The pro Palestinian position is just “the wrong people are dying”.
Often, pro Palestinians will try to manipulate people by claiming that their position is just simply rooted in humanitarian concern. They will pontificate forever on the immorality of Israel due to its “war crimes, ethnic cleansing, ethnonatiolism, genocide, etc etc”, and will insist that these things are simply morally wrong, so ofc they condemn them. However, if you press them, you will find this is simply a mask, and they support every single one of those things.
War crimes: Pro Palestinians support Oct 7th, they will cite it is as resistance, they will characterize those who took part in it as freedom fighters. They celebrate Oct 7th as a proud day of Palestinian liberation. However, under any definition it without a doubt Oct 7th was a war crime, it included the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, mass shootings of unarmed combatants, and the kidnapping of thr members of the civilian population including children. Under any standard, these actions are “war crimes”, yet pro Palestinians hold these actions to be the most profound and powerful possible expression of Palestinianism. Additionally, it is not just Oct 7th, pro Palestinians support indiscriminate use of rocket fire in Israel by Palestine, support the decision by Hamas not use military uniforms, and support their integration into civilian infrastructure. As a result, it is clear that by their endorsement of Oct 7th, and Palestinian tactics, that they do not care about “war crimes” in some absolute sense. What they care about is “war crimes happening to Palestinians”.
Ethnic cleansing: Another main contention of the pro Palestinian is ethnic cleansing. This is the original sin of Israel in their mind, and it cannot be erased. However, for these people, in this conflict ethnic cleansing can only happen to Palestinians and any ethnic cleansing done by Palestinians or Arabs is irrelevant or justified. Obviously the biggest elephant in the room is the cleansing of Jews from the Middle East, and the one million people who had to flee to Israel as a result. The most common dismissal of this is its about sequencing, this happened after the naqba so this doesn’t count, however contemporaneous with the naqba Jews were ethnically cleansed from areas such as Hebron and other places in what would eventually became known as the West Bank. As a result it is clear that the pro Palestinian issue is with “Palestinians being ethnically cleansed”, not “ethnic cleansing”. This most glaringly seen if you just simply ask what should be done to the Jewish Israelis, and the answer is almost always that they should “return to Europe”. As a result, it’s perfectly clear that to them some ethnic cleansing is okay and some isn’t, not that ethnic cleansing itself is bad.
Ethnonationalism: Another large contention of the pro Palestinians issue that Israel is an “ethnostate” and supporting Israel equals supporting “ethnonationalism”. However, these are the same people who support the idea that Palestinean is an ethnicity with a historic connection to the levant and that as a result people of Palestinian ethnicity deserve a nation in the levant. That is ethnonationalism. To make matters worse, the rallying cry of the movement “from river to the sea Palestine will be free”, is a westernized translation of the rallying cry in Arabic “river to the sea, Palestine is Arab”. As a result, the issue that pro Palestinians have is not with an ethnostate or ethnonationalism, it’s the wrong people having an ethnostate and believing in ethnonationalism.
Genocide - The mostly commonly used tenet of the pro Palestinian is that their position comes from opposing “genocide”. Whether what happening in Gaza is a genocide it not is a separate debate from the pro Palestinian position on genocide itself. The government of Gaza is a genocidal organization, their charter included explicit calls for the death of not just Israelis but of all Jews, rooted in Islamic eschatology. While a pro Palestinian will then tell you this was removed which was true, the basic ideology and goals of the government of Gaza did not. In a 2022 conference, Palestinian leader Yahya Sinwar detailed the plans for the Jewish population of Israel, which included the elimination of the majority of the 7.2 million Jewish Israelis, and the enslavement of educated Jews and experts in the areas of medicine, engineering, technology, and civilian and military industry. From this, as well as much more, it is clear that the final goal of the glorious and justified Palestinian resistance is genocide, the result of the river to the sea is genocide. These are both expressions of Palestinianism which pro Palestinians support gleefully. As a result, it is obvious that the issue pro Palestinians have is not “genocide” but “Palestinians being genocided”. Even worse, Palestinians committing genocide is the animating goal of the movement.
Overall, the pro Palestinian movement pretends to be humanitarian and about social justice, but this is a farce. Every accusation they levy against Israel they themselves support just against Israelis. Therefore it’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that it’s not the action itself they have an issue with, it’s who is doing an action and who it’s being done to. So to those fooled by the appeals to humanitarianism and social justice, know that these are just a thin veneer of progressivism hiding a ethnonationalist, genocidal movement that supports ethnic cleansing and war crimes.