“PRO-PALESTINE” CHICKENHAWKS
Western activists have no skin in the game. But they have no hesitation in egging on Palestinians to serve as cannon fodder.
Two decades ago, the term “chickenhawk” came into wide pejorative political usage. It gained traction during the Iraq War to describe political leaders or commentators who advocate for military action despite having little or no military service themselves.
During the lead-up to and prosecution of the Iraq War, critics used “chickenhawk” to target several prominent figures in the administration of US President George W. Bush and allied policymakers. Some senior officials — such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — had not served in the military, while others were civilians playing key roles in shaping war policy. The label was used by opponents to argue that those most forcefully promoting the invasion were insulated from the personal costs of war. They had never taken any personal risk but they seemed to have no qualms about putting others in harm’s way.
Isn’t it funny how so many accusations are often projections?
By and large, the people who were throwing around the term “chickenhawk” two decades ago were the same leftists and “anti-war” voices who today are on the frontlines of the “pro-Palestinian” movement. (Whether they were on the right side on the Iraq War or not is irrelevant to my case, here. Hindsight is 20/20 and Iraq is a fricken mess. But anyways.)
Overwhelmingly, these are people who would never dream of joining the military in their home countries. Many of them probably call themselves pacifists, which is incredibly rich, since they are marching with people who literally celebrate October 7.
However else they self-define, it is worth pointing out something they seem unable or unwilling to see in themselves.
Regular readers know that I almost always put “pro-Palestinian” in scoff quotes. The people who claim to be the Palestinians’ greatest advocates are the very ones who are causing them to die.
It’s a pretty clear causation.
Hamas puts civilians in harm’s way. They build military infrastructure in civilian neighborhoods, in schools, mosques, hospitals. They employ human shields and child soldiers. They dress terrorists up as ambulance drivers and journalists.
Then, when these “innocent civilians, women and children” are killed or injured, the world reacts in precisely the way Hamas intended, rewarding the strategy and inspiring more of the same.
That has been going on, at the latest, since the Second Intifada began in 2000. Western activists tally the death tolls like Eurovision scores — ignoring the fact that Israel does everything in its power to minimize casualties on both sides and Hamas does everything to maximize them.
Since October 7, 2023, this grotesquery has morphed.
Many or most Western “pro-Palestinian” activists used to pretend they supported a two-state solution. To maintain political legitimacy, they needed to make believe that they did not seek to eliminate the state of Israel, so they pretended they supported Palestinians living alongside Israelis, not on their graves.
After October 7, they realized that the Overton window of political legitimacy was much wider than they thought.
They could support genocide of Jews — and maintain political legitimacy. (More needs to be said about this obviously.)
The retrogressive slogan “Antizionism is not antisemitism” was eclipsed by “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” “By any means necessary,” and “Globalize the intifada.”
In other words, the core mantra of the “pro-Palestinian” movement changed from “kill Jews in Israel” to “kill Jews everywhere.” (“Free Palestine,” FYI, has always been an upbeat dog-whistle for beating down the Jews.)
Something else is going on, though.
The abandonment of pretense that activists seek peace and coexistence sheds light on something else in their character: The willingness of Western “pro-Palestinians” to put Palestinians in harm’s way while they themselves wallow in the comfort of their parents’ basements.
We need to accept the core truth of this conflict.
An independent Palestine will only happen when Palestinians come to the negotiating table and agree to compromise and coexist with Israel. Palestinians will never militarily defeat Israel, and egging them on to try is to condemn both sides to decades more conflict — with inevitable lopsided fatalities on the Palestinian side. (See why I use scoff quotes?)
Maybe there is a cost-benefit calculation going on in these “progressive” minds, in which 10 Palestinian lives are a fair price for one dead Israeli. It sure looks like it.
The choice the world faces now is not whether to side with Israelis or Palestinians.
The choice is whether we side with negotiated peaceful coexistence, or with incessant violence in which Palestinians fight — literally to the death — for total victory over the Zionist usurpers.
That’s our choice.
Anyone who calls themselves pro-Palestinian (like me; no scoff quotes) would choose the path that doesn’t lead to more piles of dead Palestinians.
People who call themselves “pro-Palestinian,” however, repeatedly choose the other option.
Driven by hatred, ideology, misinformation, and gawdknows what other toxic motivations, the higher the Palestinian death toll rises, the more overseas “friends” egg Palestinians on to continue their death match with the obviously exponentially superior Israeli military.
Pro-Palestinians (no scoff quotes) would be urging Palestinians to abandon violence, abandon the hope of eradicating Israel (and Jews) from the region, abandon the idea that “martyrdom” in a fruitless cause is preferable to life in peaceful coexistence with Jews.
Instead, “pro-Palestinians” (scoff quotes) encourage Palestinian violence — violence that always results in more dead Palestinians than dead Israelis.
They urge Palestinians to fight. It’s always “Resistance!” “No justice, no peace!” “Globalize the intifada!”
I guess “Negotiate to stop the dying and finally get a Palestinian state” just doesn’t hold the romantic revolutionary cachet Western activists crave.
But that is exactly the point.
These are people who have no skin in the game, and no concept of what it is to be on the frontline.
But they seem to have no hesitation in urging Palestinians to continue playing the role of cannon fodder in these Western activists’ geopolitical LARPing.
They keep rewarding the Hamas strategy that rests on maximizing dead Palestinians — and the Western outrage the feeds the cyclical Ouroboros of Palestinian death.
They are chickenhawks.
They wouldn’t dream of putting their own lives on the line.
But they have no hesitation in sending Palestinians into hopeless battles they can never win.
These are the people who call themselves “anti-war.”
These are the people who call themselves “pro-Palestinian.”
Neither of those terms seem quite apt.
“Chickenhawk” seems more applicable.
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Pat, I think you are certainly correct about many of these demonstrators and activists having no real skin in the game while encouraging endless conflict from the safety of Western campuses and cities.
But I also think something deeper and more troubling has happened psychologically and ideologically. A significant number of these activists genuinely believe Israel is a colonial, illegitimate state, and once they emotionally accept that framework, they begin rationalizing or excusing almost anything done in the name of “resistance.”
I honestly think many of them are useful idiots who know very little actual history. They do not seriously examine both sides, the repeated rejection of coexistence proposals, the Jewish historical connection to the land, the role of Islamist ideology, or the reality that Hamas openly seeks Israel’s destruction. They absorb emotionally powerful narratives and slogans and then build their entire moral worldview around them.
But I also agree with you that there are others who go further — people who have genuinely internalized sympathy for Hamas or for violent “resistance” because they now see Jews and Israel primarily through an oppressor-versus-oppressed framework where violence becomes morally justified.
And yes, as you point out, it is always much easier to romanticize endless struggle, martyrdom, and revolution when somebody else’s children are the ones dying in the conflict.
I would like to see "progressives'. simply referred to as regressives. It is what it really means now anyway.