The Red-Green Axis!
The Red-Green Axis: An Alliance That Begins With Israel but Will Not End There
By Mansoor Laghari
One of the most dangerous political alliances of our time is also one of the least honestly discussed.
It is commonly called the Red-Green Axis: the convergence between the revolutionary far left and political Islamism.
“Red” represents movements rooted in Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-Western ideology. “Green” represents Islamism, not Islam as a religion, but the political project of imposing religious supremacy over society and government.
These movements appear to be natural enemies. The radical left speaks about feminism, LGBTQ rights, secularism and personal liberation. Islamists frequently reject those principles altogether. One side claims to oppose religious authority, while the other seeks to place religious authority above the individual.
Yet they increasingly march together.
This is not because their values are compatible. They are not. It is because they share enemies: Israel, America, capitalism, liberal democracy and the political traditions of the West.
Scholars have examined this convergence for years, describing how political Islam and the radical left adopted overlapping narratives and built a common front against the United States and its allies. What once appeared to be an intellectual contradiction has now become a visible political movement.
A Muslim’s warning about Islamism
I write this not as an enemy of Muslims, but as a Muslim.
I am also a Zionist, a U.S. Army veteran and a human rights activist. I know the difference between Islam and Islamism because I have seen what happens when political extremists claim exclusive ownership of a religion.
Islam is the faith of nearly two billion human beings, representing countless cultures, traditions and political opinions. Islamism is an authoritarian ideology that treats Islam as a vehicle for acquiring political power, controlling society and silencing dissent.
Conflating the two is unjust to Muslims. But refusing to confront Islamism is equally unjust, especially to Muslim reformers, women, minorities, dissidents and young people who are often its first victims.
The Red-Green Axis protects Islamists from scrutiny by presenting every criticism of political Islam as “Islamophobia.” In return, Islamist networks provide the radical left with a powerful narrative of grievance, identity and revolutionary struggle.
Each side launders the other’s extremism.
The radical left gives Islamists the language of social justice, decolonization and human rights. Islamists give the radical left a disciplined political constituency and a cause that can be presented as resistance against Western power.
Israel becomes the point at which their narratives meet.
Why Israel is their central target
Israel is not targeted only because of borders, settlements or the policies of a particular Israeli government. Those issues can be debated, as they are debated every day inside Israel.
Israel is targeted because its very existence contradicts the ideological story promoted by the Red-Green Axis.
The Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel, yet activists portray them as foreign colonial invaders. Jews suffered centuries of persecution, exile and genocide, yet their national liberation movement is described as white supremacy. Israel includes Jews whose families came from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Ethiopia and across the Jewish diaspora, yet this extraordinary diversity is erased to preserve a simplistic racial narrative.
The purpose of this distortion is not to improve Israeli policy. It is to make Jewish sovereignty appear inherently illegitimate.
There is an enormous difference between criticizing an Israeli government and demanding the elimination of Israel. There is a difference between supporting Palestinian dignity and glorifying organizations that deliberately murder civilians. There is a difference between advocating peace and chanting slogans that promise another intifada or the removal of the world’s only Jewish state.
The Red-Green Axis deliberately destroys these distinctions.
It transforms terrorism into “resistance,” antisemitism into “anti-Zionism,” and the destruction of Israel into “liberation.”
October 7 exposed the alliance
The moral character of a movement is often revealed by what it celebrates.
After the Hamas-led massacre of October 7, 2023, much of the world had not yet processed the scale of the atrocities before activists began rationalizing, minimizing or openly celebrating them.
The victims had not yet been buried. Families were still searching for their children. Hostages were being dragged into Gaza. Yet demonstrations appeared in which mass murder was reframed as an understandable act of resistance.
This reaction was not an accidental excess at the margins of the movement. It exposed the consequences of an ideology that divides humanity into permanent oppressors and permanent victims.
Under that system, members of a designated “oppressor” group can never truly be innocent. Their suffering becomes irrelevant, or even deserved. Once Israelis and Zionists are assigned to that category, almost any violence against them can be excused.
That is how people who claim to oppose racism end up demonizing Jews collectively. It is how self-described feminists become evasive when Israeli women are assaulted. It is how human rights activists find themselves defending Hamas, Hezbollah and other authoritarian organizations that reject nearly every liberal principle those activists claim to uphold.
The consequences are no longer theoretical. The Anti-Defamation League documented 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the United States during 2025, approximately 17 incidents every day. Physical assaults reached a record level. ADL also documented 856 antisemitic incidents connected to anti-Israel demonstrations, while carefully distinguishing legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and ordinary pro-Palestinian advocacy from antisemitism.
The alliance is dangerous to Muslims
The Red-Green Axis does not merely endanger Israel and Jewish communities. It endangers Muslims who seek reform, democracy and peaceful coexistence.
Islamists insist that they speak for all Muslims. Some Western activists reinforce that claim because it is politically convenient. Reform-minded Muslims who challenge extremism are then dismissed as traitors, sellouts or instruments of Western power.
This leaves liberal Muslims trapped between two forms of intolerance.
On one side, anti-Muslim bigots treat every Muslim as a potential extremist. On the other, Islamist organizations treat every Muslim who rejects their political agenda as an apostate or enemy.
The way forward is neither collective suspicion nor ideological appeasement. It is to defend Muslims as human beings while confronting Islamism as a political movement.
Western progressives who form alliances with Islamists are not empowering Muslim communities. They are often empowering the most organized, aggressive and politically motivated voices within those communities.
The first people sacrificed are usually Muslim women, religious minorities, LGBTQ Muslims, secular Muslims, former Muslims and anyone who dares to interpret faith differently.
Israel is the frontline, not the final destination
The Red-Green Axis begins with Israel because Israel is a convenient target. It is small, constantly scrutinized and connected emotionally to Jewish communities around the world.
But the project does not end with Israel.
The same activists who describe Israel as an illegitimate colonial state increasingly use similar language against America and other Western democracies. They describe national borders as oppressive, law enforcement as inherently racist, capitalism as exploitation and patriotism as a form of extremism.
Political Islamists arrive at a similar destination through a different route. They reject liberal democracy not because it is insufficiently progressive, but because it places human legislation, religious freedom and individual conscience above theological rule.
One side wants to dismantle the Western order in the name of revolution. The other wants to replace it in the name of religious supremacy.
Israel is simply where they cooperate most openly.
This should matter deeply to Americans.
Israel is not a burden disconnected from American interests. It is a democratic ally located in a region challenged by terrorism, authoritarian governments and Iranian-backed militant networks. The United States intelligence community continues to treat developments involving Iran, terrorism and malign foreign influence as matters affecting American security and freedom.
Israel also demonstrates that the Middle East does not have to choose permanently between military dictatorship, monarchy, Islamist rule or failed statehood. Its political system is imperfect and often bitterly divided, but it allows elections, dissent, opposition parties, an independent civil society and public criticism of its leaders.
That is precisely why authoritarian movements despise it.
Defending Israel does not require abandoning compassion
Supporting Israel does not require ignoring Palestinian suffering. Palestinians are human beings entitled to dignity, security, opportunity and responsible leadership.
But compassion for Palestinians must not be transformed into political immunity for Hamas.
A movement that steals the future of Palestinian children, embeds warfare in civilian communities, glorifies martyrdom and treats permanent conflict as a governing strategy is not a liberation movement. It is a machinery of human sacrifice.
Real solidarity requires rejecting the forces that have used Palestinian suffering as political currency for generations.
A genuine peace movement would defend Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians. It would oppose antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred. It would challenge Israeli policies when necessary while also confronting Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and every movement that treats the destruction of Israel as a sacred obligation.
The Red-Green Axis does none of this. It does not seek coexistence. It requires permanent conflict because conflict sustains its ideology.
The West must recover its moral confidence
The greatest advantage possessed by the Red-Green Axis is not its numbers. It is the fear and confusion of democratic institutions.
Universities, media organizations, political parties and civil society groups have often become so afraid of being called racist, colonialist or Islamophobic that they hesitate to defend their own principles.
That hesitation creates space for extremists.
Democracy cannot survive when intimidation is mistaken for activism, when terrorism is romanticized as resistance or when one minority is told that attacks against it are merely a form of political expression.
The answer is not censorship or collective punishment. The answer is moral clarity.
We must defend peaceful protest while rejecting incitement. We must defend religious liberty while opposing religious authoritarianism. We must defend Palestinian humanity without legitimizing Hamas. We must defend Muslims from hatred while supporting Muslims who confront extremism. And we must defend Israel’s right to exist without apologizing for Jewish self-determination.
Israel is the first target because it is the clearest test.
When a society cannot condemn the murder of Israelis without qualification, cannot defend Jewish students without political calculation and cannot distinguish criticism from demonization, it has already surrendered part of its moral foundation.
The Red-Green Axis presents itself as a coalition of the oppressed. In reality, it is an alliance between two authoritarian traditions that regard liberal democracy as an obstacle.
Its members may imagine that they are using one another temporarily. History suggests that such alliances eventually turn inward. Revolutionaries devour their partners, and religious extremists do not share power indefinitely with secular radicals.
By the time this alliance collapses under the weight of its own contradictions, the damage to Jewish communities, Muslim reformers and Western democracy may already be profound.
Israel is sounding the alarm.
The West must decide whether it will listen.
