Are you Pro-Palestine or Anti-Israel?

A few days ago I saw a poll on Twitter (X) that left me thinking. The question was “Are you Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israel?” The survey gave only two options to choose from.

Of course I am pro-Palestinian; I believe in peoples right of self-determination and in the basic human right to live in peace and security. What happens to the Palestinian people, to those innocent, is truly a tragedy.

These rights also apply to Israeli citizens. A right that was violated on October 7 and that continues to be violated every second for the 130+ who remain kidnapped in Gaza.

If you ask me who I’m rooting for in a soccer (football) game, it would be easier for me to decide; I can have a favorite team, and I hope it beats the other team 10-0, I cheer for my team to humiliate and denigrate their adversary on the field. My position in that match is one of “zero-zum”: Everything for one, nothing for the other.

If like me, you believe that you can be pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli at the same time, I have no problem with you being pro-Palestinian and caring about the lives and well-being of its population. But, this position is very difficult to find, the majority of “Pro-Palestinians” openly claim to be against Israel. That is not being Pro-Palestinian, that is being Pro-Hamas and its agenda of destruction and murder of the entire Israeli population.

Perhaps a more accurate question in the Twitter (X) poll would have involved Hamas instead of Palestine, or even a better question could´ve been are you “Pro-Israeli or anti-Israeli?” However, even with that correction, I am sure I would have been surprised by the number of votes against Israel with the same ease with which they would have chosen their favorite soccer team.

This is just a sample of what we see every day on social networks, the streets and in the media. Anti-Israel support comes from such different people and with such different profiles and agendas, some of them contradictory to each other. Let’s analyze some of them:

The Hamas – Those who perpetuated 07/10 feel proud and call to repeat it a million times. Their objective and mission is the total destruction of Israel.

The Palestinians – A population who from an early age are educated to hate the Israelis and blame them for all their misfortunes. They learn it at home, from their teachers, in their textbooks, in the children’s TV shows.

Likewise, I think I can understand a mother whose son died as a victim of the war; she is not going to start analyzing who is to blame for the war, but rather she is going to curse the army that dropped the bomb. I wonder how many Japanese or German mothers blamed the allies for their misfortunes after a bombing in Tokyo or Berlin and how many blamed their governments and their sick ideologies.

However, although they are still few, more and more Palestinians are seen blaming Hamas, this in front of cameras or a microphone, putting their lives in danger, I imagine more think it or express it only in confidentiality.

Muslims of the world – There are more than 2 billion Muslims in the world, most of them are decent people, lovers of life and human rights. These are not the fundamentalist Islamists marching in London calling to “globalize the Intifada,” “gas the Jews,” or “rebuild the Caliphate.”

In many of the Arab countries of the world, as in Palestine, hatred of the Jew and the State of Israel is embedded in education and culture. Anti-Semitic books such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion continue to be Best-Sellers in several Arab capitals.

Most of these Muslims who speak out so fiercely in the defense of Palestine or Hamas, don´t really do it out of concern for the well-being of the Palestinians, but out of their hatred for Israel. If they were worried about the Palestinians, they would march for the Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria or Jordan. Furthermore, if their interest were to defend the Muslims of the world, they would march for the Muslims of China, Afghanistan, Sudan, Yemen or against the real genocide in Syria, but they don´t. Their passion is not to defend life, but to hate Israel. (If hate can be a passion, which I think it can). People who really understand the ideology of a fundamentalist Islamist knows how incomprehensible the existence of a Jewish State located in the middle of the Islamic world can be for them.

Anti-Semites – Simple. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the anti-Semite hates the Jews. There is no clearer representative of the global Jewish community than Israel, the Jewish State. If the Jew is bad, a liar, a murderer, a traitor, a conspirator, a manipulator, etc.; Israel is the maximum expression and collection of all the evils that the Jew brings to the world.

The indoctrinated – Those who believe they know and understand the modern world under a reality that is easy to categorize: The good and the bad, AKA the oppressed and the oppressors. If you are white, you are an oppressor. They´re extremists too, but in another corner, intolerant of anyone who doesn´t share their worldview and values. Look up for the horseshoe theory, where two sides get closer to each other the further they move to the extreme.

 Starting with good intentions, they categorized everything, including skin color, becoming racists. In the case of Israel, they see it as rich, powerful and white, immediately making it the oppressor. Anything that contradicts their narrative is immediately dismissed or justified. Children murdered? They were oppressors, Women kidnapped and raped? It’s all propaganda and lies.

The indoctrinated also fantasize about a reality that doesn´t exist. Fundamentalist Islam does not exist in their worldview; if you mention it, they consider you Islamophobic. Don’t they know that if they march through the streets of Gaza with their “Queers for Palestine” signs they would be killed? They believe Hamas represents its population and fights the noblest battle that can exist: For the freedom of its people. In the videos of Hamas members celebrating the slaughter of Israelis, the chants are of “Allah Akbhar”, I have not seen “Free Palestine” being chanted anywhere. Nothing more ironic than a symbol of “peace and love” at a pro-Hamas march, while the speaker shouts about the destruction of the State of Israel. 

Hamas – “We raped and murdered Jews”

The indoctrinate – “No they didn´t”

Hamas – “Yes we did, and we will do it again”.

The indoctrinate – “They are resisting oppression”.

Hamas – “Allah Akhbar, death to the infidel!”

The indoctrinate – “How romantic are these freedom fighters”

There is a phrase that says “tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”, how can you be on the side of those whose best friends are the Ayathola Regime of Iran, Hezbullah, the Hutties and to a lesser extent Turkey, Russia, South Africa, the Latin American populists and Qatar?

The ignorant – Somehow, I understand them. Take for example a person who knows nothing about the subject, begins to hear all the noise and decides to learn and “educate themself”, opens TikTok – possibly their only source of information – and begins to watch videos and calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, Apartheid. These people may have good intentions, of course we must be against genocide, but they have been deceived.

This creates conflict for me and makes me think a lot. In how many topics or conflicts in which I cannot consider myself an expert, have I also fallen victim to absolute deception?

“I can´t get over how ignorant these people are. When they say `Free Palestine´do they understand that Hamas is a dictatorship that took Gaza by force? That they killed 160 Fatah members? That they force people to follow Sharia Law?… they attack from inside populated areas knowing that there will be a retaliation. And they hide in tunnels which they don´t allow civilians into – they are only for Hamas. And yet people are marching for Hamas” – Avi Issacharoff in an interview with Nicole Lampert.

The idiots – Difficult to differentiate them from the ignorant, but they go even more to the extreme. They believe whatever they find coming from anyone.

This category also includes those who join the Anti-Israeli cause to follow a trend, like sheep, that go to a march and repeat chants of “from the river to the sea” or “globalize the Intifada”; when questioned the meaning of the chants they accept they have no idea what they mean. The worst part? The majority say it with a smile on their face, similar to that of a child who has just done a little prank.

I saw an interview with an African-American teenager who said she was against Israel because they do not allow black people to enter Israel, and another with a gay man who said he supports Palestine because Israel is a homophobic country where LGTBQ+ people have no rights.

“Israel is an illegitimate country built on stolen land. Its nature is ethno-centrist and racist. Colonialist, imperialist and supremacist. It is the last remnant of European colonialism, which is maintained by exercising Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Israel’s only objective in the current war is to kill as many Palestinians as they can to retake Gaza and colonize it again. Meanwhile, the sadistic Israeli army, which sees Palestinians as inferior sub-human beings, enjoys murdering children and stealing their organs. The worst thing is that there are Zionists in the world who justify and applaud all of the above.” Oh my, if I thought that narrative, I would share their hatred of Israel and the Zionist world regime and speak out with the same passion as they do.

The Opportunists – Whether for political, fame, exposure or financial reasons, they invent and share narratives that they themselves know are false, but that will meet their objectives. Here is someone who, for example, looks for a photo from Syria and shares it saying that it is from Palestine, lies on purpose but achieves a goal: hundreds or thousands of likes or shares. These people take advantage of the crowd of idiots, ignorant and anti-Semites who they know they will consume and accept whatever they are told.

Of course these categories are not independent from each other, they can be intertwined and mixed; You can be anti-Semitic and Islamist at the same time. The vegan girl, careful not to carry out a microaggression by calling someone by their wrong pronoun, feels good tearing down the poster of a kidnapped baby.  Few people would dare to remove the poster of a lost cat, but they feel entitled to remove one of a kidnapped human being, a clear combination of being idiotic, ignorant, indoctrinated and anti-Semitic. Also confusion; like those who claim that Israel is a country of pure white Europeans and therefore is an oppressive country, are they indoctrinated? Ignorant? Idiots? Anti-Semites? All of the above?

What about feminists, who made an entire career following the initiative of believing every woman, yet the voices of Israeli women are not heard?

The ones that make me saddest and most angry are the progressive-woke young Americans; a group with whom I thought I shared many of my principles and beliefs, a group that believes its highest purpose is progress, inclusion, tolerance and respect. A group that demonstrated that, whether because they were indoctrinated, anti-Semitic, ignorant or idiotic, they could come to hate and become what they´re supposed to flight for.

This Cronenberg monster is a fundamentalist monster, its ideas and beliefs are fixed and immutable, it doesn´t accept opinions or even facts that contradict them, it believes to have the absolute truth in its falsehood. It created a fanaticism to its own narrative, creating total intolerance and filling its hearts with hatred. This monster is not imaginary.