Last week, after Hamas attacked Israel, some people seemed to be genuinely shocked when they saw Black Lives Matter activists displaying flags supporting the terrorists and praising the Palestinian terrorists as “freedom fighters” engaging in “a desperate act of self-defense.” Some of the groups at least partially walked back those positions after the understandable condemnation that ensued, but the message had already been sent. BLM as a whole clearly supports Hamas and sees them as “sticking it to the man.” But as The Free Beacon reported yesterday, this is really nothing new for BLM. They have an established history of partnering with Hamas-friendly groups and likely see them as victims of oppression or whatever.
Black Lives Matter chapters across the country made waves last week when they excused and explained away Hamas’s attack on Israel.
A coalition of 26 local chapters called the attacks a “desperate act of self-defense.” The Chicago chapter shared an image glorifying Hamas gunmen on paragliders, before walking it back amid blowback. And the movement’s Phoenix branch praised Hamas “freedom fighters” for their acts of “resistance.”
Echoing this rhetoric are two Hamas-friendly groups—American Muslims for Palestine and the Council for American-Islamic Relations—that have for nearly a decade worked arm-in-arm with the Black Lives Matter organization to plan rallies and lobby lawmakers.
The linked report quotes Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, who describes BLM as sharing an “oppressed-oppressor narrative that helps them destroy society.” That sounds about right. If you’re willing to be intentionally blind to the facts and ignore the realities on the ground, you can probably buy into the concept of the “oppressed Palestinian people” being locked up in a gulag by their Jewish overlords. And there are plenty of people around the country – particularly on university campuses – who will join the chorus and sing that tune along with you.
Of course, the only complaint that the Palestinians in Gaza every really had, going all the way back to 1948, was that they didn’t want to peacefully coexist with a bunch of Jews. They could have ended all of this before it even began by literally doing nothing. Instead, they chose the path of endless war and destruction.
That reality makes the seeming marriage between BLM and groups like American Muslims for Palestine and CAIR all the more curious. American Muslims have historically had very little to complain about. America’s freedom of religion has allowed them to build mosques all over the country and establish large communities, though sometimes with horrible results for everyone else in the age of ISIS.
But Blacks in America at least have legitimate complaints, particularly in an historic sense. Starting with the origins of slavery and stretching right up to the Jim Crow era, Blacks in America truly did suffer oppression and significant losses of opportunity if not overt physical violence. And there have clearly been times when bad cops have been discovered to have racist tendencies and caused harm, though that is vastly less common in the modern era than the BLM press offices would have you believe.
So why the partnership with these Hamas-supporting groups? American Muslims for Palestine isn’t really even concerned with the condition of Muslims in the United States. They have the word “Palestine” right in their name. And CAIR is all over the map, though they are usually busy trying to swat down accusations of terrorist activity among American Muslims that have been “inspired” by ISIS. Aside from a shared culture of perceived victimhood, there seems to be little that they would have in common. And yet, here we are. The paraglider icon that has come to symbolize Hamas on the left is flying proudly along side BLM banners. Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans support Israel and oppose terrorism, so hopefully this will remain a fringe effect.
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