by Izzy Salant
“When Israel cannot be blamed, they cannot be bothered to rally on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza,” David May, of FDD, told JNS.
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Anti-Israel protesters demonstrate in Lower
Manhattan in New York City on March 10, 2025. Photo by Timothy A.
Clary/AFP via Getty Images. |
Protesters, who have turned out in the streets stateside and worldwide purportedly in support of Palestinians in the months since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 terror attacks have largely tipped their hands, experts told JNS, that they are really anti-Israel rather than pro-Palestinian, due to their silence as Gazans risk their lives protesting Hamas in the streets.
Those protests in the Strip have drawn thousands of Gazans, including Oday Nasser Al Rabay, whose relatives say that Hamas tortured and killed him before dumping his remains in front of his family’s home. (Rabay is also referred to as Saadi.)
“A 22-year-old Gazan was tortured and brutally murdered for protesting Hamas rule in Gaza,” wrote Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.). “No outrage from the pro-Hamas radical left in the United States and no reporting from mainstream media because it doesn’t fit their narrative.”
David May, research manager and a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that the silence of activists on the Gaza protests “confirmed that the pro-Palestine movement in the West is little more than cheerleaders for Hamas.”
“When Israel cannot be blamed, they cannot be bothered to rally on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza,” he said. “The current protests are a perfect gauge of whether activists in the West support the Palestinians or merely oppose Israel.”
“Many Palestinians oppose the Iran-backed terrorist group that has repeatedly brought devastation upon Gaza by marching it into failed wars of annihilation against the Jewish state,” he added. “But the complex reality is too much for their simplistic understanding of the conflict and does not fit neatly into their oppressor-oppressed narrative.”
Jason Isaacson, chief policy and political affairs officer at the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that this lack of activism “has often been the case since Oct. 7.”
“Pro-Palestinian activists in this country have looked the other way and ignored atrocities committed by Hamas to further their anti-Israel agenda,” he said. Isaacson hopes that Saadi’s death, while tragic, will serve as “a wake-up call” to Hamas supporters in the United States, he added.
“Recently, some Gazans have risked everything to voice their disgust with Hamas,” Isaacson said. “Saadi paid with his life for speaking out. I hope they will finally realize who are the true enemies of a peaceful and secure future for the Palestinian people.”
Sam Markstein, national political director and communications director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS that “the antisemitic, anti-American, useful idiots for Hamas and their patrons in Iran have refused time and again to demand the release of the innocent hostages held in Gaza.”
“It should come as no surprise that these ghouls are totally silent in the face of Odai Naser Saadi’s brutal murder,” he said. “They do not seek to ‘free Palestine’ from Hamas terrorists. They seek the Jewish state’s destruction and they continue to be exposed day after day.”
At press time, National Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow had not issued statements in support of Rabay or of the anti-Hamas protesters in Gaza.
There have been some exceptions. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who grew up in Gaza and who has been sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wrote “shame on all who failed the protesters in Gaza and ignored their pleas and cries for freedom, dignity and a future free of Hamas, terrorism, violence and conflict.”
“Shame on all the ‘journalists,’ ‘human rights’ fraudsters, ‘pro-Palestine’ and ‘solidarity’ activists, college campus advocates, academics, clueless leftists, conspiracy theorists, intifadists, jihadists, professors and other imbeciles who didn’t utter a word in support of tens of thousands of Gazans demanding an end to Hamas and the war that it started,”
The poet Mosab Abu Toha, who grew up in Gaza and now lives in Syracuse, N.Y., is a harsh critic of the Jewish state and its war against Hamas in the Strip. “Based on people’s reactions to the protests in Gaza, I landed upon a shocking fact: Most people stand in solidarity with Gaza and not with the people of Gaza,” he wrote.
Izzy Salant
Source: https://www.jns.org/silence-on-anti-hamas-gaza-protests-shows-many-are-anti-israel-not-pro-palestinian-experts-say/
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