#“pro-Palestine” movement

[unsolicited-opinions]

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib writes on Twitter about Secretary Blinken's NYT interview:

The "pro-Palestine" movement's role in prolonging the war on Gaza: Though many are angry with Secretary Blinken’s responses during his interview with the New York Times about Gaza, some of the points he shared are absolutely salient and accurate. I have said this time and again and received immense backlash for doing so: Hamas’s war strategy, statements, behavior, and goals regularly shift and oscillate based on international public opinion, the actions of the “pro-Palestine” solidarity movement, and political statements by world governments, leaders, and institutions against Israel’s war. To be clear, I’m not in any capacity saying I endorse the horrendous war that Israel’s been waging on Gaza, killing a large number of civilians (including my family) and failing to achieve strategic and lasting results 15 months later. However, Hamas refused to engage in pragmatic negotiations to end the war it started, pulled back several times from closing a ceasefire/hostage deal, and thought that mass civilian casualties would delegitimize Israel and force it to end the war. Many are uncomfortable with Secretary Blinken’s remarks because he shed light on the reality that “pro-Palestine” rhetoric and pressure on Israel has inevitably or perhaps indirectly resulted in a strengthening of Hamas’s position and the overall worsening of the situation for Palestinians in Gaza. I have said time and again that even if folks wanted to attack and criticize Israeli actions, they should call upon the Islamist group to release hostages and negotiate and off-ramp from the war to implement political transformation. Instead, the “pro-Palestine” and international solidarity movements completely ignored Hamas’s criminality against Palestinians and Israelis alike while failing to promote pragmatic, realistic pathways forward to save the most Palestinian lives and make it clear that Hamas’s actions are unpopular, unsupported, and condemned. Secretary Blinken is right on the money with his remarks. The “pro-Palestine” movements across the world after October 7 bear a significant responsibility for prolonging this war and directly contributing to the massive suffering of Palestinians in the coastal enclave. This dereliction of duty delegitimizes almost the entirety of the premise upon which current “pro-Palestine” activism is built. Take a step back and never, ever speak for, over, or on behalf of the Palestinian people!

Haviv Rettig Gur says he agrees:

I agree with Ahmed. We might assess the war differently, but we assess the future the same. When the dust settles, when the rebuilding begins, the old truths everyone likes to ignore will reassert themselves. We'll be back at square one, with the same problem as before. Israel can't rule the Palestinians for all time, nor can the war ever end as long as Palestinian ideological factions like Hamas consistently undermine every attempt at peace-making. Anyone who doesn't understand how catastrophic Hamas has been to the Palestinian cause is of no use to the Palestinian cause. 90% of Israeli Jews now tell pollsters that the fundamental impulse of the Palestinian national movement is to annihilate them. Imagine for a moment that I personally would like to see Palestinian independence in my lifetime. What am I supposed to do with the reality that that statistic describes? How do I urge my fellow Israelis to once again ante up in a game that they have learned from repeated bitter failure - and from Hamas's own consistent rhetoric - is meant to bring about their destruction? And Hamas did that. It was Hamas (with some help from Arafat) that convinced even most progressive Israelis, through explicit word and endless bloody deeds, that withdrawal or compromise would only bring more bloodshed. As long as Israeli Jews believe that, believe what Hamas tells them, they will remain immune to the moral emotions of foreigners. This is the profound folly at the heart of the pro-Palestinian movement. It wants to pressure Israelis to withdraw while Hamas tells Israelis that it will come for their kids from any inch of land they abandon. The pro-Palestinian movement has not yet noticed that it and Hamas are sending Israelis opposite messages, making opposite demands, and so canceling each other out in the Israeli psyche. And it is Palestinians, always Palestinians, who are the first and greatest victims of this folly. Even their defenders are mostly just corralling them into that same old trap. If you can't separate the Palestinian cause from Hamas's cause, or, indeed, if you share Hamas's yearning to see us destroyed, then you're no defender of Palestine. You are one of its destroyers.

[perfectlyvalid49]

I’ve been seeing a lot of “One Year of Genocide” posters for October 7th from a lot of pro-Palestinian organizations, and I feel like they’re accidentally saying the quiet part out loud.

Because I’ve seen arguments that Israel has been committing a genocide against Palestinians for years/decades/since its founding/since prior to its founding, but all of that would be longer than one year. So that can’t be what it’s referencing.

And I’ve seen lots and lots of arguments that the current war in Gaza is a genocide, but Israel wasn’t at war with Gaza on October 7th. War was declared on the 8th, and Israel did not start attacking Gaza until a day or two later. So the specific date of October 7th wouldn’t be marking a year of the war, so that can’t be what it’s referencing either.

So what is the date of October 7th referencing when they say “One Year of Genocide”? It’s referencing the start of a year of attacks against Israel. A year of attempted genocide against the people of Israel.

These posters aren’t for a protest against the genocide in Gaza. They’re for a celebration of a genocide in Israel.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Someone on Reddit made the mistake of saying, "Teach me how this conflict came about" where I could see it.

Let me teach you too.

The common perception is that Jews came out of nowhere, stole Palestinian homes and kicked Palestinians out of them, and then bombed them for 75 years, until they finally rebelled in the form of Hamas invading Israel and massacring 22 towns in one day.

The historical reality is that Jews have lived there continuously for at least 3500 years.

There are areas, like Meggido iirc, with archeological evidence of continuous habitation for 7,000 years, but Jewish culture as we recognize it today didn't develop until probably halfway through that.

Ethnic Jews are the indigenous people of this area.

Indigeneity means a group was originally there, before any colonization happened, and that it has retained a cultural connection to the land. History plus culture.

That's what Jews have: even when the diaspora became larger than the number of Jews in Israel, the yearning to return to that homeland was a daily part of Jewish prayer and ritual.

The Jewish community in Israel was crushed pretty violently by the Roman Empire in 135 CE, but it was still substantial, sometimes even the majority population there, for almost a thousand years.

The 600s CE brought the advent of Islam and the Arab Empire, expanding out from Saudi Arabia into Israel and beyond. It was largely a region where Jews were second-class citizens. But it was still WAY better than the way Christian Europe treated Jews.

From the 700s-900s, the area saw repeated civil wars, plagues, and earthquakes.

Then the Crusades came, with waves of Christians making "pilgrimages to the Holy Land" and trying to conquer it from Muslims and Jews, who they slaughtered and enslaved.

Israel became pretty well depopulated after all that. It was a very rough time to live there. (And for the curious, I'm calling it Israel because that's what it had been for centuries, until the Romans erased the name and the country.)

By the 1800s, the TOTAL population of what's now Israel and Palestine had varied from 150,000 - 275,000 for centuries. It was very rural, very sparsely populated, on top of being mostly desert.

In the 1880s, Jews started buying land and moving back to their indigenous homeland. As tends to happen, immigration brought new projects and opportunities, which led to more immigration - not only from Jews, but from the Arab world as well.

Unfortunately, there was an antisemitic minority spearheaded by Amin al-Husseini. Who was very well-connected, rich, and from a politically powerful family.

Al-Husseini had enthusiastically participated in the Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Then the Empire fell in World War One, and the League of Nations had to figure out what to do with its land.

Mostly, if an area was essentially operating as a country (e.g. Turkey), the League of Nations let it be one. In areas that weren't ready for self-rule, it appointed France or Britain to help them get there.

In recognition of the increased Jewish population in their traditional, indigenous homeland, it declared that that homeland would again become Israel.

As in, the region was casually called Palestine because that was the lay term for "the Holy Land." It had not been a country since Israel was stamped out; only a region of a series of different empires. And the Mandate For Palestine said it was establishing "a national home of the Jewish people" there, in recognition of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country."

Britain was appointed to help the Arab and Jewish communities there develop systems of self-government, and then to work together to govern the region overall.

At least, that was the plan.

Al-Husseini, who was deeply antisemitic, did not like this plan.

And, extra-unfortunately, the British response to al-Husseini inciting violent anti-Jewish riots was to put him in a leadership role over Arab Palestine.

They thought it would calm him down and perhaps satisfy him.

They were very wrong.

He went on to become a huge Hitler fanboy, and then a Nazi war criminal. He co-created the Muslim Brotherhood - which Hamas is part of - with fellow fascist fanboy Hassan al-Banna.

He got Nazi Party funding for armed Muslim Brotherhood militias to attack Jews and the Brits in the late 30s, convincing Britain to agree to limit Jewish immigration at the time when it was most desperately needed.

He started using the militias again in 1947, when the United Nations voted to divide the mandated land into a Jewish homeland and a Palestinian one.

Al-Husseini wouldn't stand for a two-state solution. He was determined to tolerate no more than the subdued, small Jewish minority of second-class citizens that he remembered from his childhood.

As armed militias increasingly ran riot, the Arab middle and upper classes increasingly left. About 100,000 left the country before May 1948, when Britain was to pull out, leaving Israel and Palestine to declare their independence.

The surrounding nations didn't want war. They largely accepted the two-state solution.

But al-Husseini lobbied HARD. And by mobilizing the Muslim Brotherhood to provide "destabilizing mass demonstrations and a murderous campaign of intimidation," he got the Arab League nations to agree to invade, en masse, as soon as Britain left.

About 600,000 Arabs fled to those countries during the ensuing war.

Jews couldn't seek refuge there; in fact, most of those countries either exiled their Jews directly, confiscating their property first, or else made Jewish life unlivable and exploited them for underpaid or slave labor for years first.

By the time the smoke cleared and a peace treaty was signed, most of the Arab Palestinian community had fled; there was no Arab Palestinian leadership; many of the refugees' homes and businesses had left had been destroyed in the war; and Israel had been flooded with nearly a million refugees from the Arab League countries and the Holocaust - even more people than had fled the war.

That was the Nakba. The one that gets portrayed as "750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled!" in the hope that you'll assume they were expelled en masse, their beautiful intact homes all stolen.

Egypt had taken what's now the Gaza Strip in that war, and Jordan took what's now the West Bank - expelling or killing all the Jews in it first.

(Ironically, Jordan was originally supposed to be part of Israel. Britain, inexplicably, cut off what would have been 75% of its land to create Jordan.

Even more inexplicably, nobody ever talks about it. I've never seen anyone complain that Jordan was stolen from Palestinians. Possibly because Jordan is also the only country that gave Palestinian refugees full citizenship, and it's about half Palestinian now.

Israel is nearly 25% Arab Palestinians with full citizenship and equal rights, so it's not all that different -- but the fundamental difference of living in a country where the majority is Jewish, not Muslim, probably runs pretty deep.)

Anyway: that's why Palestine is Gaza and the West Bank, rather than being some contiguous chunk of land. Or being the land set aside by the U.N. in 1947.

Because Arab countries took that land in 1948, and treated them as essentially separate for 20 years.

Israel got them back, along with the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, in the next war: 1967, when Egypt committed an act of war by taking control of the waterways and barring Israel from them. It gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of the 1979 peace accords between Egypt and Israel.

Israel tried to give back the Gaza Strip at the same time. Egypt refused.

Palestine finally declared independence in 1988.

But Hamas formed at about the same time. Probably in response, in fact. Hamas is fundamentally opposed to peace negotiations with Israel.

Again: Hamas is part of a group founded by Nazis.

Hamas has its own charter. It explains that Jews are "the enemy," because they control the drug trade, have been behind every major war, control the media, control the United Nations, etc. Basic Nazi rhetoric.

It has gotten adept at masking that rhetoric for the West. But to friendlier audiences, its leaders have consistently said things like, "People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels.  Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels."

(Palestinians were outraged by this speech. Palestinians, by and large, absolutely loathe Hamas.

It's just that it's not the same to say that to locals, as it is to say it where major global powers who oppose this crap can hear you.)

Hamas has stated from the beginning that its mission is to violently destroy Israel and take over the land.

It has received $100M in military funding annually, from Iran, for several years. Because Iran has been building a network of fascist, antisemitic groups across the Middle East, in a blatant attempt to control more and more of it: Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Houthis in Yemen.

Iran has been run by a very far-right, deeply antisemitic dictatorship for decades now, which pretty openly wants to take down both Israel and the U.S.

Last year, Iran increased Hamas's funding to $350M.

The "proof of concept" invasion of Israel that Hamas pulled off on October 7th more than justifies a much bigger investment.

Hamas has publicly stated its intention to attack "again and again and again," until Israel has been violently destroyed.

That is how this conflict came about.

A Nazi group seized power in Gaza in 2007 by violently kicking the Palestinian government out, and began running it as a dictatorship, using it to build money and power in preparations for exactly this.

And people find it shockingly easy to believe its own hype about being "the Palestinian resistance."

As well as its propaganda that Israel is not actually targeting Hamas: it's just using a literal Nazi invasion and massacre as an excuse to randomly commit genocide of the fraction of Palestine it physically left 20 years ago.

Despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza have been protesting HAMAS throughout the war.

[workersolidarity]

🇯🇵🇵🇸 🚨

LARGE PRO-PALESTINE PROTEST IN TOKYO CALLS FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE

📹 Scenes from large-scale Pro-Palestine demonstrations in Tokyo, Japan, calling for the Liberation of Palestine and rejecting the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[amaditalks]

There are four possibilities for the people chanting “globalize the intifada” and “intifada everywhere” and none of them are any good.

They don’t care that they’re calling for mass terrorist violence and deaths because they don’t care who lives or dies. (The nihilist option.)

They assume that anyone who’d be killed in such violence deserves it and haven’t considered that it could easily be someone they claim to care about. (The true terrorist option.)

They’re willing to sacrifice the people they care about for “the movement.” (The true terrorist plus volunteering others for martyrdom option.)

They’re happy to chant whatever the loudest person tells them to, and they have no idea what the intifada even is. (The ignorant lemming option.)

People have to do better.

[hazel2468]

Kay you know that long ass post I just reblogged? With the absolutely unhinged antisemitic person tweets?

I saw someone in the notes being like “as a member of the Pro Palestine camp, we do not claim them!” And I’m like…

That’s the fucking problem. Because they ARE YOU. That kind of unapologetic antisemitic racist conspiracy? Is RAMPANT in Pro Palestine spaces. Online and in the real world. And at BEST people just ignore it and let it happen and at worst they AGREE with it.

You can’t just “they’re not with us” with this when I have yet to see a SINGLE fucking post about being Pro Palestine that doesn’t have someone in the comments devolving into antisemitic bullshit. They ARE with you- they are constantly there. And you guys need to fucking clean house because at this point? Idgaf if you say you “don’t claim them”, because there are enough of them that your movement is not only entirely unsafe for Jews, but at least 75% of the shit I see posted in the name of being Pro Palestinian is actually just antisemitic as fuck.

[pjharvey-moved]

it’s mostly very funny to me how the “stop posting and log off and do REAL ACTIVISM” crowd, when faced with the reality that leftists of the ilk they find annoying (whether for valid reasons or not) ARE doing real activism and risking getting expelled from their schools, fired from their jobs, and arrested for it, are like oh actually they’re just LARPing as activists because they want to piss off their parents. and theyre saying this in online posts, instead of logging off and doing any real activism, because i guess that advice doesn’t apply to themselves

[redvelvetwishtree]

Question: All the kids and young people in Gaza witnessing their parents, siblings, cousins get murdered by Israel, their houses being pulverised, babies killed, dead bodies in their neighborhoods and ice cream trucks, father carrying his kids body p@rts in a plastic bag, aid denied, power gone...none of them will grow up normal and super chill. In addition to the trauma and other mental disorders, they will most likely want to (rightfully) avenge their families and friends' deaths, fight for their land that was bombed and have nothing but sheer hatred for Israel.

And then when they come together to fight for their land and families, and maybe give their resistance movement/group a name, will the western media automatically label them as terrorists from Day 1? Will their goals and objectives be termed as terrorism?

Because this will most certainly happen. Their childhood and youth is irreparably ruined in the most atrocious ways possible. You can't expect them to be super chill about the things they've seen.

But I'm sure Israel and the west will waste no time in labelling them as some barbaric terrorists who only want Israelis gone...

And they'll ask the future generations,"do you c0ndEmn this movement/group of people" before anything else...

[aestariiwilderness]

But yes – sure, “Free Palestine!” supporters are worried for the Palestinian children. This man was so concerned “for the children”, in fact, that he directly copied Hamas’ efforts and…shot children to demonstrate his concern for children. Likewise – again imitating Hamas and so many other so-called Pro-Palestinians – he held individual children responsible for the imaginary crimes of a Christian elementary school/imaginary crimes of a nation, and attempted to kill them for it. And planned to do so again. Oh, and it’s not even done! To cap it all off, he planned to use his own "child" as a weapon to kill more children, in his concern “for the children”. Just like Hamas and the Palestinians themselves, who regularly send their own children as suicide bombers to Israel to kill Jews; who systematically brainwash their children into thinking their lives are only worth however many Jews they can kill. 

There is no sense here; there is no moral high ground, there is no freedom or justice or actual concern for anyone. There is only unreasoning, bigoted hate and a manic love of death. 

The children he shot -- 5 and 6 years old, respectively -- are alive, thank God.

[fairuzfan]

When's the anti-pro-Palestinian movement going to admit they have an islamophobia/anti-Arab/anti-palestinian problem

[cyarsk5230]

The 🍉 gang is DISGUSTINGLY antisemitic

No diff than the racist 🌹 brigade

If you see a post with these two 🍉🌹: automatically block their arss!

[girlactionfigure]

@leekern13

An elderly Jewish man has been murdered in Los Angeles by anti-Israel activists The pro-Palestine rallies are now a terrorist movement They are in support of terrorism abroad and now they are engaging in domestic terrorism

[workersolidarity]

🇺🇸🇵🇸 🚨

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA LATEST TO ENDURE POLICE VIOLENCE AND SUPPRESSION IN NATIONWIDE CRACKDOWN

📹 Scenes from the University of Virginia, where student protesters were attacked, assaulted, and more than 20 arrested by police in the latest among countless crackdowns on college campuses nationwide.

More than 2'000 students across the country have been arrested in Pro-Palestine, anti-genocide student protests.

Police in riot gear have been widely used by elites to break up encampments using tear gas and rubber bullets on peaceful student protesters, while an officer in the NYPD reportedly "accidentally" discharged his firearm.

#source1

#source2

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[maaruin]

I was about to write "One year anniversary of the most inept protest movement since Occupy Wallstreet.", but then I remembered Extinction Rebellion exists...

Seriously though, leftists seem to have the idea that protests are magic. They think it is like protest -> result, when in reality it is protest -> public support -> political response to public support -> result. You cannot skip the middle steps.

(What I wrote is true for the participants in the protests who were hoping for results within the year. It is possible that there are some Palestinian activists who are playing the long game of trying to build a generational consensus that Israel shouldn't exist and then run out the clock on pro-Israel sentiment in the US population to maybe realize a Palestinian state "from the river to the sea" in ~50 years.)

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

Michael Harriot: Why ""Pro-Palestine activists" are attacking and beefing with Black Supporters.

Honestly, I deeply feel that every day for these past 10 months that a half good portion of these so-called "Pro Palestine" "ActiviSTS" has truly showcased just how full of bullshit and performative their "Activism" actually is.

I wish these rat-fuckers would seriously stop calling themselves "Leftists" or so-called "Revolutionaries" when, to me, they've seriously shown themselves just how extremely unserious and out of touch with reality they've have become lately and how they turned this conflict into their main number one personality trait while at the same time showing how they truly don't actually give a Fuck about Palestinians or Gazans. Seeing how they seem to be fine with letting a convicted criminal bigoted rapist take power again and are OK with America losing Democracy and everyone within the country losing their civil and equal rights. Because they seem to think that will somehow help Palestine?

I swear these people aren't real " Activists" and should seriously just admit to themselves that they really want Trump to win and want to completely fuck over the many vulnerable groups and minorities within the country that they pretend to care about, because they foolishly believe that it will "Punish the Democrats" .

As I said before FUCK these phony fake-ass people and their imaginary Hunger Games fantasies for "Revolution" crap.

[pjharvey-moved]

i don’t think acknowledging that antisemitism exists in leftist spaces, which include antizionist spaces (tbh especially so because the fact that israel is associated with jewish people worldwide is fodder for antisemites who are also leftists) defeats the point of antizionism, any more than acknowledging that leftist spaces are often immensely sexist, ableist, anti-addict, and dismissive of indigenous voices makes you a spineless liberal.