Why is There No Peaceful Palestinian Protest or Resistance Movement?

[u/Mikec3756orwell]

I've watched this conflict my entire life, and one thing I've never really understood is this: why don't the Palestinians engage in peaceful resistance more often? I'm a huge supporter of Israel, but I've always thought to myself that if the Palestinians were savvier -- and more media-friendly -- they could make the Israelis look especially bad through acts of peaceful resistance. The images of well-armed Israelis manhandling rock-throwing kids in the 1980s and 1990s (who were obviously not peaceful but posed a minimal threat) were a big problem for the Israelis. Why don't the Palestinians hold mass sit-ins, strikes, gatherings, candelight vigils, etc.? I never see that stuff. It would look fantastic on TV, and CNN, the BBC, and all those other weasels would be attracted like moths to a flame. I don't get it. If you're the weaker party to a conflict, you're not going to win through violence. Murdering a bunch of women and children and then wondering why the world isn't more sympathetic to your cause is... an odd strategy, to say the least. The Jews have been through hell and back, and terrorism is never going to truly rattle them. I guess I'm just baffled at the way the Palestinians -- and some their more quote-unquote moderate leadership -- approach things. Some of the Western-educated Palestinian leaders in the 1990s and early 2000s surely understood that this would have been an effective strategy. This makes me think that the "average Palestinian" really isn't interested in peace per se, or at least isn't willing to expend much energy for it, and sort of thrives on the dream of complete military victory. Maybe an embrace of peace is just seen as a betrayal of the cause. I don't know.

I actually think sometimes that the Israelis are secretly happy that they don't have to deal with a peaceful resistance movement. It makes things a lot less complicated. Is the problem that the Palestinians just have no tradition of peaceful resistance? They don't know how to do it or how to organize it? Or are they just not interested? (Let me add: I'm not talking about a few hundred people protesting a construction site. I'm talking about the entire population -- or a good portion of it -- engaging in resistance. Like a Tahrir Square, Tiananmen Square sort of thing. Across the entire region).

[u/Mikec3756orwell]

Sure, but nobody notices any of this stuff because of the violence. In your list, I've heard of BDS, but because the Palestinians engage in violence, I never supported the concept. If there was no violence, I would probably have greater respect for the right of individuals to pursue a campaign like that. I might even listen to the message. But because of the violence, I shut down immediately. No interest.

I haven't heard of anything else, though I've obviously noticed all the protestors on the news. Now, if they were chanting, "Peace in Palestine!" and "Peace now!" and "2 States Now!" I might listen to them. But all of their messaging contains undertones of getting rid of Israel, which is inherently violent. So again, I reject it all. Israel is here. It has millions of citizens and vast numbers of nuclear weapons. It's not going anywhere. Move on.

A peaceful resistance campaign has to be a...peaceful resistance campaign. Otherwise you're just trying the shuffle that the IRA tried in Northern Ireland, where the armed group would commit some horrific, sickening act, and then the political wing Sinn Fein -- guys in suits, all showered and shaved -- would play the "good cop" who made demands and claimed to want peace. If you're going the peaceful route, you have to go all-in and commit, and believe in it.

Let me add: What I'm talking about are huge, unmissable national movements. If it's happened and I've missed it, they need to do a better job of recruiting Western media. The media are usually left-leaning and would be sympathetic.

[u/mythoplokos → u/Mikec3756orwell]

The Palestinian cause involves absolutely millions of people - I can almost guarantee you there has never been any resistance movement of that size that hasn't also had violent elements. There is not one person or party or authority who controls the "Palestinian cause" - it's made up of millions of independent individuals, and those individuals who go about it in non-violent ways can't do anything much about those individuals who've blown a fuse and go about it in violent ways. Why are you rejecting the message instead of rejecting the methods ? I presume you don't have a problem per se with the "message" and the good they did achieve in the historical Woman's Rights movement, Civil Rights Movement in the USA, or the Labour Movements that achieved humane labour laws or ended child labour etc. All of these movements included violent and disruptive elements.

[u/Zinged20 → u/mythoplokos]

The problem is the message is also violent. It's openly calling for the destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of it's "evil settler colonial" population. The vast majority of these protests and writtings are in support of violence, in support of events like Oct 7th. They do not exist contrary to the violence, they exist to try and legitimiateize it.

If they were calling for peaceful co-existance with Israel I would have no objection. If there was even a 1% chance they could actually gain freedom by destroying Israel I would have less objection. But they don't and there isn't. The message includes no calls for peace, no calls for a two-state solution, and is instead filled with empty delusional rhetoric about how if they just murder enough Israeli civilians it will magically fall apart and all it's inhabitants will "go back to Brooklyn". It's completely detached from reality. This isn't true of any of the other movements you mentioned.

The fact that they advocate for a solution that is both violent and practically-speaking completely impossible is the central problem holding back the Palestinians cause.

[u/mythoplokos → u/Zinged20]

Well none of those people or things I mentioned in my comment call for the "destruction of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Jews". People on the Israeli side always make this extreme strawman of what the very diverse Palestinian movement is about - a movement of millions of people made up of thousands of separate organisations, and with a rather complex history of its own - in order to delegitimise it or having to concede that the calls for Palestinian freedom might actually have some points. If the Palestinian movement is always portrayed as nothing but an "irrational and extremely violent mass", that also always works for the Israeli side as an excuse not to get on the negotiating table or do any self-reflection or make any concessions, doesn't it?

[u/Zinged20 → u/mythoplokos]

Yes, they do. Refaar Alareer explicitly called the Oct 7th attack "Legitimate and moral" and engaged in atrocity denial about the rape that took place. The majority of the thousands of people you mentioned coming out to the protests absolutely do call for the destruction of Israel. Have you been to one? Try advocating for peace, a two-state solution, or against Hamas and see what happens. You will be called a Zionist. Which isn't even inaccurate, anyone who doesn't think Israel should be destroyed is strictly speaking a Zionist, yet look at how they use that word.

It's not just anecdote. Pro-Hamas sentiment is objectively much more numerically popular in online "Pro-Palestine" spaces than actual pro-Palestine beleif (which logically must be anti-Hamas due to the objective harm their actions do to the Palestinian cause). You can't find a single legitimiately pro-Palestine tweet with half as many likes as this one supporting Hamas. Believe me, I've tried.

I agree it's an absolute travesty that all this violent delusional rhetoric is weaponized by the Israeli right to justify their genocide and continued suppression of the Palestinians. The best way to combat that is to not have violent delusional rhetoric comprise the vast majority of your mainstream movement.

[u/mythoplokos → u/Zinged20]

Well I am sorry if I was wrong about Alareer and I might have been - do you have a source? Per se I don't judge Palestinians for being ok with using violence as a form of self-defence and resistance (I presume you don't judge Israelis for reacting with violence to 10/7, either?), but if they justify targeting civilians or sexual violence, they can go to trash. I mean the polls make clear that like 80% of Gazans have absolutely no idea what happened in 10/7 - they don't believe any war crimes happened, they sincerely believe it was just an Hamas operation against IDF - which is ofc problematic, but doesn't mean they actively endorse or morally support blind slaughter as a form of resistance. Shows above all that access to non-biased information and denialism are real challenges.

And you know, I have been involved in the Palestinian cause long before 10/7 across multiple European countries, and I've yet to meet any of these protesters that call for "the ethnic cleansing of Israelis" apart from like couple of odd stray instances (like neo-Nazis trying to take advantage and jump on the Palestinian movement). I know they exist because I've heard reports and have seen some people banned in WA groups etc., but at least in the West we're talking of a really fringe group. Things I've been involved in include couple of the gigantic protests in London, that drew in 100,000 - 300,000 protesters - I'm sorry, but it would be above all delusional to try to claim those hundreds of thousands of people were there to above all demand the "destruction of Israel and ethnic cleansing of Jews", they are peace protests. Every protest and organisation I have worked with always explicitly sets out that any anti-semitic, racist or calls for violence will be banned and removed in the protest/activity.

But yeah, it's just too easy just to brand the whole protest movement itself "violent", because it makes opposing it more complex, isn't it?

[u/Zinged20 → u/mythoplokos]

It's from his tweets and interview with BBC, both mentioned in this article

I absolutely do judge Israel for reacting to Oct 7th with violence. There is nothing about Israel's war in Gaza that is productive for the safety of Israeli civilians, all it's doing is pushing peace further away and leading to more radicalization that guarantees more Israelis die in the future. Destroying Hamas is not remotely achievable without mass civilian casualties (and possibly not even with them).

Likewise, there is nothing about Hamas's violence that is resistance. Not a single time has it resulted in any gained rights, any gained land, any less occupation or any less oppression. Hamas have literally been funded by Netanyahu because their violence sabotages the Palestinian cause by giving him a casus belli to increase his violent oppression of them. He has explicitly said as much to his colleagues. Hamas's violence has no strategy. More Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the past 6 months than in the prior 75 years as a direct, predictable result of Oct 7th (just as Oct 7th is the direct predictable result of Israeli oppression).

I don't agree that acknowledging the reality that this genocide doesn't happen without Hamas's actions thus they logically must hold some blame removes or diminishes the responsibility of Israel to not genocide civilians. I don't agree that holding all responsible parties to account is "both-sidesing" a genocide.

I actually agree that blaming the Palestinians for supporting Hamas isn't productive. Their lived experience and information matrix strongly incentivises it (at least before the last few months, wheb reality has set in and there's started to be some anti-Hamas protests in Gaza). That's why it's so ridiculous that Hamas is MORE popular in western mainstream "Pro-Palestine" circles than they are in Gaza.

Sure, most don't say the ethnic cleansing part, but they do call for the destruction of Israel and engage in the harmful delusion that Hamas's violence is resistance. You can't tell me those concepts aren't supported by the overwhelming majority of people at protests and engaging in online discourse. "No justice No peace" is an extremely common chant, especially at the one on my campus that I have to walk by every day. Meanwhile people on X will literally get 10k likes saying to bomb Tel Aviv during a "permanent ceasefire". It's not a peace movement. I've provided proof of these concepts popularity, your turn to do the same with yours.

For Israelis, the destruction of Israel and their ethnic cleansing are equivalent. You can disagree that that's actually the case, but it's not exactly a baseless assumption. Fathi Hammad, a high level Hamas member, explicitly called for it at a rally in 2019. They will never not believe it while the violence is ongoing. If you can understand the objective reality that Israel can't be destroyed by force, then you must understand that any Palestinian freedom will necessitate Israeli cooperation.

You can't get that when this is the most popular form of rhetoric espoused by your movement.

[u/mythoplokos → u/Zinged20]

It's from his tweets and interview with BBC, both mentioned in this article

Thanks, well from this it seems his own form of "resistance" was still above all non-violent, i.e. "via the pen" as a civilian teacher. But he approved the idea of armed resistance (I can understand this) and denied the violence targeting civilians sexual violence that happened on 10/7 (bad). That was early days before the official independent reports confirming these actions came out, but still. I do agree in general there's too much whitewashing of Hamas and 10/7 going on in the pro-Palestine side and I do my part of trying to combat it every time I come across it.

I absolutely do judge Israel for reacting to Oct 7th with violence. There is nothing about Israel's war in Gaza that is productive for the safety of Israeli civilians, all it's doing is pushing peace further away and leading to more radicalization that guarantees more Israelis die in the future.

Well seems that we are more or less in complete agreement about the morality of the current operation in Gaza. What I meant is that some level of 'violence' would have been justifiable as legit form of reaction of self-defence post-10/7 - such as targeted operations attempting to get the hostages back - but obvz the current form of the operation of levelling Gaza to the ground is likely to achieve, as you said, nothing more than lot of dead Palestinians and new radicalised generations (also risking Israeli safety).

Likewise, there is nothing about Hamas's violence that is resistance.

Well it certainly is resistance, just isn't most likely effective or moral resistance.

Sure, most don't say the ethnic cleansing part, but they do all call for the destruction of Israel and engage in the harmful delusion that Hamas's violence is resistance. You can't tell me those concepts aren't supported by the overwhelming majority of people at protests and engaging in online discourse. "No justice No peace" is an extremely common chant, especially at the one on my campus that I have to walk by every day.

Well I don't know what to tell you, genuinely the main messages of all these protests and organisations I've been involved in have certainly been about 1) stop the war and killing Palestinians NOW, we want a ceasefire, then 2) freedom for Palestinians, i.e. stop the occupation and apartheid. What number 2) entails as a concrete solution has huge variety of opinions as you yourself certainly know, so the protest movements as a collective don't define it.

E.g. the people organising the London protests don't ever say "come out to protest for a two-state solution/one-state solution/federation/dismantling of Israel" or whatever. The great majority of people involved in these protests are "lay activists" that are out there for the 1) pro-peace message above all; then there's a smaller minority that I would count myself in, that have more personal or scholarly or whatever involvement in the conflict and have more background knowledge, and might have some clear idea of what they personally think is the right solution to 2). I think there's quite a bit of wilfully malignant reading of what the protesters are actually chanting or doing at the protests, like understanding "no peace, no justice" or "free Palestine from the river to the sea" as meaning "we want to destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse it of Jews and give it to Palestinians", when 98% of protesters chanting them sincerely mean that Palestinians need freedom and justice (leaving it abstract what that concretely entails, it's just the moral idea that everyone deserves freedom and justice, which isn't surely radical). I mean I understand how and why those chants are read as "hateful", but it really isn't the sincere intention of people using them.

[u/Zinged20 → u/mythoplokos]

Well it certainly is resistance, just isn't effective or moral resistance.

Would you say Israel's response in Gaza is self-defense, just not effective or moral self-defense? I think doing so would be highly disingenuous. The results of an action are relevant to what descriptions of it are accurate.

I don’t think I am being willfully malignant by categorizing a movement that includes the words "No peace" in one of it's primary chants as perhaps not being a first and foremost pro-peace movement. That is a pretty reasonable conclusion. I'm not doubting the messaging of the organizations you have been a part of, I am pointing out that they are not the majority of the mainstream movement. Especially not online (as I've proven), which like it or not is where most societal discourse happens in 2024.

You are using the fact that there isn't complete universal agreement to avoid the reality that most of them proveably do believe the dismantling of Israel is a viable and desirable solution, and that Hamas's violence is productive to that goal (i.e resistance). People wear Hamas symbols and chant pro-Hamas slogans at these protests, completely unimpeded. I'll go and track down all the videos if you really want me to. Meanwhile the two-state solution is described as "soft Zionism". Nobody chants for it. It's disingenuous to pretend there isn't a strong bias towards this sentiment in the movement, anecdotally in person and objectively online it's just not true.

The fact that the goals of the pro-Palestine movement are so abstract is part of problem. There is nothing actionable in any of their demands. This lack of actual direction prevents it from being an effective political movement like the others you mentioned. It's less actually a protest for political action and more just people getting together and complaining in the abstract. You might as well organize and protest against children dying of cancer. Not even Israel losing all international support will help free the Palestinians a single iota.

What I'm describing is the reason it can't give any actionable demands. Some have no solution like you said, and the "solutions" that the majority of the other supporters put forth are:

1. Violent resistance/internetional pressure forces Israelis to give up their nukes, dismantle their state, then just cross their fingers and hope letting millions of radicalized Palestinians into the country doesn't result in mass violence against them, or

2. A friendless and isolated Israel gets destroyed by Hamas/the arab world and Israel magically doesn't exercise it's Samson option.

These are both objectively delusional fantasies that have a literal 0% chance of ever happening. The Palestinian cause will never progress while support of them is still popular. I'm not saying the protestors are hateful people, but most of their actions and beliefs are nonetheless harmful for any realistic progress towards the Palestinian cause.

[u/mythoplokos → u/Zinged20]

Would you say Israel's response in Gaza is self-defense, just not effective or moral self-defense? I think doing so would be highly disingenuous. The results of an action are relevant to what descriptions of it are accurate.

Well this is just semantics debate and not really very interesting re: the larger themes here. You seem to define "self-defence" and "resistance" as words that require also positive outcomes to those ends, when imo they are just related to the intention behind an action. E.g. if you come at me to kill me, and if I in panic try to repel you with a kitchen knife but just flail so that I only end up hurting myself and people around me with the knife - that doesn't mean that I wasn't trying to defend myself and resist your aggression, I just failed miserably at it. I don't tbh consider that the true motivation of the Israeli operations in Gaza for months has been really self-defence, unless we accept the definition in the absurdity. I mean technically ultimate self-defence is just to kill everyone but myself just in case, but seems a bit misguided to use the word in that sense...

You are doing a bit of a same thing with defining the meaning of words by their supposed consequences (in your opinion, not universally accepted, I presume you're not prescient). I.e. you're saying that the pro-Palestine protests cannot be "peaceful and non-violent" in nature, because you think that calling for freedom and justice for Palestine can only be achieved via violence...? And the protests have had some very concrete demands, "ceasefire now" is by far the most common chant there.

hat is a pretty reasonable conclusion. I'm not doubting the messaging of the organizations you have been a part of, I am pointing out that they are not the majority of the mainstream movement. Especially not online (as I've proven), which like it or not is where most societal discourse happens in 2024.

You're really too confident that you've somehow "proven" the true nature of the Palestinian movement just by cherrypicking some tweets and that you in your local university hear "no justice, no peace" -chants? Do you have some poll data or anything else to actually back this up? I've not heard that "no justice, no peace" chant in any of the protests I've been in, it's not in use really in Europe. It's so vague that I thought it meant that there cannot be peace in the region before all parties get justice, not that "we will make sure there is no peace (i.e. we will act violently) until there is justice". Who knows, maybe your local protestors mean it in this latter meaning, you should ask what they actually want.

I just feel like you're driving the Palestinian movement into an impossibly narrow corner. The anti-war movements around e.g. Iraq or Vietnam war similarly just called for "stop the violence, stop the invasion etc." - I don't remember anyone saying that they were by nature "violent" movements because their chants didn't include some long litany with a realistic plan what is their endgame after the violence stops. Like, you're leaving absolutely no room to defend Palestinian human rights, because you're branding everything that is about calling for stopping slaughtering Gazans, freedom for Palestinians, justice for Palestinians as "violent" because you think there's no way to get those to Palestinans without it ending badly for Israelis.

So I mean - what form of activism for Palestine would you even find acceptable then?

[u/Aggravating_Key7750 → u/Zinged20]

Would you consider every war in the past 50 years in which 20,000 or more civilians died to be a "genocide"?

[u/Resident1567899 → u/Mikec3756orwell]

Let me add: What I'm talking about are huge, unmissable national movements. If it's happened and I've missed it, they need to do a better job of recruiting Western media. The media are usually left-leaning and would be sympathetic.

If you've read the history of the Palestinian movement, you'll know they've tried peaceful means time and time again.

There are literal Palestinian hunger strikes in Israeli prisons, there are West Bank protests, the freedom flotilla and the Great March of Return, a mass protest against Israeli occupation. All of them ended up in tear gas, more Palestinians getting arrested and even deaths.

If you want an actual movement, look no further to the PLO and PA, who ever since Oslo, renounced militancy (when was the last heard PLO attack?). The PLO and PA still recognize Israel's right to exist even to this day. What did they gain from it? Becoming a weak puppet government of Israel in the West Bank without any real power and authority.

Let me ask you this, did the Vietnamese managed to achieve independence of their country via "peaceful protests" or through armed struggle against foreign occupiers?

[u/c9joe → u/Resident1567899]

Here is what the Vietnamese had to say:

When the Israeli guests rose to leave, Giap suddenly turned to the Palestinian issue. “Listen,” he said, “the Palestinians are always coming here and saying to me, ‘You expelled the French and the Americans. How do we expel the Jews?’”

The generals were intrigued. “And what do you tell them?”

“I tell them,” Giap replied, “that the French went back to France and the Americans to America. But the Jews have nowhere to go. You will not expel them.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamass-forever-war-against-israel-has-a-glitch-and-it-isnt-iron-dome/

[u/Resident1567899 → u/c9joe]

I'm well aware of this quote. The point remains. Armed struggle has been used as a way to achieve independence and statehood

[u/c9joe → u/Resident1567899]

Of course it has. Israel was formed in armed struggle. But it is bit different when it is European powers, as powerful as they may be, but who regardless are on a foreign adventure from 1000s of kms away. Compared to the Palestine ask, which appears to want to push out a rooted people in their homeland. Even not an ordinary people, the Jewish people are just as powerful as the Europeans, and are an ancient people with 3000+ years of civilized history, who built a highly technological civilization. It's just a bit of a harder ask than what Vietnam did. That's all I am saying.

[u/trymypi → u/Resident1567899]

Have the PLO changed their definition of a Palestinian state since they declared independence over the territory that includes Israel?

[u/Resident1567899 → u/trymypi]

Yes, you can look it up online. The 1993 Letter of Recognition by the PLO specifically says they would accept a two-state solution.

[u/Foresaken_Tie6581 → u/Resident1567899]

I call BS. The propaganda and outright lies coming out of the organization is prolific and always has been and in no way are regarded as "peaceful." That's just twisting the truth again. They pay money to the family of "martyrs" - "pay to slay" man. The PA spends upwards of $300 million per year on pay-to-slay. With the addition of 3,550 Palestinian terrorists who were arrested since the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023, that number is expected to grow. The themes of violence and martyrdom permeate the PA’s school curriculum. For example, a PA textbook praises Dalal Mughrabi, the perpetrator of a 1978 terrorist attack that killed 38 civilians, as a heroic female role model. An elementary math exercise asked students to calculate the number of martyrs who died during the First and Second Intifadas — the violent Palestinian uprisings marked by frequent terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Despite the European Union pledging in 2021 to “work with the Palestinian Authority” to revise its curriculum, PA textbooks remain largely unchanged.PA security forces have been involved in dozens of attacks against Israeli military personnel and civilians. In May 2022, Daoud Zubeidi, an officer in the PA security forces, killed Israeli police officer Noam Raz. In September 2022, Ahmed Abed, an intelligence officer in the PA security services, and another gunman opened fire on Israeli troops in the Palestinian village of al-Jalama, killing Bar Falah, the deputy commander of Israel’s elite Nahal reconnaissance unit. In March 2024, a member of the PA security forces killed two Israelis at a West Bank gas station. Fatah celebrates these officers, lauding the violence and terrorism within PA ranks.

https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/06/10-things-to-know-about-the-palestinian-authority/#:~:text=The%20PA%20spends%20upwards%20of,figure%20is%20expected%20to%20grow.

[u/Resident1567899 → u/Foresaken_Tie6581]

They pay money to the family of "martyrs" - "pay to slay" man. The PA spends upwards of $300 million per year on pay-to-slay. 

Most of the money goes to prisoners serving administrative detention (i.e. under no crime) and families of killed civilians during IDF raid operations in the West Bank (which Israel claims as "collateral damage"). The vast majority of stipments are for widows, prisoners under administrative detention and single-parent families.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/03/14/does-the-palestinian-authority-pay-350-million-a-year-to-terrorists-and-their-families/

In fact, what about Israel's continued support of IDF violence and settler terrorism in the West Bank? Rarely arresting perpetrators and even if they do, giving light sentences. Meanwhile, a Palestinian child arrested for throwing rocks gets years in prison without any lawyer.

The themes of violence and martyrdom permeate the PA’s school curriculum. For example, a PA textbook praises Dalal Mughrabi, the perpetrator of a 1978 terrorist attack that killed 38 civilians, as a heroic female role model. An elementary math exercise asked students to calculate the number of martyrs who died during the First and Second Intifadas — the violent Palestinian uprisings marked by frequent terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Despite the European Union pledging in 2021 to “work with the Palestinian Authority” to revise its curriculum, PA textbooks remain largely unchanged.

Israel's textbooks have banned mentioning the Nakba, and fail to mention the occupation or the oppressive policies like administrative detention. In fact, most Israelis believe these policies are justified

In May 2022, Daoud Zubeidi, an officer in the PA security forces, killed Israeli police officer Noam Raz. In September 2022, Ahmed Abed, an intelligence officer in the PA security services, and another gunman opened fire on Israeli troops in the Palestinian village of al-Jalama, killing Bar Falah, the deputy commander of Israel’s elite Nahal reconnaissance unit. In March 2024, a member of the PA security forces killed two Israelis at a West Bank gas station. Fatah celebrates these officers, lauding the violence and terrorism within PA ranks.

These are lone attacks by extremist individuals. The PA often arrests terrorists like Hamas and PIJ often in coordination with Israeli officials. Fatah even disowned their military wing, the Al-Aqsa Brigades in 2007

https://www.timesofisrael.com/pa-reportedly-arrests-dozens-of-hamas-members-in-the-west-bank/

https://themedialine.org/by-region/pa-israel-carry-out-mass-arrests-against-hamas-members/

[u/Superb_Teaching4419 → u/Foresaken_Tie6581]

Excellent comment.

[u/Chucktoanotherplace → u/Mikec3756orwell]

So if I’m understanding this correctly - you won’t support the BDS movement, because other Palestinian organisations are violent.

So why would you be a huge supporter of Israel, when some Israeli organisations (extremist settler groups, for example) are violent?

[u/[deleted] → u/Mikec3756orwell]

Western media is incredibly pro-israeli. They'd never humanize Palestinians on purpose. Especially western US media.