinian indigeneity, which again countered everything I had learned from that point about the history of the state of Israel,” she explained.

These courses provided a broader perspective to her regarding colonialism in Africa and the Middle East.

“I, I had to understand the context of colonial efforts and the race for Africa and how that colonization project moved north into the Levant,” Bogen said.

Then she recalled how World War II ended, and Jewish refugees needed to be settled.

“And how at the end of World War II, there were 100,000 Jewish refugees to be resettled somewhere, and the U.S.” She further spoke about those countries, Britain, France, and others, which did not want those Jewish refugees.

“And so they got together and said, hey, we already have the Balfour Declaration. We’ve been trying to colonize this plot of land,” Bogen explained.

Then she said how antisemitism among those countries was the deciding factor in what happened next.

“What if we took those hundred thousand Jewish refugees that none of us want because we’re still antisemitic as f***, and we put them on this plot of land and we tell them, hey, it would be really smart if you also had conscripted military service,” she said.

Then she provided a conclusion regarding what Western military project happened and how indigenous people of that region were displaced.

“And then we had them engage in a Western military project where we r*** and pillage this land and displace all of the indigenous folks who already live here,” she said.

“I learned that in college,” she remarked.

@kwbogen

Unlearning is possible! Relearning is possible! So proud to be Jewish! So proud to support Palestine!

♬ original sound – kwbogen