The Achilles Heel of the “Free Palestine” Movement: Anti-Americanism

The consequence of living in a world fueled by social media incentives and blind adoption of simplistic chants and slogans is a lack of principled and nuanced debate. The rhetoric and manufactured outrage makes it hard for the average American to get a clear sense of what is going on. Many see the current protests as nothing more than two opposing sides, arguing over a decades long battle between two faraway countries. Many onlookers wonder what this has to do with America - Why should they care??

Many average Americans with the perception that they don’t have a horse in this race don’t yet realize that those Israeli flags represent the same values and principles of the American flag — freedom, rule of law, and liberal democratic values. This is a fight between Western Democracy and Anti-Americanism (that is increasingly resembling Sharia Authoritarianism). It is a fight to preserve our values and way of life against those that want to destroy them to fulfill their ever-changing ideological visions.

To make this distinction crystal clear, Israel-supporting and America-loving counter-protesters should be hoisting the American flag, a whole sea of them, to wake society up to the true stakes of this debate.

While some protesters in the “Free Palestine” movement may be well-intentioned and peaceful, the vast majority of them are conforming to the increasingly common view that Zionists must be punished or eliminated by any means necessary. And as we have repeatedly seen, these radicals can not be satiated — the demands for “social justice” are only expanding (e.g. reparations, divestment, boycotts, etc.), as do the list of “oppressors” they are targeting (first Israelis, then Jews, then Americans). In only 6 months, we went from decolonization workshops to “Free Palestine” marches to arrests and campus expulsions with explicit “Death to America” calls.?

The anti-American wing of these protestors doesn't realize that it is shooting itself in the foot — the more the protests turn against the West, the more they will alienate their moderate supporters, and eventually, the rest of our country.?

We have seen it time and time again over the past few weeks and months: there is no room for support of the West in the pro-Palestine movement. Suppose a brave soul in these encampments hoists an American flag, even if a majority of the group supports it. In such cases, the most extreme, loudest hecklers amongst them have not allowed what they see as an enemy or “oppressor” flag to be raised in their midst.

By re-framing this fight as anti-American or anti-democracy, we will lead the moderate wing to abandon the extremists, and whatever credibility and support those remaining currently have will collapse shortly afterward as popular opinion sours on them.

With these latest college encampments - 24/7 continuous protests as permanent fixtures of campus life - the radical left has escalated this fight to a new level, violating not only their schools’ policies but also laws in the process. Though most city officials & university administrations have been unwilling to enforce the rules against these protesters, likely out of fear that they’d be villainized for stifling protests & speech, we can expect that this tolerance for anti-Israel and even anti-Jew rhetoric will not extend when those officials can no longer deny that these radicals are explicitly anti-American too. As we recently saw, even Eric Adams wasn't able to ignore the protesters who replaced the American flag on campus with a Palestinian one.

As these protesters have changed the game, we must change the frame. Let’s all begin to see this, and show this, with the most powerful symbol in the world - the American flag - to be a battle of ideas, values, and principles between American liberal democracy and anti-American ideologies. And once these stakes are made clear, like every single battle our great nation has faced before to protect our democracy, America will emerge victorious to maintain its place as the beacon of Western values.