In the West, Hamas is resoundingly condemned, which is why protesters are focusing on Israel

Nancy Pelosi recently said that campus protesters should target Hamas as much as Israel. Here’s why she is wrong.

I was in tenth grade when the Twin Towers were struck by Al Qaeda in September of 2001. Even at that unripe age, because I had some understanding of the Middle East and its conflicts with the U.S., I immediately suspected that it was indeed Arabs who committed the atrocity. Growing up Egyptian, I became familiar with geopolitics of the region regarding the U.S., and unfortunately, for a number of reasons, such an awful attack was not surprising.

My family experienced persecution as Christians growing up in Egypt. I am familiar with the persecution of queer people in the Middle East, as well. And furthermore, I am not, in any way, unclear about the ways that Middle Eastern theocracies and autocracies oppress and repress their own people.

I am also familiar with political violence and all of the harm and trauma that follows it. The legacy of colonialism, in particular, has added fuel to the fire, and led to militant and fringe groups taking up arms and holding power, often in authoritarian ways. 

My understanding stems, in part, from Western history and media. The media rarely depict Middle Eastern resistance as anything other than wicked, baseless terrorism. To put it another way, in the West, there is no shortage of coverage of Middle Eastern oppression. It’s clear that violence in the region, especially as it affects Israel and the United States, is regularly condemned, sometimes even at the expense of the dignity of Arab-Americans.

That is the status quo in the U.S.: our media and our politicians condemn the Middle East as a matter of course. The region is made up of many autocratic countries who are enemies, not allies, of the U.S. We know there is partisanship in the coverage and portrayal, because friends of the U.S., like Saudi Arabia, escape such coverage.

After the October 7 atrocities in Israel, the same was true. Everywhere in the West, Hamas’ actions were nearly uniformly condemned. That condemnation was entirely appropriate and laudable. I joined with our political leaders in condemning Hamas’ attack. It was the only humane thing to do.

This is the context into which we must put the anti-Zionist and anti-apartheid protests happening across our country. When Nancy Pelosi urges campus protesters to target Hamas as well as Israel in their protests, it is as if she is unaware that the prevailing narrative is one that is anti-Middle Eastern and anti-Palestinian.

It is unfair to tell any pro-Palestine activist or ally that they must also condemn Hamas before they say anything about Israel. This is a tired and well-rehearsed argument. They don’t need to condemn Hamas because virtually no one in the West is not condemning Hamas. But it is not ordinary or common to condemn the actions of Netanyahu and Israel.

In fact, doing so results in accusations of antisemitism. When protesters (and Jewish people among them) try to distinguish opposition to Zionism from antisemitism, the media is not clear about the difference and covers it in a way that validates the bad-faith accusations of anti-Zionists. To be sure, my camp has to interrogate antisemitism in all of its actions, as I have written about elsewhere.

Because of this, it is essential that we see protesters as shedding light on an issue that is not widely covered in the media: the horror of Netanyahu’s war in Gaza, in particular. In the West, it is a forgone conclusion that Hamas and its actions should be condemned. But many people are uneducated about the apartheid regime Israel has created, the borderline war crimes it has committed, and the history of trauma in that region. 

Twenty percent of Israel’s population is Arab, but only 10 Arabs sit on the Knesset (a 120-member legislative body). Currently, 4500 Palestinians sit in Israeli jails, and 310 of them are in administrative detention, without the right to trial. Currently, Gaza is under the strictest curfew imposed by Israel since 1973. Since 1948, six million Palestinians have been displaced. Babies continue to die of preventable causes in the besieged region. Educating about these matters is what the protests are about. 

Those telling us we must condemn Hamas before we condemn Netanyahu’s policies sound like the folks who were shouting “all lives matter,” in contrast to Black Lives Matter protests. They sound like people calling for talks about “black on black crime,” in the face of the pursuit of racial justice. It is a strategy used to minimize the concerns of protesters.

In my experience on campus encampments, the goal is solidarity and education. At Penn, a Seder dinner was held where Christians, Jews, and Muslims participated together. Such protests are a beautiful expression of what solidarity for justice can look like.

Alongside the education about Palestinian oppression is, of course, the need to educate about antisemitic hatred and violence around the world. We need to teach both. But in this current moment of desperation, the Palestinians and those in Gaza need our help most urgently. Until the atrocities of this war cease, we cannot stop our protests. 

Calls for us to also condemn Hamas are redundant. We already have a country, a president, and a mass media that do so. The protesters are educating the country about an issue that does not get enough attention: Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, over the last year, and over the last seven decades, as well. 

Next time, instead of telling a protester to condemn Hamas, ask someone condemning Hamas to condemn Israel’s policy of apartheid and its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.