By Rohan Gunaratna
Since October 7th 2023, a brutal war between Israel and Hamas, which was initiated by Hamas, has devastated the Gaza Strip and created a global movement colloquially called the Pro-Palestine Movement.
The heartbreaking images from Gaza have galvanised this movement across the globe, from universities in the West to the streets of Sri Lanka, and most importantly, in the digital realm of social media.
It is a powerful movement that shows humanity’s capacity for compassion for people far and away from them. A testament to the kind of humanist forces we need to bring all conflicts to a grinding halt and build a secure and peaceful world.
Unfortunately, the original noble aspirations of this movement have been subverted by violent extremist propaganda and performative activists eager to build their brand image as social justice warriors.
Precious little of the original desire for a true end to conflict, restoration of Palestinian dignity, and a genuine effort towards a two-state solution remains within this movement.
While there are many rational voices, such as the Palestinian Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib or Egyptian Loay al-Sharif, actively working for true peace and true statehood of the Palestinians, there are overwhelmingly more irrational voices calling for a globalized Intifada (Resistance Movement).
How did this happen?
The Pro-Palestine movement is built on very shaky foundations of half-truths or outright misunderstandings of history. One such misunderstanding or propaganda narrative is the idea that all Jewish immigrants from Europe are Zionist conquerors who came to kick out Palestinians and steal their homes.
The truth, however, is not as binary and simplistic as that.
History contains answers
After World War I, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine. This period saw a rise in both Arab nationalism and Zionism, or the movement for a Jewish national state. Legal Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, driven in part by a desire to escape antisemitism in Europe, which in turn led to rising tensions and violence with the local Arab population. The British attempted to manage the escalating conflict but ultimately decided to hand the problem over to the newly formed United Nations.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, which proposed the partition of Palestine into two independent states: one Arab and one Jewish, with Jerusalem to be a separate, international city.
Partition Details: The plan included an allocation of approximately 56% of the land to the Jewish state and 44% to the Arab state. This was a point of contention, as the Jewish population, while a minority, was given the majority of the land.
The Zionist leadership accepted the plan, seeing it as a crucial step toward establishing a Jewish state. However, the Arab leadership and the surrounding Arab states rejected the plan, viewing it as an unjust division of their land and a violation of the principle of self-determination for the Arab majority.
The UN resolution, rather than creating peace, ignited a civil war in Palestine. The period between the UN vote in November 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in May 1948 saw escalating violence between Jewish and Arab militias.
A crucial point of misunderstanding with this partition plan was that many people took it to mean that in that 56% all people who are not Jewish will be chased out. This was not the case.
In fact, at the time, neither a Palestinian state nor an Israeli state existed; it was only a territory under the British called Mandatory Palestine – legally administered by the British. This partition, in reality, was a line on a map where if you were on the Jewish side of the line, you would be automatically be granted citizenship as an Israeli citizen, and if you were on the Arab side, you would automatically be granted citizenship as a Palestinian citizen.
This is exactly how 2 million Arab Muslims currently live and are naturalized Israeli citizens with full rights.
The fighting took the form of attacks by both sides on villages, cities, and armed forces. Arab forces sought to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, while Jewish forces aimed to secure the territory allocated to them by the UN.
On May 14, 1948, as the British Mandate expired, David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel declared the establishment of the State of Israel. The next day, armies from neighboring Arab countries—Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq—invaded the former Mandate territory, turning the civil conflict into the first Arab-Israeli War.
During and after the war, an estimated 700,000 to 800,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. This displacement was the result of a combination of factors, including forced expulsions by Israeli forces, Palestinian’s fleeing voluntarily out of fear of massacres, and the destruction caused by the conflict. In the end, Israel succeeded in creating a state, Palestine refused to accept the terms of the partition plan and didn’t create a state.
This is the historical record which anyone can verify.
“Zionism”
The next problem is the term Zionism and the current use as either a slur or as a means to identify the colonial conquerors from Europe. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Zionism is nothing more than a movement, much like the Pro-Palestinian movement to establish the Jewish state of Israel. The context of this movement, much like the Pro-Palestinian movement, resides in generations of oppression and pogroms faced by Jewish people, with its peak during World War 2 under the unprecedented genocide of the Holocaust.
To vilify Zionism is to vilify the Pro-Palestinian movement, as they are both 2 sides of the same coin. Each on a genuine attempt at creating one part of the ideal 2-state solution of Israel AND Palestine.
The real reason this anti-Zionist narrative has picked up so much steam is partially due to a poor understanding of political systems and partly due to the maximalist goals of Hamas, other terrorist groups, and Iran.
In popular media, I often see many who distinguish between Zionism and Jews. However, in practice, on the ground, it is plainly obvious that this distinction is far more blurred.
When the Pro-Palestinian Movement claims that Zionism is an evil, imperialistic force from Europe that is perpetuating this conflict and wants to see all Palestinians dead, they are not referring to Zionism at all. Rather, they are conflating politics, specifically the far-right politics of the current Israeli government, which is a coalition of several far-right parties, which tends to favour more harsh, military action and is strongly against a Palestinian state.
Why are the far-right parties so against a Palestinian state? Can’t we all live in harmony? This is the wrong question to ask. In all parts of the world, we have extremist narratives of the left and the right. But in rational, correct-thinking parts of the world, these narratives are always on the fringes.
However, in Israel, they are the ruling force.
And why did they come to be the ruling force? This is because the Israeli’s fear that a Palestinian state will never guarantee the safety and security of their own country and families.
If we pull on that thread further, we trace it back to the second intifada, a violent movement notably influenced and led by Hamas which killed the desire for a 2-state solution within Israel and struck fear into Israeli’s that Palestinians want all Israelis dead, and the state of Israel destroyed.
So, where does this leave Zionism? Zionism is nothing but a nationalistic ideal of establishing the state of Israel. However, the confabulation of Zionism for far-right politics is creating a lot of confusion within the Pro-Palestine Movement!
This confusion will lead to a great deal of misunderstandings between ordinary, peaceful Jews who consider themselves Zionists, but also support a 2-state solution or at least are capable of seeing a road to that in the future.
The Pro-Palestine Movement needs to aim for real impact
This confusion will also contribute to antisemitic narratives, as we have seen on the ground. This can lead to decentralized terror groups like ISIS or Iran-sponsored groups to fund, train, and plan attacks in other countries where Jews or Israelis reside.
The terrorist leader who planned Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday Massacre in 2019 explicitly blamed foreign conflicts against Muslims as reasons for conducting the attack in Colombo.
What is stopping another individual like him from taking on the antisemitic narratives and planning attacks against Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka or any other country with no regard for the innocent lives lost?
Another major issue the Pro-Palestine Movement in its current form faces is the unintentional support it lends to preventing any meaningful change for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza.
The movement uses propaganda narratives like ‘from the river to the sea’ or ‘globalize the intifada’ and other slogans that completely dismiss any recognition of the state of Israel’s legitimacy, while simultaneously legitimizing Hamas’s abusive grip on Gazans.
Most people who identify with the Pro-Palestinian Movement are woefully unaware that Hamas rules Gazans with an iron fist. They have never had another election after the 2006 election when they came to power. It’s been almost 19 years since. They murdered any opposition in Gaza. They subvert all aid towards their military ambitions. If a Gazan protests against Hamas, they will be jailed and tortured, or killed. Hamas has built an elaborate and enormous tunnel network under Gaza with their bases, weapons storage and for transporting their soldiers, but not a single civilian is allowed to use it for protection from air strikes.
Instead of holding placards calling for the release of the hostages, the slogans and writings endorse Hamas and its violence. The protesters are driven by a mob mentality rather than from a comprehensive understanding of the conflict and meaningful resolution.
When Hamas committed the October 7th attack, they took 251 hostages. Hostage taking is a grave concern to the international community and a vile and reprehensible act that violates fundamental human rights, including the right to life, liberty, and security of person.
Yet, the Pro-Palestinian Movement is rarely ever noted to draw attention to these crimes of Hamas and other terror groups. Often, they either omit these crimes and focus entirely on Israeli military casualties and war crimes or intentionally pretend that these widely documented atrocities by Hamas and other terror groups didn’t happen at all.
Hamas is influencing the pro-Palestinian rallies worldwide. Below, a protester in Sydney, Australia, wears a shirt with Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader that staged the massacre on Oct 7 2023.
This whitewashing of Hamas’s crimes is one of the key reasons the Pro-Palestine Movement is proving to be utterly useless to the actual Palestinians on the ground suffering from collateral damage of conflicts or the iron-fisted rule of a lunatic, religious death cult.
These protests are dividing Sri Lankan communities, too. By bringing a conflict in the Middle East to Sri Lanka, it is creating another conflict in Sri Lanka. It is radicalising the Muslims and inciting violence against the Jews, Israelis and the west. To end the war, Hamas should release the hostages – none of the placards call for that!
Today, the Pro-Palestinian Movement, greatly subverted by these nefarious forces, has attracted the attention of performative activists. Their goal is not to see any real end to conflict or to see realistic solutions put forward, but to give them a platform to shout at the top of their lungs that they are virtuous people fighting for the greater good. The longer the conflict drags on without any meaningful solutions, the longer they get to enjoy the limelight. These performative activists will not read or hear a word of what is said in terms of good or bad arguments, but attack blindly at anything that seems to sound like it’s against their narrative of fighting for social justice.
According to their narrative, if you fight for Palestine their way, which is maximalist, dismissive of true Palestinian voices, terror-supporting, and not practical or workable, then you are good, but if you point out even a single flaw in their arguments, you will be vilified, shouted at, and chased out of the room.
The alignment of the Pro-Palestine Movement to Hamas and other extremist group propaganda narratives doesn’t stop there. It lends more power to the shadow behind the curtain that pulls the strings for its own imperialistic goals.
Iran is the financial backer of all these terror groups, and its goal for them is to be its arms that will slowly grip the entire Middle East under its theocratic nightmare regime.
Iran is a rogue state with blatant imperialistic ambitions. It is working on developing nuclear weapons, it is heavily sanctioned by most countries for this, yet it still insists on allocating what precious little resources it has available for its people to the development of weapons and funding of terror groups throughout the Middle East. And to what end?
It desires to be the hegemon of the region.
The Pro-Palestinian Movement in its current form will do nothing for the Palestinian cause except continue to be “useful idiots” for the imperialistic Iranian rulers, ensure that a far-right government remains in Israel, and only lend credence to a fanatical death cult like Hamas to rule over Gaza forever as a blood thirsty militia.
What changes can help realign the movement back to its original noble goal of ending conflict, elevating the Palestinian people, and improving the overall stability and prosperity of the region as a whole?
The first step is, of course pressure Hamas to release the hostages. No meaningful progress can be made while hostages are still held by Hamas, and it will give Israel the moral authority to continue the war until such time as no hostages are remaining.
The second step is for the Pro-Palestine Movement to work towards normalization of relations between Israel and other Arab states. There is the historic Abraham Accords, which 4 Arab countries have already signed.
The final step for the Pro-Palestine Movement is to push for the total abolition of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terror groups within Gaza and the West Bank, and re-establish free and fair elections so that the Gazans can choose a right-thinking leader who will act in their best interest.
A further step is to familiarize themselves with the political apparatus of the Palestinian Authority and educate themselves on who the key people, both incumbent and up-and-comers are. What a Palestinian state needs is fresh new leadership who are educated, motivated, and focused on realistic solutions.
The road to a Palestinian state is a long and hard one, and no one can know how long and how hard, but what we do know for sure is that the current Pro-Palestinian Movement across the globe is not contributing to that journey. It is only a roadblock.
True peace and coexistence require intelligence, consistency, and hard work. Not endorsement of terrorism or divisive slogans.