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Palestine is the World’s Last Just Cause. In over a few weeks, the Free Palestine movement has succeeded to mobilize millions in favor of justice, peace, and a New World Order based on equality of rights and a sense of peaceful and collaborative coexistence between the nations.
History’s (Not So) Little Ironies
No good comes out of horror, killing, and genocide. It is “unethical’ to speak of a silver lining for blood, the death of innocent children, women, and elderly, and the unfolding tragic suffering of 2.3 million helpless Palestinian civilians, trapped in a small strip of land, with bombs raining on them day in day out for about three months. This “gift from hell” is daily sent by an Israeli government and army bent on revenge, feeling Biblically licensed, (and enabled by an acquiescing and conniving West) to wipe the Palestinians off their land. Yet a glimmer of hope and light emerges from behind the horrors and atrocities committed by Israel in Gaza, namely a refreshing wind of collective revival that is blowing all over the different corners of the World, billowing out as a reaction to the blood bath. That is History’s (Not So) Little Ironies.
People are mobilizing, acting, and setting collective initiatives and objectives, all to achieve a just, better, and fairer world order for all, as well as to call for an end to the assault, the bloodshed, and the genocide orchestrated by the State of Israel against a helpless civilian population. Freeing Palestine of the shackles of occupation, colonization, apartheid, and injustice has become a unifying and mobilizing cry everywhere.
The Last Just Cause
Palestine is probably the last just cause that the World is fighting for. Climate change is another, but for some a “Free Palestine” seems as urgent and probably drastically graver and more extreme for millions of people around the world, and even a welcome bridge to the important reduction of carbon emissions to save the planet. Both are existential, but the first has a life-and-death urgency about it because people do not want to be passive onlookers of a genocide in the making. As Greta Thunberg, Alde Nilsson, Jamie Mater, and Raquel Frescia put it, “advocating for climate justice fundamentally comes from a place of caring about people and their human rights. That means speaking up when people suffer, are forced to flee their homes, or are killed.”
Progressives, liberals, moderates, academics, students, journalists, artists, actors, and hundreds of thousands of normal people and angry citizens, including Palestinians and non-Zionist Jews, are rallying to call for justice, for an end to the mass killings, to ethnic cleansing, displacement, colonial settlement, apartheid, and genocide committed by Israel in Palestine. We have not seen this kind of global coalition except about climate change and the fight against Apartheid in South Africa.
It comes therefore as a most welcome rallying cry for progressives, liberals, and peace lovers from around the world. In recent years, some of these different groups have lived with apathy and a sense of helplessness as they witnessed waves of populism, supremacist culture, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and authoritarianism win hearts and minds all over the globe. In the United States, Zionism has found allies within MAGA and extremist Christian groups, with progressives at a loss, not knowing how to defend a sense of justice towards minorities, especially Jews, and wean this very defense away from strange bedfellows like Christian Zionism, Jewish Zionism, and the MAGA movement. Palestine has given the progressive groups not only a sense of purpose but a certain ideological clarity: singularity of experience is important but justice for all is the only way to protect historically oppressed groups like Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Indigenous populations, migrants, refugees displaced persons, etc.
Daniel Levy’s Critique of the Instrumentalization of Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is a singular experience but is weaponized ad nauseam, especially by the Israeli establishment and its supporters in the West. Daniel Levy, the former Israeli diplomat, analyzes the exploitation of anti-Semitism as a way of shifting the “field of debate” when Israel finds itself accused of apartheid. But he also sheds light on how the Jewish communities of Europe allow themselves to be exploited in the cultural wars of the West (Islamophobia, migration, and) because the weaponization of anti-Semitism by the State of Israel has marginalized them to such an extent that, strangely enough, it is the European and American extreme right which defends Israel in the current conflict, while the non-Zionist Jews of Europe defend the rights of Palestinians. The pro-Palestinian Jews know that they experience a certain cruel identity alienation, but they see this very alienation as necessary in an imperialist world that wants to impose forced coexistence with the brutal industry of dehumanizing violence in Palestine.
Gen Z and Palestine
Reacting to this violence and spearheading the protest are Gen Z youth (30 years old and under). Their level of mobilization is so developed, so effective and so widespread it has pushed pro-Israel politicians and organizations in the US and in other Western countries to resort to censorship and appalling oppressive measures against critical voices at work, in Congress, in the media, in schools, and universities. 
The supposedly free world is resorting to censorship and oppression to silence critical voices defending the very rights the West has been lecturing the whole world about for decades. The irony of the ethical hypocrisy and the double standards has not been lost on young people so well-versed in the discourse of “justice for all”. In fact, they are fighting the powers that be with the same values those very powers have used for so long to show a moral superiority to the Global South and other nations—a superiority that has now been shown by Gen Z to be no more than an intellectual arrogance that smacks of a desire to dominate and to serve proto-colonial agendas of control, interest, and white ethnocentrism. 
Gen Z mobilization is making a huge difference in this awakening of world conscience to the atrocities committed by Israel in Palestine, in total immunity for the last 75 years. Juan P. Villasmil, an Intercollegiate Studies Institute editorial fellow at The Spectator World and a Young Voices contributor, said that “polls, hashtags, Instagram stories, and college demonstrations show that my generation, Generation Z, is more skeptical of Israel than older Americans. On TikTok, where half the users are under 30, #freepalestine has 31 billion posts compared to 590 million for #standwithisrael — more than 50 times as many.” Gen Z leads and have proven to be a force to reckon with: they are tomorrow’s voters, mainstream opinion shapers and possible political leaders. Their mobilization in favor of a free Palestine has been phenomenal.
Non-Zionist Jews
Another effective group is Jews themselves, especially writers, artists, intellectuals, academics, journalists, non-Zionist orthodox Torah rabbis, and social media influencers, some of whom are descendants of Holocaust survivors. Their message “not in my name” was effective in debunking the idea that the Palestinian struggle is against Jews and not against the Zionist colonial project in Palestine (i.e., against Israeli occupation of Palestinian land). Led by great scholars, writers, or intellectuals, this movement has gained momentum during the wave of protests for Palestine in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The list is long, but I have chosen to highlight a few:
• Noam Chomsky the famous linguist and one the most articulate critics of US governance structure, imperialist hegemony, and of Israel.
• Norman Finkelstein, the American political scientist, and activist whose primary fields of research are the politics of the Holocaust and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and whose book The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000) set the tone for a whole trend that set off to critique the instrumentalization of antisemitism by the Jewish establishment.
• Omer Bartov, the Israeli-born historian and the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, calls Israel’s treatment of Palestinians ethnic cleansing and considers the assault on Gaza a form of genocide.
• John J. Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, and whose book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) sheds light on how the Israeli lobby wields too much power in the US.
• Ilan Pappé, the Israeli historian from Haifa University, whose controversy with other New historians pushed him to migrate to the UK to teach at the University of Exeter and whose book on The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a groundbreaking book on the formation of the State of Israel.
• Raz Segal, the Israeli historian and Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide at Stockton University. Segal described what is happening in Gaza “textbook case of genocide” and connected it to the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians during the establishment of Israel in 1948. ..
• Masha Gessen, the Russian American journalist, whose recent brilliant piece “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: How the Politics of Memory of the Holocaust and Antisemitism obscure what we see in Israel and Gaza today” led the “Heinrich Böll Foundation in the city hall of Bremen in north-west Germany” to annul the ceremony organized for his reception of the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thought, mainly because he compared what was happening in “Gaza before 7 October to the Jewish ghettoes of Nazi-occupied Europe”
• Daniel Levy, the ex-Israeli ex-diplomat and peace activist who has been involved in the peace talks with the minister Yossi Beilin during Oslo II and Taba negotiations.
• Gideon Levy, the Israeli journalist and writer, member of the editorial board of Haaretz.
• Max Blumenthal, the American author and blogger who criticizes Israel’s shift towards the rights and its war crimes in Palestine.
These and various other non-Zionist Jews have written or spoken out to compare what is happening in Gaza to Auschwitz, or to draw parallels between Gaza and the central European ghettos under Nazi Germany, or to deconstruct the equation between ant-Zionism and ant-Semitism, or between criticizing the Israeli government and being against the Jews as a race. Some of them, being genocide and Holocaust scholars, have been instrumental in drawing parallels between aspects of the Shoah and the unspeakable atrocities meted out against Palestinians in Gaza and all of Palestine. Non-Zionist Jews have been the voices that have shown the World that the Free Palestine movement is not against Jews or Judaism but against Zionism as a Western colonial project.
On the other hand, as early in the Israeli War on Gaza as November 2, 2023, hundreds of Jewish writers, artists, filmmakers, playwrights, and activists published a letter in which they argued that criticizing Israel is not antisemitic, calling for everyone (including the Anti-Defamation League, the US Government and Israelis themselves) to stop weaponizing antisemitism to legitimize the oppression of Palestinians, ending up by calling on everybody to stand up for Palestinian rights and to call for the end to occupation:
“A group of Jewish writers drafted this letter after seeing an old argument gain new power: the claim that critiquing Israel is antisemitic. Editors at a corporate-owned magazine were prepared to publish the letter, but their lawyers advised against it. The writers share this letter in solidarity with those who continue to speak out in support of Palestinian freedom.
We are Jewish writers, artists, and activists who wish to disavow the widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. Israel and its defenders have long used this rhetorical tactic to shield Israel from accountability, dignify the US’s multibillion-dollar investment in Israel’s military, obscure the deadly reality of occupation, and deny Palestinian sovereignty. Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israel’s ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community.
(A Dangerous Conflation: An open letter from Jewish writers, n+ Magazine, https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/a-dangerous-conflation/ via @nplusonemag).
The letter was supposed to be published by a mainstream wide-circulation magazine, but it was struck down by the editorial board for fear of economic backlash from advertisers pressured by the very powerful Israeli lobby. I guess the fact that it was suppressed only made publicity for its wide circulation over social media.
Palestinian Voices
Palestinian voices have been strong and successful in speaking out against injustice in a language that world audiences would understand. They have managed to use human rights discourse and international law provisions to show the contradictions and double standards of Western countries. Palestinian activists have been articulate in describing the horrors on the ground, the killing, and the suffering, while putting what is happening in Gaza these days in the context of 75 years of displacement, oppression, and denial of rights to a whole people, the Palestinian People.
The list includes but is far from being limited to:
• The seasoned, articulate, and knowledgeable diplomat, Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom.
• Motaz Azaiza, the photojournalist from Gaza. Prior tog October 7, 2023, Azaiza’s profile on Instagram shows about 25,000 followers. On 13 October, his Instagram account was restricted when his family was killed by an Israeli strike, but it was restored a day later. He reached one million by 17 October, nine million by October 30, 12.5 million by November 3, and 13 million by November 7. As of 27 December 2023, Azaiza’s Instagram profile had 17.5 million followers, surpassing the follower count of US President Joe
• Refaat Alareer, the writer, poet, professor, and activist who was targeted and killed by Israel on December 5, 2023. Alareer’s final poem, If I must die, was widely circulated after his killing and was translated into more than 40 languages.
• Wael Al-Dahdouh, the Palestinian journalist and the bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Gaza, whose family was killed and he was injured but still continues to heroically report the mass killings in Gaza.
• Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, academic dean at Bethlehem Bible College, and the director of the Christ at the Checkpoint conferences. His latest book is The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope (2020). He delivered the famous sermon ‘Christ in the Rubble’, in which he said, “if Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza”. A powerful sermon that was covered even by Time Magazine
• Hundreds of Palestinian activists on the ground and in social media, university professors, doctors, human rights activists, UN personnel (close to one 150 of whom have been specifically targeted and killed by Israel), social media influencers and users, and various others are at the vanguard of this world call for action for a free Palestine.
• But also, the more than one hundred journalists deliberately killed by the Israeli army to cover up the atrocities in Gaza. For their names (as of December 23, 2023) see, Committee to Protect Journalists, “Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war”
The journalists and activists on the ground that still cover the on-the-ground atrocities play a fatal hide-and-seek game with Israeli snipers. Because Israel has prevented journalists from entering Gaza except as embedded with the IDF, Palestinian voices on the ground and from within the diaspora have been the eye and the ear of the World as it watches in complete shock the unfolding of a genocide in the making. 
Progressives, Human Rights Activists, Liberals and Justice Defenders
Other voices include progressives, liberals, and human rights activist from all over the world. The list is long but it includes writers, influencers, journalists, politicians, and activists like:
• Sarah Wilkinson, the UK influencer, activist and militant for freedom and justice in Palestine.
• Kaitlin Johnstone, the reader-supported independent journalist from Melbourne, Australia whose political writings can be found on Medium and on her Facebook page,
• Katie Harper, the Jewish American journalist who produces the Katie Halper Show and who was fired by The Hill because she had defended the Palestinian-American Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib’s characterization of Israel as an Apartheid state.
• Dominique de Villepin, the famous French politician and writer who served as Prime Minister of France from 31 May 2005 to 17 May 2007 under President Jacques Chirac.
• Chris Hedges, the American journalist, author, commentator and Presbyterian minister who writes a weekly column at Scheerpost and hosts the program The Chris Hedges Report on The Real News Network.
• Mehdi Hassan, the articulate and highly watched British American Broadcaster whose MSNBC The Mehdi Hasan Show was cancelled in November 2023 because he was not soft on Israeli government officials.
• Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis, the Danish medical doctor who is very active on X and ids a fervent supporter of the Palestinian cause.
• Kim Iversen, the famous American radio host and journalist.
• Aaron Maté, the Canadian writer, journalist (Democracy Now!, Vice, The Real News Network, Al Jazeera, The Nation) and producer who hosts the show Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone and who, as of January 2022, fills in as a host on the Useful Idiots podcast.
• James Bamford, the American best-selling author, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and winner of the National Magazine Award for Reporting. His article, “Who Is Funding Canary Mission? Inside the Doxxing Operation Targeting Anti-Zionist Students and Professors” was based on his most recent book, Spyfail: Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America’s Counterintelligence.
• “Yanis” Varoufakis, the Greek economist and politician (ex-Syriza member and ex-Minister of Finance in 2015) who has been since 2018 Secretary-General of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), a left-wing pan-political party he co-founded in 2016.
• Owen Jones, the British newspaper columnist (The Guardian, The New Stateman, and The Tribune), political commentator (two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show, and The Owen Jones Podcast), journalist, author, and left-wing activist.
• Jonathan Cook, the British writer and freelance journalist (the National and the Middle East Eye), formerly based in Nazareth who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
• Howard Beckett, the British famous socialist and trade unionist.
• Arnaud Bertrand, French entrepreneur and activist.
• Jack Shields, the Ex-UFC fighter and former Strikeforce middleweight .
• Jackson Hinkle, the American political commentator and social media influencerwho hosts the political show The Dive with Jackson Hinkle. A MAGA supporter but still an active defender of the Palestinian cause.
• Aymeric Caron, the French politician and former radio and television journalist who has represented the 18th Constituency of Paris in the French National Assembly since 2022
• Bassem Youssef, the Egyptian comedian, television host, and surgeon who is best-known in his media career for having hosted Al Bernameg, a satirical comedy show focused on Egyptian Politics, from 2011 to 2014. He is dubbed “Egypt’s Jon Stewart after Stewart’s satirical The Daily Show.
• Mohamed Safa, the Lebanese Diplomat, PVA NGO main representative at United Nations ECOSOC and accredited at United Nations Geneva Office.
• Mario Nawfal, Dubai-based Australian entrepreneur, and influencer.
Critical, challenging, strong, and relentless, these, and scores of other voices, have played a fundamental role in relaying the truth from the position of being an “outsider “but firmly standing for justice and international law, and against oppression. Being respected and well-known in their fields and political and social contexts, millions listen to them, relay their content, and interact with what they say and publish. They lead the debate but from within a different angle than Jewish intellectuals or Palestinian activists. While non-Zionist Jews and Palestinian activists live the protest emotionally, mentally and with passion, these “outside” voices act on a moral and intellectual level, in the name of a possible, fair, and just humanity. Their cry, “where is your humanity”, has been a relentless, strong, and mobilizing moral force.
A Few Good Politicians
While leading politicians in the West have been silent, with some openly supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza, and providing it with weapons and diplomatic cover, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, the Belgian Alexander de Croo, the Scottish Humza Yousaf, the Irish Leo Varadkar have been brave and have taken a stand against the mass killing and the Israeli war machine. The Pope, President Lula of Brazil, quite a few African, Arab, and Asian leaders have all been on the side of justice and freedom for the Palestinians. UN votes have shown that an overwhelming majority of the World community is mobilized in favor of a free Palestine.
The US and its allies in the West have been missing on an opportunity to lead, leaving the stage for China, Russia, India, Brazil, and South Africa to stand for what is right and just in the eyes, not only of the Global South, but of all the peoples of the World, including in Western Europe and North America. By giving Israel a green light to massacre Palestinians in Gaza, Western Leaders have made themselves irrelevant to the concerns of all the peoples of the world. This awakening World Conscience is emerging and coalescing, while taking into consideration the fact that Western values is a double-edge sword that applies, in a strangely Orwellian fashion, to some but not to others. The moral leadership of the West is probably bankrupt for good. That is why people not only protest the killing but protest Western Leaders’ support of the onslaught as well. 
The Geography and Politics of Protest
The protests have been taking place everywhere around the globe. People March in the streets, chant slogans in football stadiums, organize sit-ins in university halls, organize truck driver rallies on highways, storm meetings to convey messages before being kicked out by security, compose Christmas carols and sing them in front of shopping malls, attend sermons by Palestinian and pro-Palestinian priests, organize debates and lectures, compose songs and share them on social media, set up lists of companies to boycott because of their pro-Zionist stance etc. The mobilization is huge and has never been this loud, well-organized, angry, but to the point and effective. The boycott has worked with so many companies issuing statements saying that they stopped their support for Israel or declaring their sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
Social Media…Despite Censorship and Shadow banning
But it is at the level of social media that the battle has been won in favor of Palestine. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, and scores of other platforms are full of messaging, content, both audio and video, clippings on the politics, the history, and the geography of the conflict. Creative ways are devised by the minute to drive home the message. Caricature, photoshop, images, videos and songs are uploaded by the thousands every day for the World to see the atrocities, to watch the “genocide in the making” as many call it. But they are designed to call for action, for a ceasefire, for the collection and distribution of humanitarian aid, and as a call for the end of occupation and Palestinian suffering.
The world has woken up to a shocking reality: Palestinians have been the victim of Israeli oppression for 75 years and Israel has managed to convince the World that it is the victim all this time. That is why social media users are angry, vowing not to keep silent anymore, to speak up, to not tolerate oppression anymore.
Nonetheless, the users face another form of oppression themselves: Meta and X platforms use different methods to silence the most outspoken or shadow-ban them. Although Meta said it was a bug, quite a few users see the stealthy hand of Big Brother reducing the effect of Pro-Palestine voices.
Western Media: So Out of Touch with the Whole World
Another force that suppresses Pro-Palestine voices are mainstream media. Western media have been appallingly pro-Israeli, making themselves irrelevant for hundreds of millions of people avid to know the reality on the ground. It has been strange for the World to watch mainstream Western media carry out biased coverages that parrot Israeli official positions, while knowing perfectly that the reality on the ground is grim, horrific, brutal, and rife with death. When some journalists dare speak out, the channels are reprimanded by seeing ads withdrawn, or the same journalists are either fired or redeployed away from prime-time programs.
Western Media punish journalists when they dare do their job. Doing your job in these times has been redefined to mean “parroting the Israeli official line”: “Israel has the right to defend itself; Israel is the victim here; Palestinians were offered peace, but they refused it; why don’t Arab states accept Palestinians in their countries; and it is antisemitic to criticize Israel of course…”
Some French media and Fox-news not only repeat these fallacies but look like Israeli war rooms, giving advice on how to root out Hamas and rein in Palestinian nationalist positions. They speak of “deradicalizing” Palestinian society while not even covering how a striking majority of Israelis support the mass killings in Gaza and the apartheid system as well the ethnic cleansing policies in the West Bank. That is why one of the collateral damages of this Global Awakening is that mainstream media have been totally discredited by Gen Z and other groups marching for Palestine. Their coverage is debunked on social media, criticized and shredded by young influencers savvy on how to deconstruct mainstream media pro-Israel bias.
The Bankruptcy of Israeli Propaganda Machine
The second collateral damage is the failure and bankruptcy of the formidable Israeli propaganda machine. The failure of Israeli intelligence and the army response resulting in the killing of hundreds of Israelis by Israeli soldiers themselves, on October 7 has poked a big hole in the myths of the invincibility of the Israeli Occupation Forces and the effectiveness of the Israeli intelligence apparatus. This has had a negative domino effect on the founding narratives of victimhood, the “only democracy” in the Middle East, the Zionist dream of a Promised Land etc. All these myths have been discussed, dissected and deconstructed by Jews and Palestinians alike, aided by scholars, academics, politicians, retired army generals, journalists and influencers, all of whom have a precise knowledge of the facts, the history, the politics and the reality on the ground. For everyone, Zionist Israel appeared as this entity that is built on lies, misrepresentations and myths, reinforced by a dominant discourse in Western media, think tanks and universities, and that it is time to dismantle the rhetorical edifice that has only served a violent and garrulous settler colonial Zionist agenda at the expense of a real homeland for both Jews and Palestinians, either in one state or two states living next to each other in peace
The Transformative Effect of the Free Palestine Movement
The impact of the mobilization to deconstruct the myths and work for real peace on individuals and groups has been deep and far-reaching. The Israeli war on Gazans has had a transformative effect on a lot of people. Some have been radicalized but most people have been humanized. The focus on “humanity” is important for so many young generations, progressives, students, teachers, religious groups, and ordinary citizens, because it appeals to a sense of “sharedness” borrowed from climate change activists’ discourse. But this sense of global solidarity for a core existential value means that the war on civilians in Gaza has stirred a sense of anxiety among so many groups. People think that if the forces of oppression and control win (especially those using Biblical lethal rhetoric like Netanyahu), the world may go down a spiral of violence that could be devastating on a global level. 
Conclusion: A Learning Journey
It has been also a learning journey full of tears, shock, and anger, for quite a few people. They have learnt that being silent regarding injustice can only make that very injustice worse; that the powers that be will do everything including silencing the media, censoring universities, firing people, and oppressing protesters, to keep the supportive narrative intact. They also know that that the People have the power through social media to debunk myths and narratives, to call for action, to mobilize and to speak the truth, and uncover the lies.
But most importantly, people have learnt that boycotts work and that their economic action can shake the system form inside out. The anti-capitalists have been dreaming of this for a long time, but the global leaders of the Free Palestine Movement have succeeded in showing that the People have power, and they can effectively exercise it through real, effective, and targeted action against the perpetrators of the genocide, and their supporters in business, media, and politics. The World has learnt that it can fight back. People are taking matters into their hands. They are certain they will succeed in making a difference, despite the lethality of means used by Israel and its protectors in the West. 
