You know the bad apples: the ones creating 'liberated zones' on college campuses, announcing that ‘Zionists have entered the camp,’ jabbing Jewish students in the eye with flagpoles, calling for 10,000 October 7ths.
They are a major problem.
And they are a problem that needs to be solved from within the Pro-Palestine movement.
I firmly believe that most pro-Palestinian Americans are rational, non-violent, and thoughtful. I may not agree with everything that the movement believes or adheres to, but the difference in opinion is not the issue.
The fringes of a movement are dangerous because they are often left unchecked by the majority, shrugged off and dismissed as radicals. As if simply condemning those who intimidate, incite, and threaten violence undermines your movement’s progress.
In reality, not calling out the rampant, and often violent, anti-Semitism on display across college campuses in the U.S. is what undermines the movement’s reputation. This is where anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same: when Jewish American college students are advised to stay in their dorms because they are being blamed for the actions of a government on the other side of the world.
What’s worse is shrugging the violence off as an outlier while expressing frustration that it overshadows the majority peaceful protests that do occur.
I’ve protested, I know how these things go. There are always a small handful of people who take it too far. But lamenting that the violent protesters are getting all of the airtime is precisely why they need to be dismantled from within the movement in the first place.
If you’re concerned that your cause is being hijacked, it probably is.
On January 6th another group of bad apples stormed the capitol. Five people were killed and over 1M in damages was reported. Certainly this group of 2,000 unhinged, conspiracy theory-embracing Americans weren’t reflective of the entire Republican party. Yet the majority of Republicans didn’t seem to openly condemn the violence or express outrage over it.
Meanwhile bad apples in police departments kill black Americans at a disproportionate rate and the “All Cops are Bastards” (ACAB) crowd considers them to be reflective of the American justice system as a whole. The expectation of the ACAB movement is that the entire system needs to either a) be abolished or b) dismantled and rebuilt from within.
So, regardless of what the pro Palestinian movement believes about their bad apples, it is in their own best interest to denounce the violence, condemn the rampant anti-Semitism, and reiterate that their focus is on ending the war in Gaza. They cannot simply hope that the bad apples will rot on their own: at this point, with violent words and actions escalating to a fever pitch, it’s clear they are just ripening.
You hit the nail on the head. I am glad you made the connection to the Republican Party. It’s true of all fringe groups.