The organizers and leaders of the anti-Israel protests in the US and Canada, including on university campuses, continue to ignore the real suffering of the Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the Iran-backed Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
These Palestinians are living under two corrupt dictatorships, both of which place the interests of their leaders above those of the people.
We never hear the voices of these protesters when the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas commit human rights violations against their own citizens.
The massive violations of Palestinian leaders against their own people for the past 30 years include ruthless crackdowns on journalists, political opponents, human rights activists, lawyers and university students.
It is hard to say that the anti-Israel protesters are unaware of these violations, They have been widely documented by Palestinian and foreign human rights groups.
Is there a free media in "Palestine?" No. Is there a functioning parliament? No. Are there general elections? No. Are there no consequences for protesting against the leaders' abuses?
The last parliamentary election was held in 2006; the last presidential election in 2005. This means that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is about to enter the 19th year of his four-year-term.
Even when Palestinian and international human rights organizations have expressed alarm about the human rights violations committed by the PA and Hamas, we do not see or hear any protests at university campuses in the US, Canada or Europe.
The so-called pro-Palestinian individuals and groups in the West deliberately turn a blind eye to the predicament of the Palestinians living under the PA and Hamas. The reason? As long as Israel cannot be blamed for the human rights violations, the "pro-Palestinian" protesters apparently do not care. As far as most of the international media is concerned, these unremitting abuses against the Palestinian people never took place.
Foreign journalists covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tend to look the other way when Palestinians complain about the oppression at the hands of the PA and Hamas. These journalists appear to be busy searching exclusively for any story that will reflect negatively on Israel. They are only interested in stories if they have an anti-Israeli angle.
One has to ask, are the protesters really pro-Palestinian or are they just looking for a "respectable," politically correct, way to vent a loathing for Jews?
Had the "pro-Palestinian" activists in the US and Canada paid attention to Hamas's repressive measures against their own people in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians there would have been in a far better situation today. They would have a real education system instead of one designed to indoctrinate them with hate. They would have been taught skills to enable them to find lucrative jobs. They would have had responsible governance, freedom of speech and the press, and equal justice under the law – liberties the protesters freely enjoy but appear to take for granted.
Did we ever hear a word from these activists when Hamas was depriving their people of international aid and diverting international funds to build a vast network of tunnels and manufacture weapons instead of creating a "Dubai on the Mediterranean"? Not once.
Did we ever hear a word from these self-righteous protesters when Hamas police officers and militiamen were beating, arresting and shooting residents of the Gaza Strip who took to the streets to protest economic hardship or when journalists were arrested, tortured or killed ? Never.
The same is true for the Palestinians in the West Bank. We have rarely, if ever, heard "pro-Palestinian" individuals and groups in the West speak out against the financial and administrative corruption in PA's governing institutions. Pro-Palestinians there know all too well what could happen to them if they did.
In the past few weeks, Palestinian Authority security officers shot and killed six Palestinians in Jenin Refugee Camp in the northern West Bank. One of the victims, journalist Shatha al-Sabbagh, was reportedly shot by a PA sniper as she was standing in front of her home in the camp.
There have also been many reports about human rights violations by the PA, including beatings, torture and arbitrary arrests (such as here, here, here, here and here).
We are still waiting to see if "pro-Palestinian" activists on Western university campuses will organize a protest against any of the PA crackdowns. No one organized such protests when PA security officers beat to death prominent Palestinian human rights activist Nizar Banat in 2021.
It is probably not realistic to expect the "pro-Palestinian" protesters to come out against human rights violations by the PA and Hamas. Deep down, one suspects, these professors and students do not really care about Palestinians at all, only about hating Jews.
The "pro-Palestinian" individuals and groups might try to see that by siding with Hamas, they are harming, not helping, the very people -- the Palestinians -- they claim to support. They also might try to see that by directing their hate against Israel, they are emboldening Hamas and the radicals among the Palestinians to increase their abuse.
The "pro-Palestinian" activists just keep showing that all they have to offer is hatred for Jews and Israel. The real "pro-Palestinian" advocates are those who want to see a good life for the Palestinians, not those who encourage them to embrace a brutal and corrupt Hamas. Would they encourage the Iranian people to submit to the ayatollahs, or the Uyghurs to embrace the Communist Chinese Party?
Instead of sitting in a comfortable campus where no one will arrest, torture or kill them for speaking out, these activists should be urging Hamas to release the 100 Israeli hostages it has been holding in the Gaza Strip since the atrocities of October 7, 2023. That would be the best and fastest way to end the current war in the Gaza Strip. The real message is: if you do not want your people killed, do not start a war.
Instead of calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel, the "pro-Palestinian" students might invite Israelis and Palestinians to their campuses to build, not destroy, bridges between the two peoples. If these protesters in the West really want to help Palestinians, instead of offering messages of hate, they could offer good salaries and jobs.
Sadly, "pro-Palestinian" protests have shown themselves to be nothing more than a backdoor way of spreading hate, delegitimizing Israel and demonizing Jews.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
Luonne Dumak