Hate in disguise: Undermining Israel's right to exist through 'pro-Palestinian' campaigns - opinion

• Published date: 28 April 2024
• Author: DR. RONEN HOFFMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Often, these organizations, many of which are funded and supported by countries like Iran and Qatar, manage to camouflage their true motives, which, in the narrow and immediate sense, are to completely undermine Israel's legitimacy to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people in its historic homeland. In the broader and long-term sense, they seek to undermine the liberal-democratic order and challenge constructive progressiveness, committed to maintaining state frameworks that respect a variety of identities, beliefs, opinions, and different worldviews. Therefore, although in the common discourse in the media and social networks these organizations are presented as pro-Palestinian, their primary concern is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but opposition to the very existence of the State of Israel, as part of a deeper challenge to Western democracy as a state framework where fair interactions between different social and political currents are supposed to occur with respect for compromises and agreements

If these organizations were genuinely pro-Palestinian, they would certainly call for the liberation of the Palestinian people in Gaza from the terrible burden of Hamas, the most extreme terrorist organization in the world, which not only beheads, rapes, and murders Israeli women and men, but also tortures and kills political rivals from within, and throws Palestinian homosexuals from rooftops to their deaths. If they were pro-Palestinian, they would call on the Palestinian political leadership to return to the negotiation table and promote dialogue with the Israeli government - not the current one of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, but the next one of Yair Lapid, Naftali Bennett, Benny Gantz, and Avigdor Lieberman - to promote the idea of separation into two states, an idea that has been repeatedly rejected through violence and terrorism by the Palestinians whenever Israel was ready for it in the past.

Their current occupation of campuses by these "pro-Palestinian" organizations is unlike the expressions of social-political protest known in the Western world. It is organized, violent, and brutal. It involves threats and abuse against Jewish and Israeli students, some of whom still deny the very right to exist of the only democratic state in the region and actively seek its destruction. These organizations cleverly exploit the freedom of expression, a key democratic constitutional principle practiced in the countries where they operate, and...