A social scientific control group: What do ‘pro-Palestinian’ protesters do when non-Israelis oppress Muslims and Arabs?
“Pro-Palestinian” or “Anti-Israel?”
Are they different? We think not.
The reactions from across the world to the protests in Iran confirms what we long knew to be the case about “pro-Palestinian” protesters, and why the Intermountain Jewish News switched to calling them “anti-Israel.”
The prism perfectly refracting the reasoning behind the switch is the grass roots outburst in Iran against the regime’s brutality and upside priorities: funds for Hezbollah in place of water for Iranians; funds for nuclear pursuits in place of basic good for Iranians.
Iranians heroically protested before being put down after having been abandoned by President Trump, full of false promises for the Iranian people.
Iranians protested — but who else? Not the people who protested against Israel’s response to Hamas’ brutality against Israelis.
There is hate-based violence in the Middle East. It comes from Iran. It comes from Hamas. Iranians do their best to protect themselves. But they are unarmed. Israelis do their best to protect themselves — and they, thank G-d, are armed.
If “pro-Palestinian” protesters were the term that told the truth, these protesters would have been out en masse in support of the heroic, brutalized Iranian people. The widespread “pro-Palestinian” movement worldwide is actually “anti-Israel.”
For if it weren’t Israel that was attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, if it weren’t overwhelmingly Jews who were murdered, abused and kidnapped then, if it weren’t Israel — the Jewish state — that responded, few would have taken to the streets.
Few would have run amok in the halls of government, disrupting and attempting to shut down city council and other governmental meetings.
Few would have set up tent cities on college campuses.
Few would have taken over campus buildings, causing injury to people and destruction of property.
Few would have chased speakers off of campus or intimidated them.
Yes, there might have been a few genuine protests — about as many as greeted the brutal Iranian regime’s crushing of the recent demonstrations there. Yes, a few protests — but not the mass hysteria that overtook the world for two years, beginning Oct. 7, 2023.
It was never about Palestinians, and it never will be. It’s about Jews and Israel, latently or openly.
How do we know this?
The facts speak for themselves.
It didn’t take much to notice the lack of sympathy exhibited by these “pro-Palestinian” protesters for the other groups in the same Middle East — a lack of public, in-your-face sympathy for the Iranians. Or for the Syrians (a million Muslims murdered by the Assad regime), or for the Yazidi or the Kurds, who have suffered devastating losses of their own.
When “pro-Palestinian” protesters gathered on Jan. 8 outside of a Queens synagogue and shouted their support for groups who oppress Palestinians and other Arabs — namely, Hamas; namely, Hezbollah — it was clear the protesters were not “pro-Palestinian.” They hate Israel so much that they are willing to voice support for terror organizations like Hamas because Hamas’ victimization of Palestinians is a small price for the protesters pay in order to strengthen Hamas’ hatred of Israel and brutalization of Israelis.
An Iranian regime fires on its citizens, killing (according to the latest, probably underestimated) 3,800 people. Yet, there are no mass protests taking place across the US, on college campuses, inside city councils, outside state capitols — no angry “pro-Iranian” protests.
Did you notice the dedicated, tiny, weekly, unfailing demonstration for democracy in Iran at 14th and Lincoln Sts., on the southwest corner of the Colorado State Capitol? Yes, tiny demonstrations. Neither thousands nor hundreds of “pro-Iranians” have joined them. If it were oppression of Arabs or Muslims in the Middle East whom the “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators truly cared about, they would quickly have joined the “pro-Iranian” demonstrators. But they didn’t.
We have here a scientific control group. See what happens when a variable is changed.
Most of the protesters outside of Iran who are protesting what the brutal theocratic regime is doing inside Iran are Iranians. Sympathizers among “pro-Palestinians” are few. There is no groundswell of public support for the suffering Iranian people.
We would have assumed that the masses of “pro-Palestinian”protesters would feel kinship with protesters in Iran. Same general ethnic identity. Same Middle East. Same general religion (mostly). But the lives of Iranian Muslims, Zoroastrians and Christians are unimportant to the “pro-Palestinian” crowd because preponderantly it really isn’t “pro-Palestinian.” It’s “anti-Israel.” It’s because most Israelis are Jews. The victims targeted in Iran are not Jews; ergo, silence — unless a way is found to blame Jews or Israel for causing the unrest.
Since the protests in Iran began, the only press release by CAIR — the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which holds itself up as the fair defender of Palestinians and Muslims everywhere — has focused on . . . Israel. In the press release, Israel is the headliner and the government of Iran — the actual oppressor of the Iranian people — is not mentioned until the seventh paragraph, following many mentions of Israel and the Palestinians.
CAIR shows no evidence that it cares when Muslims are targeted if the suffering cannot be traced back to Israel, the US or the Jewish people.
It’s not only “pro-Palestinian” and other partisans whose hypocrisy has been revealed by the latest, tragic brutality in Iran, and by the lost opportunity there.Read news coverage of the death tolls in Iran. Notice the hedging — “estimated,” “unverified,” “unclear,” “hard to determine,” etc. etc. — and ask yourself:
Did you read the same careful language in coverage of the Israel-Hamas war? Not at all. Whatever Hamas said, the media worldwide reported. There were no independent reporters in Iran or in Gaza — but no matter. Media like The New York Times and AP and the Wall Street Journal reported death tolls in Gaza, based on what a terrorist organization — that would be Hamas — said.
It was part of a pattern. Hours after an alleged Israel strike on a Gaza hospital, The New York Times, among many others, declared on its home page and in its news alerts and on its social media channels that “at least 500” Gazans were dead. Killed by Israel. Media felt comfortable with absolutely no verification declaring and disseminating what they later had to confess was false. Israel was the perceived perpetrator; so it could be reported. (The facts turned out to be: Israel didn’t bomb the hospital. Five hundred were not killed.)
“Pro-Palestinian” isn’t pro-Palestinian. It’s “anti-Israel.”
This is the perversion we have been living with since Oct. 7, 2023. ACLU Colorado advocates on behalf of anti-Israel campus protesters at Auraria, or on behalf of an anti-Israel artist in Vail, yet it has had not a single word to say about an arson attack against Boulderites exercising their freedom of speech last June 1 — nothing to say when an innocent woman, attending a peaceful, quiet rally advocating for the release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas, dies in the firebombing.
This is anti-Semitism. Call it out for what it is. Don’t hide behind “pro-Palestinian.”
© IJN 2026
