With the war in Gaza fading from the headlines, at least for now, where does that leave the global solidarity movement with Hamas?

After more than two years of college encampments and mass demonstrations, accompanied by a dizzying rise in antisemitic hate crimes, fissures in the movement are increasingly discernible.

On the one hand, you have what might be called the traditional solidarity movement—long in the tooth organizations whose actions over the last two-and-a-half years have commanded the support of assorted celebrities and politicians. On the other, you have a more radical wing that, in addition to lionizing Hamas and Iran, is increasingly brazen when it comes to expressing hatred of Israel in openly antisemitic terms.

What unites these two wings is still far greater than what divides them.

Both endorse the libel that the war in Gaza was a “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs. Both denounce Zionism as a form of racism and eagerly push the myth that the Zionist movement “collaborated” with the Nazis during the Shoah. Both actively support the so-called BDS movement that calls for boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning Israel. Both advocate a “solution” to the conflict that would replace the sovereign, democratic Jewish state with a single Arab state stretching “from the river to the sea.” Both regard the Islamic Republic of Iran as a force for progress, angrily opposing Israeli and U.S. military action against a regime that in the last month has murdered more than 30,000 of its citizens.

Where they part company, at least to some degree, is on the knotty question of the Jews.

In the traditional movement, attacking Jews as Jews is still seen as a counterproductive tactic; hence the deployment of “Zionist,” along with the pejorative “zio,” both of which essentially function as code words.

Additionally, the traditional movement has always made a great show of the handful of Jewish activists whose backing it has won, parading them as “Exhibit A” when countering claims of antisemitism. When it comes to the fate of the Jews gathered in Israel, the general consensus has been that they should become citizens of “Palestine,” rather than being expelled outright.

A large part of the reason why stems from the origins of the Palestinian solidarity movement in the radical ferment of the late 1960s. Many left-wing opponents of Zionism in Europe and North America highlighted the influence of Matzpen, a tiny group of Israeli Trotskyists mainly living abroad, whose rhetoric about severing the Israeli Jewish working class from its Zionist overlords in favor of unified, socialist Palestine chimed with the then zeitgeist.

The 2020s are different, however. While socialists are again raising their red flags, they are less careful, compared to their antecedents, about distinguishing between Jews and Israelis, and utterly disinterested, to the point of contempt, when it comes to the various divides within Israeli society.

That shift in attitude has opened a space for a newer and more extreme version of the Palestinian solidarity movement. Often led by second- or third-generation Palestinians born abroad, without refugee status but with citizenship of their countries of residence, they include such groups as “Within Our Lifetime” in the United States and the newly formed “Anti Zionist Movement” in the United Kingdom.

Led by the shamelessly antisemitic Palestinian-American agitator Nerdeen Kiswani, “Within Our Lifetime”—so named because its supporters believe that they will still be alive when the State of Israel is destroyed—has played a central role in the violent demonstrations outside synagogues in several cities, ostensibly protesting events that market and sell property in Israel.

On its website, the group explains that its “anti-Zionism” is what informs its opposition to any form of “normalization” with Israel, Israelis and their sympathizers. “The liberation of Palestine requires the abolition of zionism (sic),” it declares. At worst, this is a call for the elimination or expulsion of every single Jew in Israel, as well as the proscribing of Zionist and pro-Israel organizations outside. At best, it consigns those Jews who remain in historic Eretz Israel to the status of a depleted, hated minority.

This antisemitic program has been eagerly developed by “Within Our Lifetime’s” cousins across the ocean. Some of the individuals involved with the “Anti Zionist Movement” in the United Kingdom have already achieved notoriety for their screeds on social media, as well as their frequent appearances on Iranian propaganda channels like Press TV.

One of its leaders is a Palestinian doctor working in the British health-care system, Rahmeh Aladwan, who has been arrested on more than one occasion for her online rants against “jewish (sic) supremacy.” Last November, Aladwan was suspended from practicing medicine over her antisemitic posts.

Alongside Aladwan is David Miller, a professor who was fired from Bristol University for his harassment of Jewish students. Miller has been a key player in what can legitimately be described as the “Nazification” of the pro-Palestinian movement. His social-media feed is infested with barbs against “the Jewish Empire” and “pax Judaica.” He has harshly criticized other pro-Hamas figures, among them former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and current New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for being insufficiently attuned to the fact that “Jewish supremacy” lies at the root of the conflict in the Middle East. A fanatical supporter of Iran, he loudly cheered the regime’s campaign of repression against the latest wave of protests.

Even more worryingly, many parents of children attending Jewish schools in the United Kingdom have been revulsed by Miller’s creepy postings about the imperative to target these and other Jewish institutions as Zionist interlopers.

Miller and Aladwan were due to appear on Feb. 8 at the official launch of the Anti Zionist Movement in the city of Birmingham, whose police force banned fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv last November. At the last moment, the organizers were forced to seek another venue after their chosen location wisely opted to cancel the event. The decision was an ideal opportunity for the Anti Zionist Movement to argue that this was yet more proof that Britain is also “Zionist-occupied” territory. One of their scheduled speakers, the Press TV “reporter” Latifa Abouchakra, blamed the “Zionist lobby” for the decision, adding pointedly: “But we’re Palestinians, we’re used to fighting Jewish supremacists.”

The Anti Zionist Movement is a natural partner of Palestine Action, the violent group recently designated as a terrorist entity by the British authorities. Both share a similar political outlook and impatience with more established groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Given the historic tendency of some anti-Zionist activists to embrace terrorism—from the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s to the Democratic Socialists of America supporter who last year murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.—there is every possibility that the radical wing of the Palestine solidarity movement will follow suit, on both sides of the Atlantic.

The post Whither the Hamas solidarity movement? appeared first on JNS.org.