One might assume that many in America, Europe and elsewhere are taking to the streets out of genuine concern for the Palestinians. That assumption would be wrong. The sole purpose of their performative solidarity is to destroy Israel.
Consider their lack of outrage at Hamas’s responsibility for the plight of ordinary Gazans. Keen to incur as many civilian deaths as possible for the cameras, the terrorist group is reportedly stopping residents of northern Gaza from fleeing south as Israel has urged. Hamas hides its military infrastructure in schools, hospitals and mosques.
This is part of a malicious strategy. Hamas knew full well that Israel would respond with overwhelming force to the massacre of Oct. 7. It butchered Israeli civilians all the same. Hamas knew it could count on its collaborators in the West to take to the streets in its defense once the Gazan civilians it hides behind began to die. Hamas terrorists do not value human life. Yet you hear nothing about their ongoing crimes against their own people at ostensibly “pro-Palestinian” rallies.
Instead, you hear much about Israel. In the eyes of the “protesters,” Israel is at fault for everything wrong with Gaza. Never mind that Israel pulled out of the territory in 2005 and left it entirely in the hands of the Palestinians, in hopes that they might turn it into Singapore-on-the-Mediterranean. Nothing of the sort occurred. Hamas, which won the Palestinian elections the following year, has subjected Gaza to a reign of terror ever since. It ousted its rival Fatah, throwing officials off buildings in the process. It spends the bountiful foreign aid it receives on terrorist infrastructure, not humanitarian needs. Hamas bears full responsibility for conditions in Gaza.
Yet Israel alone is condemned. Activists deploring the “open-air prison” of Gaza omit the inconvenient truth that Egypt joined Israel in imposing a blockade after Hamas’s bloody takeover. Egypt is now heavily restricting access to the Rafah crossing on its border with Gaza and, along with Jordan, has said it will not accept any Gazan refugees. It is curious that those professing solidarity with the Palestinians do not criticize Arab countries for refusing to offer them shelter.
They also have nothing to say about the dismal state of affairs in the Fatah-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria. There, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas is in the 19th year of his four-year term. Corruption abounds and social services are deficient. Yet there have been no protests abroad against Abbas’s dictatorship. A gay Palestinian was beheaded in Hebron last year while the imbecilic group “Queers for Palestine” continues to slam Israel. Demonstrators chanting “Palestine will be free” might want to focus their energy on the remarkably unfree institutions the Palestinians have built. But doing so would defeat their genocidal aim of delegitimizing and destroying Israel.
The apathy of these collaborators in the face of the suffering of Arabs and Muslims around the world speaks volumes. Why have there been no comparable protests against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians? The military junta of Burma—the country of my mother’s birth—which the U.S. State Department has determined is guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, has faced hardly any criticism. The Chinese Communist Party and its similarly-designated genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang is also ignored. The silence of the “activists” is telling.
One can support the Palestinian people without demanding their liberation “by any means necessary.” Pro-Palestinian rallies do not have to feature calls to “keep the world clean” alongside a picture of a Star of David in a trashcan. Yet here they are, despite everything, once again showing their support for terrorism, genocide and antisemitism.
