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Imagine you’re a middle-class, middle-aged mom in any number of American suburbs outside Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, or Phoenix—the kind of civic-minded, active voter that both parties chase every election.
Since October, you’ve been paying more and more attention to the conflict in the Middle East. At first, you found yourself deeply sympathetic to the Israeli response to the October 7th Hamas-led terror attacks.
You’ve heard that Israel has treated the Palestinians unfairly for years, but how could that justify such a gruesome slaughter of civilians? You decide that Israel has a right to defend itself and tell your friends and coworkers that the country should do what it has to do in order to destroy Hamas and other militant groups.
But as the days and weeks go by, you start feeling more and more sympathetic to the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. You see news stories about how many Gazans have been reduced to eating grass or drinking polluted water. You read reports about how the destruction in the territory is unprecedented among 21st-century conflicts, and you begin to wonder if by starving, injuring, and killing so many people in Gaza, Israel will only be sowing the seeds of future conflict. You ask yourself, isn’t anyone trying to stop all this killing?
You see that thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest for a ceasefire. After learning that one of the largest groups leading the protests is called Students for Justice in Palestine, you navigate your way to their website via a search engine.
But when you get there, it’s hard to understand what you’re looking at.
“Supporting almost 300 Palestine solidarity organizations across occupied Turtle Island, we aim to develop a student movement that is connected, disciplined and equipped with the tools necessary to achieve Palestinian liberation,” it says.
Turtle Island? You were looking for a protest movement based in America. What’s Turtle Island?
After an Internet search, you end up on a Wikipedia page that explains that it’s a name that some Native Americans hundreds of years ago used to describe the land mass they lived on.
Confused, you ask yourself what the activists in the streets really want. Do they just want a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians or do they think even the country they live in is “occupied” territory that should be surrendered to Native Americans? Are they opposed to a war in the Middle East or Western civilization itself?
You shut your laptop and turn on the TV. You see an Israeli official dressed in a three-piece suit being interviewed on CNN. He argues that Israel has a right to defend itself. “What would America do if a terrorist group killed thousands of their people?” he asks. “What did America do after 9/11?”
You find yourself nodding along with the official. Maybe Israel’s going a bit too far, you tell yourself, but at least I can relate to them.
The purpose of the thought experiment above is not to mock America’s Palestinian solidarity movement. Under even the best circumstances, that movement would be fighting an uphill fight against a domestic political lobby that is well-financed and well-organized.
And many people in the movement are politically savvy and thoughtful—from liberal columnist Peter Beinart to Columbia University academic Rashid Khalidi. They make arguments that appeal to people outside the far left and have succeeded in moving America’s discourse in a direction that is more sympathetic to Palestinian rights.
But it must be said that too much of the movement is captured by maximalist sloganeering and fringe ideology that is ultimately undermining the cause of Palestinian freedom. Like many other movements that find their home on the left, it often argues in an echo chamber, as the Turtle Island example shows.
It’s a mistake that the Israeli government and its supporters rarely make. Instead, they persuade people across the political spectrum.
To the left, Israel’s government and its supporters argue that it’s a progressive democracy that was born out of resistance to the British Empire. “Zionism is the most successful anti-colonial movement in the world,” bragged Eylon Levy, a government spokesman, in a video posted on social media earlier this year.
Here’s a fact sheet from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) touting the Tel Aviv Pride Parade. It even notes that “as of 2014, the Israeli military ensures any enlisted soldier wishing to transition is eligible for army-funded therapy, hormone replacement treatment and gender affirmation surgery.”
To the right, Israel’s government and its supporters portray it as a civilized bulwark against terrorism and barbarism. “This war is a war that is not only between Israel and Hamas. It’s a war that is intended, really, truly, to save Western civilization,” intoned Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in December.
It is to the credit of Israeli strategy that you’re likely to see Israeli spokespeople on both MSNBC and Fox News making arguments that appeal to either subset of voters.
Many supporters of the Palestinian cause, on the other hand, have no idea how to appeal to middle America. One of the first rules of political persuasion is that you don’t want to ask the person being persuaded to do too much. You want them to feel comfortable and at ease with what you’re asking—like it’s common sense. Yet, at recent ceasefire protests in New York City, protesters have been chanting that the NYPD, Ku Klux Klan, and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are “all the same.”
If you’re a middle-of-the-road voter, why would you want to attend a rally where you’re being asked to see your neighborhood cop as a Klansman?
Is it any surprise that nearly half the Senate Democratic caucus supported an effort to attach new human rights oversight over aid to Israel—a move that would’ve been unthinkable a year ago, and which eventually led to President Biden signing a similar presidential memorandum into law—but that none of these senators would ever dare show up at rallies where such esoteric and fringe rhetoric is common?
To put it simply, the Palestinian freedom movement in the United States must mature.
Also read “What Justice Requires in Gaza” by Jack Omer-Jackaman.
The easiest thing to do in the world is to criticize someone else. As Teddy Roosevelt once said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.”
But I’ve been in the arena, too. Earlier in my career, I worked at the Center for American Progress, an officially nonpartisan think tank that informally aligns itself with the Democrats. Much of Obama’s first-term staff was drawn from the organization.
During a heated debate on social media, I happened to use the phrase “Israel Firster” to describe people who I felt were supporting the Israeli government’s positions to the detriment of the United States. After an internal uproar, I ended up leaving the organization.
After years of reflection, I came to understand that while I didn’t intend to refer to Jewish Americans, the term had antisemitic connotations for many.
These days, when I write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I still get blowback from people who falsely accuse me of supporting Hamas terrorism or of harboring hatred against Jews. But I also reach a far larger group of people than I used to, across the political spectrum, because I’m careful about my language and have learned to put myself in the shoes of those who disagree with me.
The Palestinian solidarity movement in the United States needs to learn the same lesson.
Rallies supporting ceasefire and an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians should discard ambiguous and contentious sloganeering. Yes, the word intifada does not literally mean violence—in fact, most of the First Intifada or uprising against the Israeli occupation was nonviolent. But because Americans often associate the word with the Second Intifada—which featured a wave of suicide bombings and other violence against Israeli civilians—it would be a mistake for American protesters to chant in favor of intifada in the streets. Likewise, rally organizers should actively disassociate from protesters who continue to voice support for Hamas.
As I mentioned earlier, one of the smartest things activists who support the Israeli government have done is craft their messaging in a way that appeals to every segment of the population. When I’d attend Israel-related events as a college student at the University of Georgia, the “Dawgs for Israel,” as they were called, would frequently put up posters of American icons like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking fondly about Israel.
Just as Israel’s government courts global left-of-center public opinion, allies of the Palestinians should be courting global right-of-center public opinion. There’s no reason they couldn’t print out posters and billboards of George W. Bush alongside his words: “There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967,” or British Conservative former prime minister (and current foreign secretary) David Cameron referring to the long-blockaded Gaza Strip as a “prison camp.”
The Palestinian solidarity movement also needs to come to terms with a political reality: most Americans like Israel as a country. A Gallup poll from 2023 found that 68% of Americans have a very or mostly favorable view of Israel.
It’s not hard to imagine why: out of all the countries in the Middle East, Israel is the one that has the closest cultural ties to America. But the fact that Americans may like Israeli culture or Israeli people doesn’t mean that they support the decades-long military occupation and denial of voting rights or sovereignty to the Palestinians.
One way to thread the needle would be for the Palestinian solidarity movement to become a Palestinian and Israeli solidarity movement. Rallies could feature a sea of Israeli and Palestinian flags, and speakers could insist that they abhor both the bombing and starvation of Gaza and the cruel acts of violence against Israeli civilians committed by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups.
Then your average American might learn to see AIPAC and its allies as what they really are: pro-occupation, not pro-Israel. AIPAC has long ignored those within Israel—including former heads of intelligence and security agencies—who’ve warned that an endless occupation only endangers Israel in the long term because Palestinians are unlikely to quietly and peacefully acquiesce to the status quo.
There’s no reason why critics of Israeli policy should ignore them as well; anti-occupation Israelis can be powerful allies. A movement that seeks to speak for both Israelis and Palestinians who want peace is much more powerful than a movement that courts only one side or another.
Maximalist sloganeering might be fun. It can get you likes and shares on social media and thumbs up from your like-minded friends and colleagues. But when millions of lives are in the balance, it’s no longer a time for fun and games. It’s time for the movement to grow up.
Zaid Jilani is a journalist and previously worked as a digital reporter for NewsNation.
A version of this article was originally published at Lee Fang’s Substack.
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