What “Free Palestine” Really Means

On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel. They murdered over 1,200 defenseless people, including children. They raped, tortured, pillaged, and took 250 hostages.

The next day, large crowds gathered in Western cities — London, Paris, New York, and on college campuses — not to condemn the Hamas terrorists, but to endorse their actions.

History will regard this shocking sequence of events in one of two ways: either as the unofficial end of Western Civilization, or the shock that finally awakened enough people to save it.

I say this because Israel personifies the values we associate with Western Civilization — both as a source of those values and their modern manifestation — everything from the Ten Commandments to biotechnology.

Israel’s enemies, those who attacked on October 7, do not share these values. They have no interest in representative democracy, freedom of speech, or freedom of religion. Hamas, and its patron Iran, run brutal dictatorships. They make no pretense about their immediate goal: the total destruction of the Jewish State; their ultimate goal, the subjugation of all non-Muslims.

To compare them to the Nazis in their Jew-hatred is entirely apt, except for one perverse distinction: the Nazis worked hard to hide their crimes; Hamas brags about theirs. This was a defining feature of the October 7 massacre. The terrorists used GoPro cameras to broadcast it to the world. When the hostages arrived back in Gaza, many bloodied and brutalized, cheering crowds filled the streets.

Hamas likely assumed the past would be prologue; that after a limited military incursion, Israel would back down under international pressure, as it had after previous “wars” in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021.

But this time was different. Even as it was restrained by the Biden Administration, Israel pushed past all previous limits. It demanded Hamas return the hostages and relinquish control over Gaza — or face destruction, however long it took.

Israel had no choice. All governments understand that their first obligation is to protect their citizens.

But, for some reason, in the eyes of much of the world, Israel is the exception to this rule. It may defend itself, but only to a point — which is like saying to a surgeon you can cut out the cancer, but not all of it.

As in previous Gaza wars, the burden to end the conflict was placed not on the aggressors, but on the nation they attacked.

At any moment, Hamas could have spared its people further suffering by releasing the hostages. But it refused to do so.

In response, Israel did what militaries have done throughout the history of warfare: applied greater military pressure with the goal of vanquishing the enemy bent on destroying it.  

So again, we must ask: why is Israel, the nation savagely attacked, portrayed as the villain and the savage attackers as heroes?

By any reasonable moral calculus, shouldn’t it be the other way around?

It should — but it’s not. The reason is tragic, though not surprising. Israel has many haters:

First, the Islamists — which, sadly, includes most of the Arab world and much of the Muslim non-Arab world. Millions of these Islamists, taught from birth to hate Jews, now live in Europe and America, where they engage in furious anti-Israel advocacy. For them, “Death to Israel” and “Death to Jews” is a matter of faith.

Second, the antisemites — members of humanity’s oldest hate club. Convinced Jews are to blame for nearly every calamity, impervious to logic and facts, they naturally want Israel gone.

Third, the hardened leftists. This group includes many journalists and academics. They despise Western Civilization and want to see it brought low. Since Israel embodies Western Civilization and all its supposed ills, Israel is enemy number one.

Fourth, the overeducated — those indoctrinated into the leftist narrative:  Israel is the oppressor and Palestinians, the oppressed. In this worldview, the oppressor can do no right, and the oppressed can do no wrong. Burning whole families alive is a legitimate form of “resistance.”

Fifth, the ignorant — the protest crowds who self-righteously endorse the latest leftist cause, whether “systemic racism,” transgender rights, or now “settler colonialism.” They chant “From the river to the sea” without knowing or caring which river or which sea.

Sixth, a growing faction on the right that resents Israel because they think it drags the U.S. into Middle East conflicts, against America’s own interest. They ignore two centuries of United States’ involvement in the region, starting with the Barbary pirates.  For reasons that are difficult to fathom, many indulge the bizarre fantasy that a country of ten million people controls — through blackmail and other malevolent means — a nation of 350 million people and has consistently done so through multiple administrations.

All these groups share one thing in common: they effectively want Israel to commit suicide, to let itself be destroyed. That Israel refuses only enrages them further.

That Islamists and antisemites advocate for Israel’s destruction at least makes sense, given their worldview. That the others share that goal does not. Because by joining the enemies of Western Civilization — in pushing Israel to commit suicide — they’re cutting their own throats.

I’m Larry Elder for Prager University.