The month or so since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians has been difficult.
It’s been difficult for the Israeli families mourning their dead and missing their kidnapped.
It’s been difficult for the Palestinians in Gaza who have suffered a cruel and unnecessary escalation in their suppression by the Israeli government.
It’s been difficult for Jews and Muslims worldwide who have suffered senseless bigotry.
In the face of all this global trauma, it’s important that outsiders like this columnist and almost everyone else in the West take a step back and examine how we react to this situation. Far too many people who claim to be on the side of the oppressed Palestinians are apparently little better than those they so actively oppose.
Those suffering do not have the opportunity to breathe and rationalize. They should not be expected to be perfect right now. We do. And we should be.
Before that, though, it’s crucial to clarify what this opinion is not.
Firstly, it’s not a discussion of the numerous examples of anti-semites using the plight of Palestinians as a cover for their bigotry. This type of behavior and ideology, while obviously dangerous, repulsive and abundant, is more overtly noxious than what this opinion will focus on.
Those who defend the vandalization of random Jewish businesses or synagogues with pro-Palestinian messages or a lynch mob in a Russian airport aren’t going to be convinced by anything said here. The same applies for those who responded to a tweet by Sen. Bernie Sanders on the fifth anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting with expressions of disgust or rage at his audacity to memorialize dead Jews.
These folks are just plain ol’ bigots. They’re not going to be persuaded by anything here.
Secondly, it’s not a distraction from the grassroots protests around the world in support of the Palestinian cause.
The views discussed in this opinion are neither unique nor unpopular. One example mentioned below is from a YouTuber with well over a million subscribers. These beliefs are global and local. They are common. They are relevant. It’s imperative to discuss and combat them.
Thirdly (and most importantly), this opinion is not intended to invalidate the lived experiences of Palestinians or to discredit legitimate efforts to end their subjugation by the Israeli government.
This is not an equivalence, but a qualification. You can’t support a movement without outlining exactly what it is that you support and what you don’t.
This opinion is an exercise in both walking and chewing gum at the same time. It’s possible to recognize the existence of a system of oppression, desire its end and understand how it leads to resistance while also criticizing specific acts of resistance and understanding that oppression itself also derives from a systemic origin.
This is what so many “leftists” fail to understand in their simplistic understanding of the situation and of the world.
Note that terms like “leftist” will be in quotes throughout this opinion. This is intentional. While fascists seek to enforce oppression within the existing social order, these “leftists” will prove to be committed to creating their systems of oppression from scratch—or at the very least by just flipping the current hierarchies.
There are two primary, problematic positions on the “far-left” when it comes to this situation: ethnonationalism and the glorification of violence.
Fundamentally, the ethnonationalist who supports an ethnostate for an oppressed population is no different than one who supports an ethnostate for a privileged population. Zionism is fundamentally the creation and maintenance of a state and government for and by Jewish people within the Holy Land.
It necessitates a hierarchy because it prioritizes one demographic above all others. Nazism was fundamentally about doing the same for Germans in Europe. Palestinian ethnonationalism is just as problematic.
White nationalists in the United States often oppose immigration from Central and South America based on the idea that the U.S. is for white people and not for other demographics. This is not magically more valid when a demographic does it just because of their claim to or possession of indigeneity. If you oppose restrictions on immigration, then you must oppose ethnonationalism. Everywhere.
Those chanting “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” are not all ethnonationalists who seek to expel every Jew (or at least the white ones) from the region, but there are undoubtedly some who believe that Palestine is only for Arab Muslims. They are wrong.
Ultimately, it seems that the ethnonationalists’ problem is not with the subjugation of Palestinians by Israel but rather with the presence of the Israeli population in the region.
This invalidation of the lived experience of every Israeli is repugnant and frankly bigoted. A population is not invalid because of how it came to inhabit a region. The story of human migration is filled with examples of conquest and supplantation.
This is unfortunate, but the solution is not the expulsion of non-indigenous populations because they have committed the sin of existing outside their supposed primordial homeland.
Human beings are not bound to their little square of earth by some vague, unbreakable chain of ancestry. Multiple peoples can have perfectly valid attachments to the same territory—all while living in harmony.
As for the violence fetish, look no further than “left-wing” YouTuber JT Chapman, who runs the popular channel Second Thought. He posted on X (Twitter) the morning of the October 7 Hamas attacks “No doubt we’ll have wall to wall coverage of ‘atrocities’ now that it’s the genocidal settlers on the receiving end. This is what a liberation struggle looks like.”
Hamas, of course, is not a liberatory organization. It’s a far-right jihadist organization that, if in power, would suppress Jews, Chrisitans, gay and transgender people, atheists and any other group it despises under its bastardization of Islam.
Regardless, the idolization of violence by actual revolutionary organizations is just as regrettable.
Violence is often understandable. It may even be considered necessary. But it’s never moral. It’s never something to find pleasure in. It’s not something to justify and validate with fancy political theory and abridged histories.
Do not bathe in the blood and tears of your opponent in the struggle for your freedom. Do not lick your lips as you taste the phlegm they spit at your face. Do not smile as their bullets pierce your flesh and shatter your bones, and do not scream with delight as you shoot right back at them.
A “liberation struggle” isn’t a national accomplishment or a ritual experience. It’s horrific. It’s not something to be excited by, but something to mourn over the necessity for. The victorious freedom fighter should break down in tears—those of sorrow, not of joy—for all they went through and all they had to do.
Violence, if it must be resorted to, is only ever a tool, not an end in and of itself. And it’s not a tool that should be used with glee, but with melancholy.
Still, it’s important not to blame people for having less than ideal reactions to systems of oppression.
It should be no surprise that Palestinians, subjected to decades of dehumanization and subjugation, resorted to radical solutions and explanations. Hamas, jihadism, ethnonationalism and antisemitism, like all incarnations of hate, didn’t arise from out of nowhere.
But in the same way, Zionism, colonization, genocide and Islamaphobia were also born from historical conditions. You can’t excuse October 7 as the result of systems of oppression and turn around and act like Israel’s demons are some personal moral failing, or worse, the work of the devil.
Privilege and power are beholden to the whims of context in the same way that oppression is.
Simply put, all acts of resistance have explanations, but not all acts of resistance need to be justified and emulated.
To paraphrase John Lennon, if you go chanting praises of Hamas, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow. And to quote him directly, “When you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out?”
Matthew Pellittieri is a 19-year-old history and political science sophomore from Ponchatoula.
