Want to be pro-Palestinian? Don’t support the demonstrations on U.S. campuses.

While peaceful protests are lawful, what is occurring on college campuses is a radical Marxist, far-left empowerment movement shaping the next generation.

There are better ways to support Palestinian rights than supporting Hamas’ war, calling for the destruction of Israel, and being in a camp that is openly threatening Jews’ safety.

Here is what we say to students supporting hate:

Facts about Hamas:

Many “Free-Palestine” supporters on campuses are openly supporting Hamas and its military wing. Yet supporting Hamas is to support war, terror, genocide, and a terrible future for Palestinians if Hamas rules them.

Keep in mind…

• The genocide of the Jews is in Hamas’ charter.
• Hamas started the war on 10/7, has rejected every ceasefire offer, and refuses to release the 100+ hostages.
• Hamas does not fight for a democratic Palestinian state. They want an Islamist caliphate based on Shariah law, which is hostile to Western values of women’s rights, freedom of speech, LGBTQ rights, etc (Israel champions all those rights).

Palestinians deserve better.

Americans and Christians should support Palestinians’ right to thrive as a people. But they should not support Hamas’ war against Israel by calling on Israel to agree to a ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power.

Palestinians deserve leadership that leads them toward peace, not leadership that furthers the indoctrination of jihad, genocide against Jews, and the destruction of the state of Israel.

Palestinians also deserve a non-corrupt government that creates economic opportunities for them and does not funnel its resources toward anti-Zionist terror.

To be anti-Zionist is to believe that the only Jewish state in the world shouldn’t exist.

While issues over policy are normal, what other nations do Westerners protest the existence of so vehemently? What about all other post-millennia land disputes? If protestors care about human rights, why not protest the Sudanese Civil War, the worst reported humanitarian crisis in the world, and an active genocide?

Anti-Zionism is a double standard applied only to Israel, and is antisemitic, even inadvertently, at its core.

The protests are based on misinformation.

Sadly, the demonstrations we are seeing on American college campuses are driven by false narratives about Israel and are leading, as they inevitably would, to aggression and violence against Jewish students. The narratives that Israel is “genocidal” and an “imperialist colonizer” are not only factually inaccurate but are modern-day antisemitic tropes that have created mainstream hostility against Jews.

Israel is not committing genocide against Palestinians.

• Genocide, to be distinguished from the concept of war, is the intent to eliminate an entire people group.
• The population growth rates in the West Bank and Gaza are among the highest in the world (3.4% and 4.0%).
• In Israel, Arabs are a thriving minority, serving in the government and military, and have full rights of citizenship.
• In its war with Hamas, Israel exercises remarkable restraint to prevent civilian casualties, unlike Hamas, which uses its people as human shields.

Israel is not an imperialist colonizer because Jews are indigenous to Judea.

• Arabs, from Arabia, colonized the region after Muhammad founded Islam, migrating from the Arabian peninsula well after Jews established a long history there as a people.
• Jewish return to their homeland from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and beyond is, therefore, a decolonizing movement of the region.

Palestinians should be able to thrive as a people in the region, but it must not come at the expense of Jews’ right to their homeland.

The campus demonstrations are more than a pro-Palestinian movement. We are witnessing a radical Marxist, far-left empowerment movement shaping the next generation.

At Philos, we are Christians who grapple with these issues because we believe the roots of our faith and civilization come from our Judeo-Christian roots in Jerusalem, and antisemitism is core to our cultural decay.

We stand with Israel and the Jewish people because we share Judeo-Christian values and believe in restoring them in America.

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