The Palestinian “Liberation” Movement That Never Was
We need to start treating the Palestinian movement as it is rather than the kumbaya movement that we would like it to be.
Last week, a horrific shooting outside the Jewish museum in Washington D.C. took the lives of two Israeli Embassy staffers. The shooter, Elias Rodriguez, told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” and shouted “Free Palestine” as he was escorted out of the museum. After the attack, left-wing activists jumped to denounce the shooting convince the world that this absolutely does not represent the “Palestinian Peace Movement.”
Commentator Cenk Uygur tweeted “you can’t do more harm to the Palestinian cause than by killing Israeli Embassy staffers…it’s also deeply counterproductive because it allows people to frame the whole peace movement as violent.”
In a since deleted Instagram post, writer Elad Nehorai stated that the shooting was “particularly problematic in a moment where the argument that Palestinians and their supporters are inherently violent.” And maybe he’s right–perhaps after witnessing the terrorist attack that left over 1200 murdered, 250 kidnapped, and thousands injured, the general public isn’t so inclined to see the Palestinian movement as one for peace, especially considering the reaction to the massacre.
When The Forward’s Nora Berman commented that the D.C. shooting “literally could not have done anything more destructive to the cause of Palestinian liberation,” I was brought back to October 7th, 2023. At which time, Palestinian civilians erupted in celebration while truckloads of murdered and kidnapped Israelis were dragged into Gaza. Outside of Gaza, popular Palestinian activists like Subhi Taha and Mohammed El Kurd shared videos mocking Israelis who were taken hostage, and supporters of the Pro-Palestinian movement poured into the streets worldwide, celebrating the massacre. During these protests, an American professor claimed he was “exhilarated” and an Australian Imam praised the 7th as “a day of courage, happiness, pride, and victory."
Yet, Berman moaned that the shooting made the “job of convincing fellow Jews that Jewish [and Palestinian] safety is intertwined” much more difficult. Mind you, this was against the backdrop of Pro-Palestine marches that regularly donned flags of Hezbollah, Hamas, PFLP, and other terror groups. Protesters held up pictures of Hamas leaders and chanted “long live October 7th.” Luckily for Berman, there are still plenty of people buying what she’s selling. Influencer Raven Reveals insisted the murders “hijacked” an otherwise peaceful freedom movement and announced that she “refused to buy into the lie that Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation are somehow antithetical causes,” insisting that “the path forward is together-holding, mourning, and becoming with one another.” This sounds great, if you completely ignore what the Palestinian movement openly celebrates as freedom.
In the aftermath of October 7th, numerous Palestinian groups consistently made statements referring to the attack as achieving freedom: The American Arab Anti-discrimination committee (ADC) characterized the attack as Palestinians asserting their right to self-determination. National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) published a statement, in part saying, “[the massacre] is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.” Al Awda, the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition wrote of the attacks that “the Palestinian people rise victorious over colonialism, reclaiming their freedom.” Nerdeen Kiswani, chair of Within Our Lifetime (WOL) wrote that the attack constituted a liberation of Palestine. Enthusiastic headlines read Gaza just broke out of prison. A popular Palestinian influencer, Subhi Taha referred to the perpetrators of the massacre as the “Palestinian freedom team.” I could go on, but my point is that these groups are not unpopular or fringe; the idea that October 7th was a freedom mission is widely accepted in the Palestinian movement. Instead of listening to Palestinians, westerners adopt a paternalistic attitude, pushing their own conception of liberation–living freely and unimpeded–onto Palestinians while the vast majority of Palestinians clearly say October 7th is our freedom; murdering Jews is our definition of freedom.
A brief look at history shows three stages of the Palestinian movement:
Destroy the Jewish state (1948-present)
Contrary to popular opinion, the Arab-Israeli conflict was never a clash between two movements each seeking self-determination. From the very beginning, it was between Jews fighting for self-determination—and Arabs fighting against Jewish self-determination. I reiterate; the struggle is not between Jewish nationalism and Palestinian nationalism, but between a people asserting their right to sovereignty and those who deny that right altogether. And whether our adversaries’ motives were Islamist led by Haj Amin Al Husseini or nationalistic led by the PLO, the outcome has remained the same: unrelenting, ideologically driven violence: kidnapping olympic athletes, hijacking airplanes, elementary school massacres, lynchings, hostage taking, shootings, and more.
Still, Israel came to the negotiating table, attempting to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians on multiple occasions, but time and again, Palestinian leaders walked away. The Israelis had mistakenly assumed that, like them, the Palestinians sought self-determination through statehood—when in reality, they rejected a state at least five times. One of those rejections was followed not by renewed diplomacy, but by a wave of suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings, and other acts of terror, also known as the second intifada (You might recognize it from another popular Pro-Palestinian chant, “Globalize the Intifada!”)
So no, the D.C. shooting wasn’t some aberration or tragic deviation from a noble struggle. It was the logical continuation of a movement that, from its inception, has defined “freedom” through violence—through rejection, through bloodshed, through the attempted erasure of the Jewish state. Western apologists may cling to fantasies of coexistence and mutual liberation, but they are not listening. Because when Palestinians chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—or in its original Arabic, “from the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab”—they’re not calling for coexistence. They’re calling for a future where Jews have no place at all.
The sooner hopeful westerners stop projecting their utopian ideals onto a movement that openly rejects Jews, the sooner we can confront the reality that this isn’t a fight for peace, it never was. It’s a war against the existence of a Jewish homeland, and pretending otherwise won’t change that, even if we really really want it to.
Reading your writing makes me feel so much better. I’m so sick of the gaslighting, I lived through enough as a survivor of DV and it feels like I’m in an abusive relationship with the world now.
Thank you for all your hard work 💕
All the “leftists” (a majority of them just rank and file white Americans) that spent the last year and a half rhetorically attacking the fundamental existence of Israeli statehood, in extremely antisemitic language, and then last week reacted to the Lischinsky/Milgrim murders like “oh that’s terrible, we don’t condone that”…. I call bullshit.
Moreover, many of them don’t even pretend to be for a two-state solution or to condemn the murders or the events of 10/7, like you said they actively cheer it on. And again, they’re not even Palestinian or Muslim or Arab. Just white Zoomers who have soaked up Soviet propaganda on Tiktok from before their parents were born.
Ugh.