Pro-Israel, Pro-Hamas, or Pro-Peace?

Sympathy is one thing. Taking sides is another.

The Arab-Israeli conflict was the Number 2 foreign policy concern of the New Left on campus in the 1960s, second only to America’s ill-fated entanglement in the Vietnam War. After that war ended in 1973 (U.S. official involvement), the Arab-Israeli conflict was second only to apartheid in South Africa as the leading foreign policy concern of the New Left. Only when apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa in the 1990s did the Israel-Palestine conflict achieve primacy. None of this is a secret to those who have followed attitudes in elite universities or the more politicized public universities such as UC-Berkeley or the University of Wisconsin at Madison, or private colleges such as Reed in Portland, Oregon, or DePauw in Greencastle, Indiana.

But that was on campus. From the mid-1990s until October 7, 2023, the issue of Palestinian rights only made headlines or “breaking news” in national media when there was actual fighting between Israel and its neighbors or in any of the partly occupied territories. But the pro-Palestine movement on campus was never asleep, and it has led a campaign of “boycott, divest and sanction” against Israel for many years now, with some success, too. The slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” which is a call for the elimination of the State of Israel and often spouted at recent pro-Palestinian rallies, also is not new. A similar call in years past was to “dismantle” the State of Israel. Only with the October 7, 2023 Hamas onslaught did mainstream media pay attention again.

But why has the Arab-Israeli conflict, then the Israel-Palestine conflict, then the Hamas-Israel war, been so central, so key to the Progressives, née New Left?

Why? The innocent construction is simply that Hamas (the name is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement) is seen by the Left as a “national liberation” movement in the old Cold War, Soviet-era mold, much as Vietnam and South Africa were characterized (and Cuba and several other movements), while Israel continues to be seen exclusively as a colonial-settler state, also an old Leftist paradigm. It is within this paradigm that pro-Hamas demonstrators think it’s clear who the aggressor is, and who is the aggrieved party.

But Hamas is not a national liberation movement. It is not “Palestine” that must be liberated, but Dar al-Islam, which is variously translated as the House of Peace and the Abode of Islam. Palestinians are not Palestinians first; they are Muslims first, last and forever. They are not authorized to reclaim lost Palestinian land, but lost Muslim territory.

And Israelis are not Israelis, but simply “Jews.” While Iran refuses to use the name “Israel,” but only speaks of “the Zionist entity,” Hamas makes no secret of its enmity toward the Jews. And Jews cannot have dominion over Muslims in Dar al-Islam. The Jews, along with Christians, may be a dhimmi people, that is, people who have certain rights and protections under Islamic law and rule, but nevertheless are second-class citizens and better only than outright Infidels. As such, the Jews cannot have dominion over Muslims or over Muslim land, ergo you drive them out for that reason.

Hamas certainly talks about returning refugees, and their descendants, to individual homes and towns from which they were driven and/or fled in the 1948 war. That must be part of the Hamas leadership’s attraction to the Palestinian masses, and many western supporters of Palestine are sympathetic to this claim. Yet that does not imply a national liberation movement, or prove that this is the primary goal of the Hamas leadership.

Today, Hamas, along with Hizballah (the Party of God) and Iran, are successors to countries that belonged to the old “rejection front” and “steadfastness group” that confronted Israel in years past, but which have since signed peace treaties with Israel or at least maintained a non-violent approach. But the motivations for Hamas, as well as Hizballah and Iran, are entirely theocratic, not political, no matter what inducements and earthly rewards they may promise the masses.

The majority of pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrators we read about likely are politically motivated, though. Certainly, some of the international students participating in the protests have relatives in Gaza or the West Bank, and many of the pro-Hamas demonstrators surely are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause due to the great suffering people in Gaza are experiencing at the present time, which is worse than the Nakba of 1948-49.  And, I think it’s safe to say that the pro-Israel supporters have their own reasons to be more sympathetic to Israel’s nightmare scenario of October 7, as well as the precarious nature of Israel’s present existence. I’m not naïve about people’s sympathies – people are more sensitive to others that they know, or to whom they have some connection. We in the West may proclaim that we’re all one family, that we care about all human rights, but that’s not how it usually plays out when there’s real conflict, when it really is a “them against us” world.

I just wish that we could see more “pro-peace” activism, and less taking sides, and less support for what looks like a winner-take-all, zero sum game, where at best a Pyrrhic victory awaits, but no real peace.