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The Truth about the Gaza Protests

(Spectator-UK) Jonathan Sacerdoti - Over the last week, crowds of Palestinians, chanting slogans against Hamas, have taken to the streets in a rare public display of dissent. Where are the Palestinian "solidarity" activists now? The same keffiyeh-clad groups that filled the streets of London, Paris, and New York waving PLO flags and denouncing Israel as "genocidal" seem conspicuously quiet when confronted with images of ordinary Palestinian Arabs in Gaza protesting not against Israel, but against Hamas. But what exactly do these demonstrations represent? We must resist the temptation to project our own liberal fantasies onto these images. The idea that Palestinians in Gaza are suddenly casting off the yoke of Hamas in pursuit of democracy and pluralism is dangerously naive. In truth, many of those now seen chanting against Hamas were, until recently, its most ardent supporters. Their opposition today is not to Hamas's goals, but to the consequences of its failed rule and its genocidal attack on Israel. The slogans are an attempt to distance from Hamas as a governing entity, not as a violent movement. It is not the cause that is being rejected, but the cost of continuing to pay the price for Hamas's strategic miscalculations. Idit Bar, one of Israel's leading researchers on the Arab world and Islam, explains that two motivations seem to drive these protests: fear and honor. Fear, first and foremost, of what lies ahead. Many Palestinian Arabs sense the winds shifting. They recognize that Hamas's presence is now a liability. The second driver is the deeply embedded cultural code of honor. Hamas cannot simply surrender or negotiate from weakness. Public pressure gives Hamas a face-saving route back to the table. The latest protests in Gaza do not mark a moral revolution. At best, they are a flicker of pragmatism. The brutality continues, the ideology remains, and the West's willingness to believe in fairy tales prevents it from confronting the hard truth: that not every culture, not every movement, not every identity is morally equal. Until we are ready to face that, we will remain blind to what is actually happening in Gaza.
2025-04-01 00:00:00
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