The Israel-Hamas conflict is opening up schisms among left-wing coalitions around the globe.
In Washington DC, near the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, escalating tensions led to violent clashes that injured six police officers, resulting in evacuation of the area.
In Britain, hundreds of protesters marched through Labour leader Keir Starmer’s constituency after he refused to vote for a “ceasefire”. And in Sydney on Tuesday night, 23 people were arrested after holding an illegal demonstration against an Israeli container ship at Port Botany.
Responding to the Port Botany protest on Tuesday night, NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns made the commonsense observation: “We cannot have a situation where our ports are blocked for commerce because one group or another has a political disagreement with another country.”
Federal Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil likewise did not hold back when she described the protest as “anti-Semitic” and “utterly despicable”.
It is both reasonable and commendable that Minns and O’Neil expressed these views. The Australian Labor Party, a party of government at state and federal levels, cannot afford to partake in the performative activism of the Greens and the hard left, even if it might appeal to some of its constituents. More broadly, however, the notion that protests in Australia could in any way influence the conflict in Gaza is highly unrealistic, if not downright insane.
Israel is a democracy, which means its government answers to the Israeli people. And the Israeli citizenry demand Hamas be destroyed in response to the massacre of October 7. Protests around the world will not change that. On the contrary, global pro-Palestinian protests and rising anti-Semitism are only reinforcing the Israeli public’s demand for their government’s protection.
But apart from failing to understand the political realities of the war, the hard left’s concept of political action does not seem to go much further beyond dress-ups.
Safe inside liberal democratic nations, with their Pride weeks and music festivals, Westerners can wear rainbow keffiyehs while calling for the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East – knowing full well they will never have to live under the yoke of theocratic fascists such as Hamas.
This isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. Paul Berman, in his book, Power and the Idealists, notes that the 1968 generation of New Left activists were mainly driven by a mix of nostalgia and fear stemming from their childhood experiences during World War II.
Many of them lived with the fear that the Nazis had not been completely vanquished, and would one day return. Imagining themselves as following in the footsteps of the heroic French Resistance, New Left radicals grasped at any insurgent cause they could find. This led them to absurd and dangerous places, such as the jungles of Latin America and eastern Cambodia alongside Che Guevara and the Khmer Rouge. It also led some of them to hijack planes alongside Palestinian terrorists.
These radicals yearned for a revolutionary purpose, and they did almost anything to find it.
A classic example of the misguided radical was Wilfred Bose, a German leftist who participated in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking with the Popular Front for Palestinian Liberation. Upon helping his comrades hijack Air France Flight 139, he was told by the PFLP to separate Jews and Israelis from the other passengers, who were then set free.
Bose was apparently taken aback by the command. He had become a left-wing radical because he wanted to fight Nazis. Yet here he was kidnapping Jews.
To be sure, defending the human rights of Palestinians or calling for peace are without a doubt noble causes. But real peace rallies would call for the return of Israeli hostages at the same time as calling for a ceasefire. Real peace rallies would carry Israeli and Palestinian flags, side by side. And real peace rallies would call on Hamas to surrender and evacuate from civilian areas.
None of this happens at our “ceasefire” rallies, of course, because they are not about peace at all. They demand “peace” from one side only.
It is perhaps for this reason, most Australians are averse to them. A study by Resolve Research shows a significant disparity in Australian public opinion: only 14 per cent support ceasefire protests, while nearly 70 per cent prefer Australia to remain uninvolved in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
The Resolve study reflects the reality that many on the centre left still believe in universal values. Abhorring racism in all its forms, including anti-Semitism, they believe in the “fair go” that does not discriminate by skin colour, religion or nationality.
Unfortunately for the centre left, however, the hard left disagrees. According to hard-left moral logic, ships should be protested because of the nationality of their origin (Israeli), businesses should be boycotted because of their owners’ religion (Judaism).
Centre-left politicians such as Minns and O’Neil, who stand firm against the extreme views on their left, deserve recognition, even when we might disagree with them on other matters.
History shows anti-Semitism tends to rise in societies where moderate forces lose control and demagogues from either side exploit divisions to seize power.
In Australia, we must counter the divisive tactics of the hard left by raising our voices for universal values. We must raise them as loud as we can.
Claire Lehmann is founding editor of online magazine Quillette.
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