In the Media

Jerusalem Post – 31 July 2024

Ever since the horrific events of October 7, the world has been flooded with mass protests and demonstrations.

You’d think these protests would have been against Hamas, the terrorist death cult that invaded Israel and murdered 1,200 innocent people and kidnapped a further 250 others – thus launching a war that inevitably was going to have terrible consequences for Gaza Palestinians as well as Israelis.

And they should have been against Hezbollah, the terror army in Lebanon, which joined the war the very next day and has fired thousands of rockets on Israeli citizens in the north, forcing 60,000 to leave their homes and become refugees in their own country.

And they should also have been against the explosion of antisemitism that has struck fear into Jews across the world, shattering their security and reminding them of the dark days of the 1930s and 1940s.

That would obviously have been the right and decent thing to do.

But, instead, the very opposite happened. 2023 became like something ripped out of the pages of 1984, with our Western democratic liberal values turned on their head – where fascism became liberalism and ignorance became strength.

Almost every week across London, New York, Paris, Sydney and Melbourne, and other major cities around the world, protests are held by those who say they are marching because of the plight of Palestinians.

These protests have often descended into violence, such as last week on July 23, when six protestors were arrested after clashing with police during a demonstration at the Electromold factory in Melbourne, Australia. They claimed the company is “supplying the means for genocide in Gaza.”

A media report referred to the protestors as “pro-Palestine” – yet this a misnomer, because these people certainly aren’t marching for the Palestinians, whatever they claim.

If they were, they would have been out in the streets for years already.

In March 1991, they would have marched against Kuwait’s expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians – which took place after PLO leader Yasser Arafat threw his support behind Saddam Hussein, who had just invaded Kuwait.

More recently, in 2014, they would have marched to object to the Lebanese Government, which closed its borders to Palestinians fleeing the Syrian civil war.

Over the years, they would have protested against Syria and Lebanon, which deny Palestinians citizenship rights and government benefits, barring them from professional employment.

And they certainly would have protested against deaths of 160 children killed building Hamas’ terror tunnels.

Yet, the streets of these great cities around the world have remained eerily silent at this mistreatment of Palestinians.

Of course, when Israel is involved, sudden burning outrage at the treatment of Palestinians is paraded and proclaimed at daily and weekly demonstrations. Yet the only thing demonstrated is hypocrisy.

When protestors fill the streets of major cities, wearing their keffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and chanting the genocidal slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” you can be certain they are not actually motivated by their compassion for Palestinians. We know this because they’ve shown none unless Israel is blamed. Such selective outrage demonstrates they are actually motivated by burning hatred of the State of Israel – and, by extension, the values of Western countries.

The latter has been evidenced in the violence we often see at the demonstrations, and the total lack of respect for the rule of law, or elected authorities.

In Australia, demonstrators even went so far as to scale the Australian parliamentary building in Canberra – the symbol of Australian democracy – breaching all security and draping the walls with their genocidal slogans.

This was a direct attack on the democratic institutions of Australia, which should have warranted a very harsh response, but instead all they received was a weak two-year ban – a slap on the wrist.

The uncomfortable truth about the demonstrators is that many have been indoctrinated into a cult of extremism.

They can no longer make a moral distinction between justice and injustice. They are unable to even consider the harsh reality that Palestinians generally suffer their greatest oppression and inequality, not at the hands of Israel, as is the popular narrative, but at the hands of their fellow Arabs who profess to care for them but do very little to help.

Hamas, which rules Gaza, has made it abundantly clear that it does not care about innocent lives, welcoming every death of a civilian as “necessary” – happy to sacrifice Palestinian lives in its quest to annihilate the Jewish state and its people.

Yet there are no protests against Hamas, the true authors of the destruction of Gaza and its civilian residents, within the “pro-Palestine” movement. In fact, it’s the opposite – those who protested against Hamas have been attacked.

If people truly want to stand up for the ordinary Palestinians of Gaza, they should express their full support for Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas and end the nightmare of its rule in Gaza.

Anything else is not protesting the plight and suffering of Palestinians, but is in favour of even more such suffering.

Justin Amler – Policy Analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council