The Vain Attempt To Tie BLM To Hamas

It won't hurt the Left, but it could end up censoring the Right

Across the country, pro-Palestinian demonstrators are protesting the war in the Gaza Strip. Many of these protesters tie their struggle to domestic left-wing concerns, linking their fight to Black Lives Matter and “indigenous rights.” The protesters have largely succeeded in making the Palestine side “woke.” They’ve managed to even attract “Queers for Palestine.”

The Right sees this connection as an opportunity. Chris Rufo has made cementing this connection a priority. “Conservatives need to create a strong association between Hamas, BLM, DSA, and academic ‘decolonization’ in the public mind,” Rufo said in a tweet. “Connect the dots, then attack, delegitimize, and discredit. Make the center-left disavow them. Make them political untouchables.”

Rufo, Daily Wire personality Matt Walsh, and others have drawn the connection between Palestinians and the domestic Left. They’ve unearthed clips of Hamas leaders lamenting the death of George Floyd, black leaders expressing solidarity with Palestine, and academics arguing that Palestine is part of a global decolonization struggle.

The link is indisputable. Conservatives who primarily focus on domestic matters like this connection because it makes the foreign conflict relevant to issues here at home. And it’s a connection that Palestinian protesters openly embrace.

But the connection isn’t serving its intended purpose.

The center-left remains resolutely in favor of mass immigration, Black Lives Matter, and all the other woke factors contributing to Palestinian support. Pro-Israel liberals are bothered by the connection, but they won’t jettison their past commitments over it. The center-right, meanwhile, doesn’t want to distract the primary focus from Israel. Everything else is secondary. 

While the establishment is outraged by rising anti-Israel sentiment, their focus remains restricted to that issue. Zionists don’t want to run with the Right’s narrative. Instead of seeing the protesters as left-wing non-whites, they view their enemies as Nazis. Tens of thousands of non-whites marched for Palestine, but the ADL still honed in on the handful of “white supremacists” that demonstrated against Israel. Zionists also want to portray their side as the real anti-colonialist, indigenous power. Apparently, the Palestinians are the oppressive imperialists. Building a unified front against “decolonization” doesn’t work when Zionists vehemently deny they are settlers and appropriate woke language to defend their cause. 

This is similar to the “Stop Asian Hate” moment from a few years ago. Across the country, blacks attacked Asians in a wave of violent crime. And yet, Asian activists blamed Donald Trump and “white supremacy.” lt was more palatable—and structurally incentivized—to blame white people than the actual perpetrators. And so the movement remained within the safe confines of the Left, despite having organic partners to solve the underlying problem on the Right. Zionists are doing a similar thing here.They feel it’s better for their cause to call their enemies neo-Nazis than POC. 

Two possible results can follow from outrage over Palestinian protests. One is immigration restriction, which the aforementioned conservative activists want. The other is speech restriction, which the GOP and zionist interest groups are lobbying for. 

Donald Trump alone wants to issue a blanket ban on immigrants from Muslim countries. The former president pledges to reinstate his travel ban if elected. He also says he wants to bar entry to migrants who hate America and want Israel’s destruction. It’s unclear how that will work, but he is advocating for it. The farthest other Republicans go is to say that America should not take in any Palestinian refugees and should deport anyone who supports Hamas. That at least indicates that there will be strong opposition to any attempt to resettle Palestinians refugees on American soil.

But there will be no deportations while Biden remains in office. Our current president doesn’t even deport criminal illegal aliens, so it’s a stretch to imagine he will deport minorities engaged in constitutionally protected protests. There’s also little chance that Biden will impose a travel ban on Muslim-majority countries. The national restrictions and deportations have to wait until Republicans take power again. The conflict may be over by then, which means Republicans will probably forget their promises.

If implemented, the additional speech restrictions will have a cooling effect on legitimate political speech. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to use state power to eradicate anti-Israel sentiments on college campuses. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley wants to send in the National Guard to take down campus Palestinian protesters. Conservative legal analyst Andy McCarthy wants the deep state to hunt down all anti-Semites in America. As I wrote last week, this is nuts. Speech restrictions, especially those aimed at “hate,” will primarily hurt right-wingers. It expands the regime’s powers to go after dissidents. Yet, Republicans happily cheer this on.

The war on speech is the most immediate result of backlash toward Palestinian protests. It would be one thing if this would lead to bans on Ibram X. Kendi’s books and the elimination of white privilege teaching. But that’s not happening. It’s directed only at people who dare criticize a foreign country. This is bound to result in censoring people on the Right rather than on the Left. Anti-white hate would still be ok; the activists would just need to avoid Israel.

Everyone can see the Palestinian protests are driven by the far-left. But viewing them as a major problem will cause the Right to adopt positions that will haunt them. Rather than targeting our efforts on suppressing wokeness, we would stifle debate about a foreign policy matter and open the doorway for hate speech laws. That would count as a self-own.

It’s best to keep the Palestine conflict in proper perspective. It’s a foreign affair. The Right should oppose intervention in the war, taking in migrants, and suppressing free speech. There’s a lot of risk in trying to turn this into a domestic affair. Instead of an opportunity to destroy the Left, we end up empowering our enemies to silence ourselves.

Mass migration may increase support for Palestine, but don’t expect the establishment to care about the cause. The center-left and center-right just want to keep the focus on Israel and ignore what really matters.