On September 11, 2001, I was in Johannesburg, South Africa, recuperating after covering the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban — an antisemitic hate fest that launched the effort to equate Israel to apartheid.
As I tried to absorb the news of the horrific terror attack back home in the U.S. — which seemed closely connected to the hatred I had seen on the streets of Durban — I received a phone call from a close Muslim friend in Cape Town.
She said she was deeply sorry about what had happened, and that it did not represent Islam. I remember feeling so touched by her gesture, which was repeated by Muslim neighbors when I returned to Cape Town a few days later.
Since October 7, some of the same friends have been posting pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel memes on social media — with not a word of criticism for Hamas, or sympathy for the Israeli victims of terror, who are apparently undeserving.
Another Muslim friend, with whom I had taken an Arabic class at college years ago, has been posting radical anti-Israel content on Facebook. I usually keep my political views off that platform, but after several months, I responded.
“Free the hostages and disarm Hamas. Instant peace,” I said in a comment.
What followed was a torrent of radical bile — from my friend, and others — about “genocide” in Gaza, “occupation” of land, “apartheid” policies, and so on.
I decided to cut through it all: “Do you condemn Hamas?” I asked.
She would not — nor would her friends.
“It would seem easy to condemn a terrorist organization that murders, rapes, and steals,” I said.
Still, she — and they — refused.
Instead, she blocked me — which was a relief, because the comments had become so toxic.
I was a bit sad to lose a friendship, but what I learned, or confirmed, is that the anti-Israel side simply will not condemn terror against Jews.
Some argue that Israel “deserved” the October 7 attack — that it still “occupied” Gaza, for example (it left in 2005). One once heard similar arguments justifying the 9/11 attacks, though America’s perceived sins were more abstract.
Others claim that October 7 was necessary because it drew attention to the Palestinian cause. This is an argument Hamas has used. But if it was plausible (if immoral) in the early 1970s, it simply does not fly, half a century later.
There seems to be a profound denial of the October 7 atrocities — a fact highlighted by a recent poll that showed that only 9% of Palestinians think Hamas committed atrocities, and 90% claim not to have seen videos of the atrocities.
In the west, Muslims and pro-Palestinian activists generally have seized on a few errors in initial reporting of the atrocities to claim that the entire story — rapes at the music festival, families burned alive — has been fabricated.
But when you ask whether they would condemn such atrocities if they believed they had occurred, there is silence.
And no one talks about peace: at a rally in Dearborn, Michigan, a speaker who used the word “peace” was jeered.
A recent poll showed nearly half of U.S. Muslims believed Hamas had “valid” reasons for war. Behind the numbers, there seems to be a plain contempt for Jews, based on Islamist ideology, and on imported European antisemitism.
There are some “moderate” Muslims abroad who have criticized Hamas: social media influencer Loay Al-Shareef, originally from Saudi Arabia; and Iranian opposition activists like Fatemeh Sepehri, recently sentenced to prison.
But they are few. Too many in the west are quiet.
It is time to ask Muslim leaders: will they condemn Hamas? Will they accept Israel’s right to exist? Will they support peace?
And if not, what hope is there for coexistence here?
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
