They Feign Concern About Pro-Palestine Chants In Order To Shut Down Pro-Palestine Protests

It’s such an insult to our intelligence how Israel supporters pretend it’s the WAY pro-Palestine protests are happening that they object to, and not the protests themselves. Like if protesters were saying different chants they’d be totally cool with opposition to Israel’s crimes.

They’re like, “We’re not trying to suppress your free speech and stomp out criticism of Israel, we’re just concerned about slogans like ‘globalize the intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’! We’re worried that expressions of support for Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran that we’ve seen in some demonstrations are going to cause acts of terrorism!”

Bullshit. Lies. They’re fucking lying. If they weren’t concern-trolling about “globalize the intifada” they’d make up some other excuse to express their concern, and they know it. Their objection is to criticism of Israel, not to the way those criticisms are being expressed.

"I support your right to protest, just not the way you are doing it," said every defender of every oppressive power structure about every form of protest of any kind.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) June 3, 2020

People who support the status quo always oppose protest groups on these same grounds. They dishonestly pretend it’s the manner in which the protesters express themselves that’s the problem, rather than the fact that protests are happening at all.

This has been going on for generations. As Martin Luther King Jr famously wrote all the way back in 1963:

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’.”

If you have loyalty to the establishment order of things, then obviously you’re never going to support efforts aimed at the upheaval of that order. If you support Israel and its western military backing, the only kind of protesting against the Zionist state that you’ll ever accept is protest that makes no difference and draws no attention to itself. You’ll make up excuses justifying your disdain for the protests against Israel, but you’ll be doing so after the fact. Your true objection is to the protest itself.

Nobody wants to be seen as a tyrant. Zionists don’t want people talking about the fact that Zionism is the single greatest threat to free speech in the western world today because of the way western governments and institutions have been aggressively stomping out criticism of Israel and anti-genocide activism since 2023 at the urging of Israel lobbyists.

So they make up fake reasons for each individual act of oppression.

No no we’re not trying to stomp out criticism of Israel in the UK, we just can’t have people breaking into military facilities and vandalizing British war planes like Palestine Action did. No no we’re not trying to stomp out criticism of Israel in Australia, we’re just trying to prevent the incitement of terrorist attacks. No no we’re not trying to stomp out criticism of Israel in the United States, we just need to make sure Jewish students feel safe on university campuses. No no we’re not trying to stomp out criticism of Israel online, we just can’t allow any expressions of support for proscribed terrorist groups and we don’t want people to be traumatized by seeing uncensored images of massacred children. Etc, etc, etc.

Over and over and over again we’re seeing measures put in place throughout the western world designed to crush speech that opposes Israel and the western empire’s facilitation of its crimes, and every single time there’s a narrative push to frame each individual authoritarian measure as its own separate act which has been put in place for reasons which have nothing whatsoever to do with suppressing speech that is critical of Israel.

And it’s a lie every time. The only common thread running through each of these assaults on free speech is that it makes it harder to express criticism of Israel. That’s the goal. Plainly.

BREAKING: Greta Thunberg arrested under the Terrorism Act for holding a sign which says "I support Palestine Action prisoners. I oppose genocide"

She was detained at the Prisoners for Palestine action at Aspen Insurance in London, insurers for Israeli weapons firm Elbit Systems. pic.twitter.com/3qBt3iRi9e

— Prisoners For Palestine (@Prisoners4Pal) December 23, 2025

You’ll see this dynamic play out everywhere from abusive nations to abusive households. If a downtrodden wife gets fed up with the way she’s been treated and yells at her spouse, the entire conversation from that point onward is going to be about the fact that she yelled and behaved inappropriately and not about the mistreatment she was objecting to. In reality there is no way she could have expressed her opposition to the status quo of the household that would have both (A) received attention and (B) been deemed an acceptable expression of discontent — because the goal of the abuser is to preserve the status quo.

That’s exactly what we’re seeing with all this fake concern trolling about anti-genocide protesters chanting inappropriate slogans or protesting in inappropriate ways or at inappropriate places or at inappropriate times. The goal isn’t to make sure the pro-Palestine protests are happening in a certain way, the goal is to shut down the protests.

Ignore their words and watch their actions. Don’t pay attention to their justifications for why this or that assault on free speech is necessary, look at the real intention behind that assault. Don’t look at what they say they’re doing, look at what they are actually doing. What they are actually doing is systematically strangling free expression to death wherever it is critical of the state of Israel. That’s the real story. That’s all this is ever actually about.

Reading by Tim Foley:

https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/they-feign-concern-about-pro-palestine