Let’s Name It: Not Just Islamophobia, but Anti-Palestinianism

Wadea al-Fayoume was an adorable 6-year-old Muslim boy — killed by his landlord in his suburban Chicago home on October 14, with 26 stab wounds. Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad are three college students — shot over Thanksgiving weekend in Vermont last year; Hisham is paralyzed from the chest down. Zacharia Doar, a 23-year-old Muslim father living in Texas, was stabbed in Austin on February 8 after a protest.

Politicians, especially prominent liberals, have responded to these and other violent attacks with somber statements condemning Islamophobia. To mark the start of Ramadan, President Joe Biden reminded Americans that “Islamophobia has absolutely no place in the United States.” A few weeks after al-Fayoume’s brutal killing, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced “the First-Ever National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.” At the local level, New York City Public Schools Chancellor David Banks established an “Interfaith Advisory Council,” and several other public and private schools have established Muslim affinity groups.

On the surface, these appear to be substantive, positive moves taken by officials who appear genuinely concerned about a rise in anti-Muslim violence since October 7.

Yet Wadea al-Fayoume wasn’t killed just because he was Muslim. Hisham, Kinnan, and Tahseen weren’t shot because they’re Muslim. And Zacharia wasn’t stabbed just because he’s Muslim. They were all targeted for being Palestinian.

The responses to this wave of violence haven’t emphasized that fact. It’s politically safer to speak generically about “countering Islamophobia” than to confront the phenomenon that has gripped America even tighter since October 2023: anti-Palestinianism.

Obscuring the victims’ Palestinian identity allows liberal politicians to profess decency and nod to identity politics. Biden, for instance, dispatched his administration’s top-ranking Muslim, Dilawar Syed, to al-Fayoume’s memorial service. Dilawar is not of Palestinian heritage, or even Arab. And he is the deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration; the killing of the small child has no connection to the administration of small businesses.

The willingness to let anti-Palestinianism go unmentioned is on more stark display in situations that don’t generate as many headlines as a slain child. The same liberal officials who paid homage to al-Fayoume often choose silence when Palestinians or supporters of Palestinian freedom are targeted with harassment and retaliation for their activism.

The sleight of hand that would elevate the fight to eliminate anti-Muslim bias, but not anti-Palestinian animus, can be seen in some of the groups that stand up to Islamophobia. Even groups with a track record of opposition to pro-Palestinian activism are willing to jump on the anti-Islamophobia bandwagon. The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, is no friend of Palestinian freedom, yet it responded to al-Fayoume’s death much like Biden: by condemning Islamophobia while ignoring his identity as a Palestinian child.

By focusing instead on Islamophobia, liberal American politicians believe they can maintain the balancing act of supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza while appearing to care for their domestic constituencies. If these liberals were to confront anti-Palestinianism head on, it would put them on a collision course with America’s powerful anti-Palestinian faction, a long existing force in American life that was kicked into overdrive after October 7.

It is exactly the pressures brought to bear by these pro-Israel forces that would shunt the mere words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” to oblivion — let alone the notion of Palestinian people. A well-meaning liberal can attract controversy by, say, just mentioning “Gaza” or “the occupation” in an Oscar speech without so much as uttering the word “Palestine.”

That Palestinians shouldn’t, can’t, or don’t exist is a common refrain of pro-Israel figures. The Zionist motto of “a land without a people for a people without a land” has been around for more than a century and a half. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir declared in 1969, “There were no such thing as Palestinians.” The mantra gets repeated everywhere from the Israeli halls of power to contemporary American campus disputes. Ignoring anti-Palestinianism cannot be separated from this campaign of total erasure.

Avoiding anti-Palestinianism is not just incorrect; it also has damaging side effects. The lack of acknowledgment casts the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a battle between Jews and Muslims. It is ahistorical, reductive, and foolish to view the troubling recent instances of anti-Palestinian violence in the U.S. through this lens. And even the most well-intentioned liberals can fall prey to it. While not the fault of his guests, Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” episode on Israel–Palestine didn’t feature any Palestinians: only an American Muslim and an American Jew.

This dangerous sectarian narrative also negates Palestinian Christians. An influential minority roughly divided between orthodoxy and Catholicism, Palestinian Christians are just as passionate about their liberation as Palestinian Muslims. As are non-Palestinian Americans — including Arab Americans of other national origins, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans, non-Muslim LGBTQ+ folks, and countless others — who have stood shoulder to shoulder with their Palestinian compatriots. (In an example of how the conflation of Palestinians and Islam gets tricky, the three college students shot in Vermont have not been identified by their religion in media reports.)

Many of these people have also suffered personal and professional consequences that would not attract the support of officials who are “confronting Islamophobia.” Viewing the consequences meted out to this diverse coalition shines a light on the unifying factor: not that they took Islamic positions, but rather pro-Palestine stances.

Islamophobia, of course, is very real. It existed before the attacks of September 11, 2001, and intensified afterward. It’s a global force so strong that, marking the fifth anniversary of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings, the U.N. General Assembly voted two years ago to recognize March 15 as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. In the U.S., anti-Muslim bigotry has consistently boiled beneath the surface, with incidents spiking periodically following incitement related to various, sometimes contrived, current events, from the campaign against the “Ground Zero Mosque” to Donald Trump’s ascension to power.

Israeli bombs don’t distinguish between Palestinian Muslims and Christians.

There is often overlap between anti-Palestinianism and Islamophobia. When former Obama administration official Stuart Seldowitz repeatedly harassed an Egyptian food cart vendor in New York, his bigotry cut across both.

Liberals should by all means combat Islamophobia and be commended for it when appropriate. (Today’s MAGA-era conservatism is at its core so anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian that an appeal to them would be foolish.) The liberal body politic, though, should recognize that Israeli bombs don’t distinguish between Palestinian Muslims and Christians. The occupation and its hateful vigilantes don’t care whether they are subjugating believers or nonbelievers. And here at home, the enforcers of pro-Israel norms rail against Palestinians and non-Palestinians, Jews and Christians, Muslims and atheists; so long as they fight for Palestinian rights, they are targets.

This is why liberals must recognize anti-Palestinianism for what it is. If they are legitimately concerned, they should combat it however they can. One place to start would be by opposing Israel’s war on Gaza.

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