The oppressed become oppressors

What happens when the oppressed become the oppressor?

Because – make no mistake – that’s what has happened since October 7, 2023.

At the start, the pro-Palestine contingent protested the actions of Israel’s government. They protested against Israel’s military, the IDF, and its use of force in the Gaza strip. All of that was constitutionally-protected. While their rhetoric could be excessive – alleging “genocide,” for instance, without any proof whatsoever – they were allowed to do what they did. It wasn’t antisemitic, per se.

As the weeks and months went by, as the war dragged on – mainly due to Hamas’ refusal to lay down their arms, and due to their refusal to release the hostages – Palestine’s acolytes in the West grew impatient.

They started to advocate for a global revolution (“Intifada”). They started to demand that Jews be removed from their ancestral homeland (“From the river to the sea”). They started to use symbols (the red hand, the red triangle) that literally advocate murder.

And they, themselves, changed. They devolved into a dark, dangerous pro-Hamas adjunct. They fully became what they had so often accused Israel of: a violent, intolerant cabal of thugs. Capable, even, of murder, in places like Washington, D.C. or Boulder, Colorado.

Along the way, they started to terrorize kids and families who had gone to see Santa Claus in a shopping mall. They blocked major roads. They vandalized. They started to attack places linked to Jews – even hospitals. And some of them even started to firebomb or shoot up synangogues and Jewish schools. (All in Toronto.)

At that point, they became what they had claimed to always oppose. They had become haters who use force. Against everyone, anyone, who got in their way. To get their way.

Which is the literal definition of terrorism, by the by: using force to achieve some political end.

On the weekend, on a sunny and beautiful Sunday, a bunch of them shut down Ottawa’s big pride event. They actually did that: they blocked the road on which LGBTQ people were peacefully walking. They did that right on Parliament Hill, at the centre of our democracy, demanding that Ottawa Pride “boycott” Jews. In culture, in academia.

The event was cancelled.

If the haters possessed any self-awareness at all, of course, they’d take a look in the nearest mirror, and see that they have changed. They would see that they have become something else. Something bad. But they won’t.

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