The Other Intifada

While Gazans ‘localize’ the Intifada and rise up against Hamas, “pro-Palestine” movement turns a blind eye and cold shoulder.

As the war in Gaza drags on, civilians continue to suffer—not just as casualties in a conflict Hamas began, but increasingly as direct victims of Hamas itself. In recent weeks, working-class Gazans have taken to the streets demanding an end to nearly two decades of Islamist rule. Their bravery has been met with brutal repression: reports of arrests, torture, and even executions of demonstrators have emerged, revealing just how desperate Hamas has become to maintain control. Watchdog reporting confirms these fears, as the Times of Israel reported May 16. According to a May 2025 report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Hamas has systematically harassed, threatened, and physically assaulted Palestinian journalists who dared to cover the anti-Hamas protests. One freelance reporter was dragged to a police station in Gaza City, where he was blindfolded, tied up, and beaten before being told never to report on demonstrations again. Others were interrogated, forced to delete footage, and threatened with death. The CPJ found that Hamas’s crackdown extended even to those merely posting about protests on social media. These aren’t isolated incidents—they are deliberate attempts to silence internal dissent and intimidate Gaza’s independent press.

And yet in the West, for all the crocodile tears for journalists killed during this conflict over the last two years, this unprecedented uprising and its bourgeoning free press has gone almost entirely unnoticed—or worse, ignored—by those who claim to speak on behalf of Palestinians. At Columbia University, masked demonstrators disrupted final exams and harassed library staff, not in solidarity with Gazans resisting Hamas, but with slogans soaked in hostility toward Israel and often Jews themselves. In South Texas, where I live, local Hamas propaganda even adopted the tagline of “Free Kashmir” into their messaging, revealing just how untethered many of these activists are from the realities they invoke. The slogan isn’t really about Kashmiri self-determination, of course, as it was effectively an endorsement of Pakistani-backed terrorism on sovereign Indian territory. It was a reference to the infamous Pahalgam massacre of late April, which I would describe as an October 7-style killing on a micro scale, an anti-Hindu pogrom. Similarly, their cries of “Free Palestine” often exclude any actual support for freedom from Hamas’s totalitarian grip. Kashmiri grievances are to the Pakistani rulers what Palestinian nationalist grievances are to the rulers of Gaza City and Tehran.

An authentic pro-Palestinian movement would champion the rights of ordinary Gazans rising against tyranny. It would embrace a vision of solidarity amongst peoples—Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Atheists, Arab, Israelis, Druze and Kurds—seeking coexistence and dignity for all. It would welcome any step that affirms Israel as a legitimate state and a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, while supporting paths toward Palestinian self-determination that are not built on martyrdom and erasure. We see panic, instead. From Hamas to Tehran to their apologists abroad, reactionary forces are scrambling to halt the momentum toward change. October 7, meant to derail peace, may have accelerated it. The Abraham Accords and the broader thaw in regional relations had already begun to unravel the stale post-1950s consensus, which subjected Israel to international pariah status. Despite or perhaps because of Hamas’s brutality, we see renewed urgency to ensure such horrors never happen again, and to assure the lost lives are vindicated and honored in a way they would have appreciated.

This is not the outcome Hamas intended. But the keffiyeh slipped. The movement that billed itself as resistance has shown its true colors: regressive, anti-democratic, and obsessed with denying Israel’s existence rather than securing a better future for Palestinians. If the campus-led “pro-Palestinian” movement were sincere, it would be applauding the potential for transformation now surfacing across the region. It would see the possibility of a post-Hamas Gaza—civilian-administered, demilitarized, perhaps autonomous within a broader Israeli federation—along the lines of Northern Kurdish-Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) today or Kosovo under the federal republic of Yugoslavia after 1945 and the 1974 Constitutional Amendments.

Instead, many self-described progressives cling to the past, unwilling to align with the forces genuinely pushing for peace, simply because those forces include political figures whom they disdain and by whom they get triggered. (We all know who they are.) But history doesn’t wait for ideological purity. Change is coming, whether they accept it or not. The tragedy is that those who call themselves “progressive” may let this moment of genuine progress pass them by—frozen by dogma, and blind to a future they claim to want. Nowhere is this contrast clearer than in the streets of New York City, where, as The Times of Israel reported this week, recently released Israeli hostages are expected to march in Sunday’s annual Celebrate Israel Parade. Their presence is a powerful reminder of both the horrors Hamas unleashed and the enduring spirit of those who survived it. It is also a rebuke to those who elevate Hamas’s rhetoric while ignoring the cries of its victims—Israeli and Palestinian alike.

As many either abandon or distance themselves from the slogan, “Free Palestine,” those of us who truly support the human rights of Gazans and West Bankers, as well as the right of Israel to exist in peace, should take the chance while it’s on offer to reclaim this well-known cadence and add two simple words: Free Palestine from Hamas.