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The Appalling Tactics of the "Free Palestine" Movement

(New York Times) Bret Stephens - Protest movements have an honorable place in American history. But not all of them. Not the neo-Nazis who marched in Chicago in 1978. Not the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. And not too much of what passes for a pro-Palestinian movement but is really pro-Hamas, with its open celebration of the murder of Israel's people and its efforts to mock, minimize or deny the suffering of Israelis, which so quickly descend into antisemitism. It wasn't a response to the human suffering in Gaza. Pro-Hamas demonstrations broke out worldwide on Oct. 8, before any Israeli response. Nor is it a matter of seeking a Palestinian state. Among the popular chants at many protests is "We don't want no two states! We want all of '48!" - all of what had been Mandatory Palestine. In other words, the central, animating sentiment behind much of the protest movement is neither humanitarian nor liberationist. It's eliminationist. Tactics like the routine removal or defacement of posters of Israelis kidnapped to Gaza; or holding a loud and aggressive demonstration outside of New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer hospital; or shouting down Rep. Jamie Raskin at the University of Maryland for being "complicit in genocide" reveals the bullying mentality at the heart of the pro-Hamas movement. It isn't enough for them to speak out; they must shut other voices down. They aim to instill a palpable sense of fear in their opponents. American civil libertarians once understood that inherent in the right to protest was the obligation to respect the right of people with differing views to protest as well.
2024-04-04 00:00:00
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