Variety recently reported on an open letter signed by nearly four-hundred members of the film industry in response to the Israeli Defense Forces’ killing of Palestinian photojournalist and war documentarian Fatima Hassouna.
Hassouna, her pregnant sister, and nine other family members were killed in her home in northern Gaza on April 16, days before her wedding and twenty-four hours after the Cannes Film Festival announced that it would premiere a documentary featuring Hassouna the following month. (That film, titled Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk, played at Cannes on May 15.) Given the IDF’s longtime targeting of journalists, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that she and her family were killed in response to that announcement. (Predictably, the IDF claims that it was trying to kill a Hamas member.)
Much of the statement focuses on the industry’s indifferent response to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. But in its closing stretch, the letter includes a bizarre and out-of-place paragraph that perfectly symbolizes the Western, pro-Palestine movement’s misguided insistence on coupling opposition to the war with completely unrelated issues:
“The far right, fascism, colonialism, anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+, sexist, racist, islamophobic [sic] and antisemitic movements are waging their battle on the battlefield of ideas, attacking publishing, cinema and universities, and that’s why we have a duty to fight.”
Is genocide really an issue that the left-right spectrum can adequately account for? In Israel, the most enthusiastic supporters of the war are certainly on the far right. But last May, the Pew Research Center found that only 19% of Israelis believe their country’s response to the October 7 terrorist attack “has gone too far.” And for well over a year, it was a Democratic U.S. president who ensured that Israel was able to carry out its brutal assault on the civilian population of Gaza. Left-liberal leaders across the Western world have offered their support for Israel’s campaign of death and destruction, with few raising anything more than the most tepid of concerns in response to the bloodshed.
By laying the conflict at the feet of the international far right, the letter reflects the biases of default liberalism, a phenomenon in which figures on the left assume that all “normal people” share their worldview. Never mind the fact that figures like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan have been some of the most consistent critics of Israel over the decades. One must either be a left-wing Palestine supporter or a right-wing Israel supporter.
Similarly, terms like “fascism” and “colonialism” have become meaningless buzzwords. Suffice it to say that Zionism has many fascistic elements, and it derives its power as an ideological force from Israel’s ability to occupy Palestinian land and evict or kill the original inhabitants. Whether the letter reflects an honest application of such terminology or a faddish embrace of academic jargon is anybody’s guess.
It’s in its invocation of “anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+” agendas that the letter truly goes off the deep end. For far too long, pro-Palestine protesters have attempted to pair their opposition to the Gaza War with issues that lifestyle liberals and cultural leftists glom onto. The destructiveness of the cultish transgender movement is outside the purview of this article. Nevertheless, any effort to equate or draw a parallel between the decades-long suffering of the Palestinians and the struggles of men who identify as women—or vice versa—is deeply insulting. There can be no comparison between the two phenomena, especially when Palestinian civilians lack the cultural capital or political cachet of transgender activists, whose objective is the abolition of womanhood. Ironically, the vast majority of Palestinians are deeply opposed to gender ideology, so the letter indirectly attacks the very people it purports to speak out on behalf of.
Intersectionality is poison. The notion that the “liberation” of various grievance groups in the West are tied to the fate of the Palestinians is morally illiterate. Any effort to wed opposition to Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip to divisive agendas—particularly ones that most Palestinians find offensive—is destined to fail. Some, if not many, of the letter’s signatories were probably willing to overlook its embrace of asinine cultural talking points because it drew attention to an indefensible war crime. But the fact of the matter remains that the death and destruction in Gaza is completely unrelated to whether Western legal systems recognize transgender identity, nor is such death and destruction exclusively the province of the far right.
Opponents of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip should focus their energies on honoring people like Fatima Hassouna by calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, not by using the antiwar movement’s newfound momentum to promote a culture war.
