Why the Pro-Palestine Movement Is Quiet on Iran

You may be noticing that the Western pro-Palestine movement is largely silent on the protests now roiling Iran. To many, this comes as a surprise.

It shouldn’t.

Decolonization versus human rights

The Western pro-Palestinian movement is not a liberal movement based on universal principles. It is, rather, an anticolonial, anti-imperialist movement. Those are its core values, not democracy and human rights. That’s why it’s crucial to depict Israelis as white and European, Palestinians as indigenous.

To some extent, this is a backlash to the failed US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A generation of leftists has grown up understanding that these interventions were disastrous neocolonialist efforts by the West to remake the Middle East in its own image. Any Western intervention is now suspect, and not entirely without reason.

This helps to explain why the movement seems so uninterested in internal struggles over human rights. Conflicts within Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, or even among regional powers, fall outside the framework of decolonization. To care about them, and to choose sides, is to risk becoming a Western imperialist, once again meddling in local affairs, which is by definition detrimental and wrong.

How the framework shapes priorities

This framework, once you see it, explains a lot. It explains why the pro-Palestinian movement wasn’t really bothered by the dismantling of USAID, and in some cases celebrated it. It explains why Tibetan and Taiwanese independence aren’t priorities: no Western imperialists involved. It even explains the ambivalence around Ukraine, since Russia is cast not as a European imperial power, but as an Eastern power reacting to the Western imperialism of NATO and the US.

It even perhaps explains why Iranians themselves are now referring to the Islamic Republic government as “occupying” Iran: this language is now so embedded in Western discourse around the Middle East that it has become the only commonly legible way of claiming legitimacy for a movement.

This framework, it should be noted, is illiberal. It’s not pro-democracy or pro-human rights. It’s anti-universalist. It’s a framework that was pushed by the USSR and is now pushed by Russia, China, and a lot of profoundly awful regimes, because it gives them freedom of action and drives off Western intervention. It’s a framework that explains why Palestinian “liberation” does not mean human rights at an individual level, and why the Palestine issue can even supersede human rights at home. Sending a message to liberal politicians on Palestine has become, for some, a greater priority than responding to the erosion of women’s rights or increasing economic anxiety at home. Even a recent US travel ban that specifically includes Palestinians has drawn a muted response. Decolonization rises to the highest principle, and all else pales.

None of this is an argument for colonialism, or for a return to Bush-style interventions. But it is an argument for recognizing the pro-Palestinian movement for what it is. And if you are, like I am, liberal, meaning in favor of universal rights and freedoms, then it’s worth looking at how this movement is designed to undermine that whole concept—and considering whether you want to welcome that into the ranks of your own liberal politics.