Yesterday, someone on X asked me why people are called antisemites, terrorists, and Hamas supporters for being pro-Palestinian. My response turned into this.
The answer is a combination of individual factors, mass definitional imprecision and confusion, as
well as the existence of actual connections.
Obviously, these are not the same in a broad sense. Many people make these associations
reflexively, often emotionally. Perhaps fueled by fear, habit, developmental needs, neurotic anxiety,
social pressure. Some may have political agendas, while others may be cognitively limited or
intellectually lazy. Needless to say, associations amplified by organizations, media, and governments are also influenced by social and political pressures.
But beyond reasons for individual and group proclivities for making and holding false associations, there is no consensus on the definition of the individual terms in the first place. Trying to define ‘pro-Palestinian’ illuminates this well. Does pro-Palestinian mean that one supports:
1. The Palestinian people continuing to be used as a tool by the Arab world to operationalize its
wish to make the world Juden rein?
2. Palestinians no longer being governed by Hamas?
Or, in a more concrete sense, does being pro-Palestinian mean that one supports:
3. All the people living on the West Bank and in Gaza?
4. All the people living on the West Bank?
5. All the people living in Gaza?
6. All the people living in Gaza except senior leaders of Hamas?
7. All the people living in Gaza except all Hamas leaders?
8. All the people living in Gaza except Hamas members?
9. All the people living in Gaza except Hamas members and Hamas supporters?
To complicate this more, each of these has its own definitional rabbit hole. Take the term ‘Hamas
supporter’, for example. Who counts? The 75% of Gazan Palestinians who support Hamas overall? The 60% who support Hamas but don’t support its violence?
Adding individual factors to this wide definitional scatter often makes discussing the topic difficult,
emotional, and potentially conflictual. From a neuropsychological perspective, people in such
conversations have less access to the organizational and analytic systems in the brain, impairing the kind of parsing necessary to avoid wrongly associating Palestinians with terrorists, antisemites, or Hamas supporters.
That said, these associations are often correct. A small sample of the evidence.
1. Generations of Palestinian children have been taught in school (evidenced by countless videos)
and at home to hate Jews and to seek to kill them
2. Two uprisings (intifadas) were launched against Israel, initiated by the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO), the terrorist group that previously governed the Palestinians
3. Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the allegedly non-terrorist version of the PLO, the Palestinian
Authority, recently sent a letter to all West Bank imams demanding they teach that Islam requires the
killing of Jews
4. Gazans, Palestinians all, elected Hamas, a terrorist organization whose charter defines its mission as the annihilation of all Jews
5. Massacre of October 7 notwithstanding, 60% of Palestinians currently support Hamas
despite its vow to repeat this barbaric violence serially
6. Importantly, the lines that should exist between pro-Palestinian and the other terms are consistently obfuscated by their supporters. Speakers and attendees at Pro-Palestinian rallies routinely call and chant for intifada against the Jews and for situations that would result in Jewish annihilation. Attendees at some rallies pin to their clothing pictures of the types of gliders used as vantage points to pick off the audience at a music festival on 10/7. Some even wear Hamas headbands. At universities, far Left academics who see the world through the lens of Frantz Fanon’s revolutionary anticolonialist claptrap have drawn a straight line from pro-Palestinian to Jewish genocide.
In summary, being pro-Palestinian is often associated with being an antisemite, terrorist, or Hamas supporter because of individual factors and the paucity of accurate, shared definitions of terms. But, mostly it’s because being pro-Palestinian is, more often than not, actually linked to antisemitism, terrorism, and/or supporting Hamas. While we must not loose sight of the estimated 20 percent of Gazan Palestinians who are simply pro-Palestinian, we must also be realistic about the large majority of the weight on the scale being on the other side.
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