Free Palestine — From Hamas!

4/27/24

I wish I could take credit for that title, but I can’t. I saw it on a sign being held up in a rally, somewhere. So many rallies; so hard to keep track. In any case, I’ve been struggling to figure out exactly where I stand on the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have become so ubiquitous in recent days. Yes, I’m horrified by the scale of the destruction and suffering on the part of innocents in Gaza, and I hold the freedoms of speech and assembly as core American values, but the alignment of large numbers of people with Hamas is baffling to me. Hamas is a terrorist organization that orchestrated the 10/7 attack and continues to hold Israeli hostages. It’s deeply disturbing to hear these demonstrators chanting the slogans of Hamas and championing the Hamas agenda.

I should start by clearly stating that I’m a Jew, dedicated to the proposition that a Jewish state is critical for the millions of people currently living in Israel who would otherwise have nowhere else to go, to say nothing about all the Jews living elsewhere who, at some point, may need a safe haven if and when antisemitism rears its ugly head — as it surely will. I’m reminded of the sentiment that the Holocaust likely would have been avoided had a state existed at the time with the willingness to absorb all of those “undesirables.” Have we learned nothing from history?