Went to a Palestinian solidarity protest/rally with some new folks who’d become radicalised against America/the West over the last six months. They aren’t socialists (yet, I’m working on it) - but they’re good people. So, seeing the genocide and its support by our governments filled them with disgust. We talked about the Nakba, the history of Zionism, and the current apartheid etc.
Now, we come to the protest.
Overall, the atmosphere was incredible. Lots of cool signs, different kinds of people, and, of course the pigs. That’s not the problem.
The problem was the fucking speakers. I swear, at least half of them had to be feds whose entire job was to turn people away from turning up at these events.
Some of them, and I mean this literally, wanted the crowd to chant “we support October 7” and “we stand with Hamas”.
I swear, the way the people I was with turned to look at me.
Not every speaker was like this - most were genuine. They talked of labor solidarity, campus organizing, personal anecdotes. But all of that made these speakers stand out all the more.
The worst part is that when it would happen, the organisers was one of them. So this entire thing was a sham from the start.
I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have just brought people to a random protest I saw and should’ve vetted it first.
Like, seriously. I can’t fucking get over this. Who organizes a protests of people from all walks of life in support of Palestine and wants them to chant we stand with Hamas and let’s do one hundred more October 7s?.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Like, of fucking course Hamas is a natural reaction to apartheid and ethnic cleansing and genocide. And of course Oct 7 is nothing compared to the 200 days that followed since (or the 75 years that preceded it). But come the fuck on.
Possibly feds but honestly some people got a bit juiced that public sentiment is shifting in what seems like a big way, forget where most people are at, at least as long as “supporting the IDF” is still less taboo in the mainstream I think more people who rhetorically “support Hamas” will actually say it than mean it.
They might also be forgetting where most people are at & supremely confident that almost all of the non-militarized Israelis killed in/around Al-Aqsa Flood were killed by the IDF. Which is certainly plausible, I’d feel comfortable assuming it’s true but like a lot of things it’ll probably be a distant memory by the time we know certainly.
Ideally the *world* could come together to intervene and stop Israel, but sometimes we deal with what we have.
My org was pushing critical support for Hamas and Oct 7 on October 10 and it paid big organizing dividends.
Folks here need to stop listening to the liberals trying to make them cowards. If you do not project and own correct positions you will abandon allies and leave space for liberals to create their own versions of the narrative you should’ve been running with.
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