Black Lives Matter Chicago Deletes Hamas Paraglider Post but Doubles Down on Anti-Israel Message

Black Lives Matter Chicago deleted an inflammatory post to X on Wednesday of an image of a paraglider with the Palestinian flag waving above and the words, “I stand with Palestine.”The activist group, though, is doubling down on its message, posting Wednesday that its members “aren’t proud” of the previous day’s post but that they “stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free.”BLM-Chicago was widely criticized for the post, given that paragliders were used were by Hamas in its attack on Israel. BLM Chicago, moreover, is not condemning Hamas’s attacks.“Do what they must” apparently includes hang gliding into a music festival and slaughtering young civilians as they run for their lives. By the latest count, at least 1,200 people in Israel were killed in the weekend’s terrorist attacks. The terrorists killed babies in their cribs and took women and children hostage.The now-deleted post from Black Lives Matter Chicago.The mainsteam left and the right are widely condemning the brutal attacks by Hamas, but there is a segment of the far-left social justice crowd that sees the struggle of the Palestinian people as intersectionally aligned with their own causes.In the age of social media, when “silence is violence,” these groups are coming out hard with justifications for Hamas’s actions that are based in “root causes” theory that unites all oppressed groups. “Decolonizing” is a common refrain. My struggle is yours, the saying goes.“We must stand unwaveringly on the side of the oppressed,” BLM Grassroots posted to X. “When a people have been subjected to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense.”BLM Chicago reposted a tweet Wednesday comparing Hamas’s attacks to the Nat Turner slave rebellion. “Y’all wanna both sides that, too?” BLM Chicago reposted. “When you brutalize an entire people for generations, your f—ing family isn’t safe anymore, either you f—ing fools. That’s why we say ‘settlers aren’t civilians.’”The national Black Lives Matter organization tells the Sun these BLM chapters have “no affiliation” with the main organization. “BLM Chicago, BLM Grassroots, BLM LA, New York — all of those are independently run organizations,” a Black Lives Matter board member, Shalomyah Bowers, tells the Sun. “We have nothing to do with their recent statements.”Mr. Bowers says Black Lives Matter will be coming out with its own statement soon, though he would not elaborate on its contents. He did say that “intersectionality is a core and a staple when you think about liberation work.”Black Lives Matter chapters are not alone among left wing social justice groups in posting “unwavering support” for the Palestinians and refusing to condemn the terrorist attacks by Hamas. A New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America promoted a rally at Time Square Sunday where 1,000 marchers chanted, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.”A picture of four young, white people holding a “Queers for Palestine” banner also went viral on X over the weekend. “Who wants to tell them?” a gay, conservative commentator, Brad Polumbo, posted, alluding to Muslim countries’ poor record when it comes to LGBTQ rights. Another viral response was, “Chickens for KFC.”“It’s all a matter of intersectionality. If you want to be on the right side, you have to hate Israel,” a Harvard Law School professor, Alan Dershowitz, tells the Sun, “even more than they support their own causes.”“Only their ignorance exceeds their immorality,” Mr. Dershowitz says. “Queers for Palestine couldn’t exist in Palestine. They’d be hanged.”More than 30 Harvard University student groups signed a joint letter over the weekend saying they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the letter states. “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”Students at California State University at Long Beach posted a flyer for a pro-Palestinian rally this week that also featured a paraglider. Students for Justice in Palestine groups at several universities have posted statements blaming Israel. “Footage of liberation fighters from Gaza paragliding into occupied territory has especially shown the creativity necessary to take back stolen land,” a Tufts University chapter of the group posted.This alignment of groups with seemingly different causes and self-interests is nothing new. In Catholic areas of Belfast there are murals of Palestinian flags and Native Americans. In Protestant areas of the city, Israeli flags fly.Yet since the killing of George Floyd and the racial reckoning that followed, the focus on affinity groups and linking all forms of oppression has gone on steroids. If you didn’t post a black box on Instagram in the summer of 2020, you were seen by some as condoning police killings of black men. Land acknowledgements are now a common refrain at the start of leftist and university events. Israel is the ultimate symbol of the oppressor. There is no nuance.The outright support for the attacks in Israel, though, may be the death knell for some of these student and activist groups. They are not espousing erudite critiques of Israeli policy but rather endorsing an “ends justify the means” approach. Here, that means terrorism.Outrage at Black Lives Matter is so strong that Mr. Bowers says he is calling reporters all day to clarify that the national organization is not in charge of all BLM chapters. The signatories to the Harvard letter are also being outed, and there are calls for employers to rescind contracts with participating students.Some are calling this outing of students a form of right wing “cancel culture.” Many people have gone to political rallies or said things in college they regret. The pressure to post “solidarity” — however misguided — is stronger today than ever. Mr. Dershowitz, though, says the outing is justified.“No decent person should support any organization that has justified lynching, rape, beheading, and torture of Israelis,” Mr. Dershowitz says. “Freedom of speech requires transparency, and every student who supported lynching should be exposed as a Ku Klux Klan student who would have supported lynching against Blacks. There should be no distinction.”

Black Lives Matter Chicago Deletes Hamas Paraglider Post but Doubles Down on Anti-Israel Message

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