Global protests misplace blame: Focus should be on Hamas and Hezbollah - opinion

Ever since the horrific events of October 7, the world has been flooded with mass protests and demonstrations. You’d think these protests would have been against Hamas, the terrorist death cult that invaded Israel and murdered 1,200 innocent people and kidnapped a further 250 – thus launching a war that would have terrible consequences for Gazans as well as Israelis.

The protests should have been against Hezbollah, the terror army in Lebanon, which joined the war on October 8, and has fired thousands of rockets on Israeli citizens in the North, forcing 60,000 to leave their homes and become refugees in their own country – and most recently and tragically, killing 12 Druze children at a football match.

And they should also have been against the explosion of antisemitism that has struck fear into Jews across the world, shattering their security and reminding them of the dark days of the 1930s and ’40s.

That would obviously have been the right and decent thing to do.

But, instead, the very opposite happened. The year 2023 became like something from the pages of George Orwell’s futuristic novel, 1984, with our Western democratic liberal values turned on their head; with liberalism becoming fascism and ignorance becoming strength.

Almost every week in London, New York, Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, and other major cities around the world, protests are held by those who say they are marching because of the plight of Palestinians.

These protests have often descended into violence, such as on July 23, when six protesters were arrested after clashing with police during a demonstration at the Electromold factory in Melbourne, Australia. They claimed the company was “supplying the means for genocide in Gaza.”

A media report referred to the demonstrators as “pro-Palestine.” This a misnomer because these people certainly aren’t marching for the Palestinians, whatever they claim. If they were, they would have been out in the streets for years.

In March 1991, they would have marched against Kuwait’s expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians after Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat threw his support behind Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had just invaded Kuwait.

More recently, in 2014, they would have marched in objection to the Lebanese government, which closed its borders to Palestinians fleeing the Syrian civil war.

Over the years, they would have protested against Syria and Lebanon, countries that deny their Palestinians citizenship rights and government benefits, barring them from professional employment. And they certainly would have protested against the deaths of 160 children killed while building the Hamas terror tunnels.

However, the streets of these great cities around the world have remained eerily silent at this mistreatment of Palestinians.

Of course, when Israel is involved, sudden burning outrage is paraded and proclaimed at daily and weekly demonstrations. Yet, the only thing demonstrated is hypocrisy.

Protesters true motives

When protesters fill the streets of major cities, wearing their keffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags, and chanting the genocidal slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” you can be certain they are not motivated by compassion for Palestinians. We know this because they’ve shown none unless Israel is blamed. Such selective outrage demonstrates that the protests are motivated by a burning hatred of the State of Israel – and, by extension, the values of Western countries.

The latter has been evidenced in the violence we often see at the demonstrations, along with the total lack of respect for the rule of law or for elected authorities.

In Australia, demonstrators even went as far as to scale the Australian parliamentary building in Canberra – the symbol of Australian democracy – breaching all security and draping the walls with their genocidal slogans. This was a direct attack on the democratic institutions of Australia, which should have warranted a very harsh response, but instead, all they received was a weak two-year ban – a slap on the wrist.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE truth about the demonstrators is that many have been indoctrinated into a cult of extremism. They can no longer make a moral distinction between justice and injustice.

They are unable even to consider the harsh reality that Palestinians generally suffer their greatest oppression and inequality, not at the hands of Israel, as is the popular narrative, but at the hands of their fellow Arabs who profess to care for them but do very little to help.

Hamas, which rules Gaza, has made it abundantly clear that it does not care about innocent lives, welcoming every death of a civilian as “necessary.” Hamas is happy to sacrifice Palestinian lives in its quest to annihilate the Jewish state and its people. Despite this situation, within the “pro-Palestine” movement there are no protests against Hamas, the true authors of the destruction of Gaza and its civilian residents. Quite the opposite, those who protested against Hamas have been attacked.

If people truly want to stand up for the ordinary Palestinians of Gaza, they should express their full support for Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas and end the nightmare of its rule in Gaza. Anything else is not about protesting the plight and suffering of the Palestinians but is, rather, in favor of much more such suffering.

The writer is a policy analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).