It has been 17 days since Hamas committed the horrifying massacre on the holiday of Simchat Torah, which marked the beginning of the Swords of Iron War. As both a social media activist and a team commander deployed near the Gaza border, I face the challenging task of balancing my role between focusing on my mission as a soldier and combating the anti-Israel rhetoric on social media.
As usual, when tensions rise, the Israel-Palestine discourse on social media intensifies.
Alongside unprecedented support for Israel and widespread condemnation of the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas, we witness a worrying phenomenon of "woke" and "progressive" activists who inexplicably excuse, ignore, or outright support Hamas's acts of violence, including massacres, rape, and kidnapping of civilians.
When Israel is not on the headlines, many of these activists champion causes such as LGBTQ rights, women's rights, and indigenous liberation. It begs the question: How can they rally behind a genocidal terrorist organization that is backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and openly calls for the extermination of Jews, the execution of LGBTQ individuals, and the abuse of women?
The answer lies in the successful and gradual infiltration of the anti-Israel mob into progressive spheres in the West. Through a sophisticated campaign that included appropriation of progressive causes and rhetoric, anti-Israel activists managed to sway the hearts of the masses, and convince them that the world’s sole Jewish state is the root of all evil in the Middle East.
Pro-Palestine rallies are marketed as anti-colonialist displays of solidarity with the Palestinian people, while attendees shamelessly call to “Globalize the Intifada,” an explicit call to commit terror attacks against Jews worldwide. The chant “From the river to the sea,” first used by Nazi collaborator and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, as a dog whistle to exterminate the Jews of Palestine, has now become a basic tenet of Western progressivism. The fundamental Jew-hatred of the Palestinian leadership and society is completely irrelevant in that case.
This campaign has implications both on social media and on the streets and campuses in the West. A video that has gone viral in the past week completely denies the atrocities committed by Hamas, claiming that Israel lied about the rape of women, the murder of 250 partygoers in Be’eri and the beheading of babies, despite the endless and shocking evidence. Another video taken during a pro-Palestinian rally in Canada showed a protester wearing a keffiyeh and AK-47 earrings, proudly announcing that “everything Hamas did is justified”.
Therefore, it is no surprise that by now, the “woke” crowd is fully desensitized to the slaughtering of more than 1,300 Israelis. To these same activists who blindly support the “liberation of Palestine by any means necessary,” October 7th was just a consequence of Israeli “occupation,” a brave act of decolonization, an uprising against the “Zionist colonizers”.
The pro-Palestine camp has succeeded in doing what neo-Nazis have failed to do, and that is to popularize the killing of Jews under the excuse of justice and liberation. This grotesque phenomenon should serve as a wake-up call to all of those who consider themselves civilized. We cannot allow Hamas’s murder of Jews and crimes against humanity to be whitewashed with assertions of human rights. When Hamas comes for your children next, ask yourself: “Why did I stay silent and overlook what happened on October 7th, 2023?”
Adiel Cohen is an active IDF reservist, a pro-Israel TikTok and Instagram influencer, and a Jewish-Israeli rights activist based in Tel Aviv.
This op-ed is published in partnership with a coalition of organizations that fight antisemitism across the world. Read the previous article by Jonathan Turner.