Yes, they're Hamas apologists

Let's get this out of the way.

Many people who support the right of Palestinians to live in their own state side-by-side with Israel abhor Hamas and all it stands for. They recognize the terror organization for being medievalist, homophobic, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and racist maniacs. They know that Israel has a right to defend itself against a group which seeks its eradication as a state and a people. They call for a cease-fire and a resumption of peace talks so that everyone on both sides of the Green Line can live in peace and prosperity, not worrying if the IDF will knock down their doors and bulldoze their homes, or if a suicide bomber will kill and murder at a Tel Aviv pizza parlor. I'm with them. I've long advocated for the two-state solution. When the late Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands in the Rose Garden, I saw that there could finally be a brighter future for all, Jew and Arab.

But openings are small and short-lived, and subject to sabotage. Benjamin Netanyahu, firmly in the settler-nationalist camp, wanted nothing to do with a just and equitable solution. And he found a partner in rejectionism from Hamas, which went on a bombing campaign after Rabin's assassination by a Jewish zealot, souring Israeli opinion on the possibility or even advisability of peace with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has been in office off-and-on since the late 1990s, and in that time has worked to scupper any prospect of real peace, while Hamas has turned the Gaza Strip into an open-air prison, using its residents as human shields, cannon fodder—and as sources of income to finance their lifestyles in Qatari penthouses.

And what of the Western left, so mobilized by Israel's "genocide"? Well, I think the graphic which heads this post is illustrative.

We can differ, but as far as I'm concerned, Gaza isn't being subjected to genocide. It simply isn't, not by any definition of the word. Using "genocide" for everything cheapens the term. (Which, if we're honest, was bound to happen once the term was applied to the Jewish Holocaust. If that was a genocide, then everything had to be a genocide, because Jews don't deserve to have any such term applied to their suffering, which they, of course, always bring upon themselves.) Muslim Uighurs are being subjected to wholesale genocide by the Chinese Communist Party. Millions have gone through gulags. A report last month by the Financial Times detailed how mosques were being torn down and replaced, their distinctive Islamic features gone and "improved" with traditional Han Chinese architecture. Meanwhile in Sudan, Black Muslims in the west of the country are being ethnically cleansed by slaughter and displacement in the country's civil war. And, of course, the Muslim Rohingya in Burma are barely noticed as the Buddhist military regime expels and kills them for not being "real" Burmese.

These three instances do not elicit thousands to march in Western capitals. No one invades Mother Emmanuel to excoriate President Joe Biden for not doing enough to save the Rohingya. (The Christians being eliminated in Pakistan and Nigeria, of course, deserve their fates, as not being "indigenous".) People like "HamasPilled"—what a pathetic reference to a movie whose theme was to liberate oneself from false reality, not to revel in it—don't actually care about genocide, rape, murder. They only care about using Gazans as cudgels against Israel and, by extension, the imperialist West. Uighurs are being persecuted by the Chinese, so that's fine. In Sudan, Muslims kill Muslims; therefor, that's something the West should stay out of, as it's a "cultural expression". (And it's Arabs killing Black people. One would think intersectionality obtained. But, Arabs can never do any wrong in HamasPilled's eyes.) And those peaceful Buddhists in Burma? Certainly they have a right to regulate immigration! (Yes, the hypocrisy is glaring.)

HamasPilled and their like have an animus towards the West, and see Israel as a proxy for it. Whatever Israel does—and, by extension, its Western "puppets", because you know it's Jews who are really in charge—is a war crime. No other crimes exist, or at least none of them are anywhere near the severity of Israel's war in Gaza. Israel is the world's greatest war criminal, not Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, or Xi Jinping in Xinjiang. 

This is the text of the tweet which quoted the above graphic:

The pro-Palestine movement, very quickly, became the pro-Hamas movement post 7 October. Within days Hamas' pogrom was forgotten as Israel moved to dismember the organization which had raped and murdered 1,400 Israelis, not all of whom were Jews. The responsibility for a cease-fire always falls on Israel; they never urge Hamas to lay down their arms and seek a settlement. Because it's not about Hamas. It's not about Palestinians and their legitimate rights to live in peace and security. It's about hating Israel. Specifically, it's about hating Jews.

When you block the Holland Tunnel, you're not expressing support for Palestine; you're venting your hatred of Jews. When you paint anti-Zionist graffiti on the side of the most prominent Jewish deli in Los Angeles, it's not the plight of Palestine which motivates you, but anti-Semitism. It really is that simple. Your focus is on Jews and your hatred of them. You give no thought to other marginalized groups suffering brutality at the hands of states who fit more comfortably in your ideological niches, as they purport to be "anti-imperialist"—a word, much like "colonizer", which has little meaning any longer. You are heroes in the films of your minds, manning the barricades like latter-day Jean Valjeans, facing down hook-nosed genocidaires in yarmulkes. 

These are the vociferous faces of the pro-Palestine movement. And as long as this is the case, they will march and scream Jew-hatred to the last Gazan. Because it's not about Gaza. It's not about Muslim lives. It's not about a just and lasting peace. It never was.

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