Ashley Church.
As we watch the scenes of chaos emerging out of France we see the same unifying emblems which have become synonymous with protest in the West. Disparate groups rallying for a range of causes including poverty, socialism, open immigration, climate change, and opposition to Western governments increasingly gather under the same colours and motifs: the Palestinian flag, supported by the keffiyeh and the covered face. These have become fundamental to the architecture of protest.
In fact, the presence of those symbols is so self-evident that it’s hard to remember a time when they weren’t being used – so it may surprise you to know that they’ve only been synonymous with protest in the three years since the atrocities of 7 October 2023 when Hamas raped, tortured and murdered over 1,200 people in Southern Israel.
And it gets even more interesting when we pin down how soon after the Hamas attacks these symbols started to show up in protest mobilisation. Was it within months, weeks, a fortnight?
Nope. In many cases it was the very same day.
In Berlin, Samidoun – an organisation with links to Palestinian terrorism – was distributing sweets to celebrate within hours. In Montreal, an announcement on 7 October invited people to gather the following day to “celebrate the resistance’s success”. In New York, organisers praised “heroic resistance” and advertised a Times Square rally for 8 October.
And these weren’t ‘spontaneous’ uprisings. In many cases the collateral of protest – including pre-printed signage – appeared out of nowhere within hours of the events taking place in Israel. By 9 October, Toronto had a giant Palestinian flag, keffiyeh-wearing participants, marshals and placards defending the violence as resistance and decolonisation. Sydney had already hosted a gathering celebrating the attack, followed by an organised march to the Opera House. The signs of ‘preparation’ were everywhere.
Consider how grotesque this is. These events were playing out while families in Israel were still desperately trying to contact relatives and the world was still coming to terms with what had just happened. News agencies were still reporting that civilians had been gunned down, bodies were still lying in the streets, families were still being held hostage in their homes and captives were still being paraded through the streets of Gaza.
At this point we still didn’t even know the final death toll and the world was only beginning to understand the scale of the horror – yet anti-Israel protests were already taking place around the world.
Think about that. Imagine watching the Twin Towers collapse, then seeing organisations immediately summon crowds to celebrate the terrorists’ success and condemn America. Imagine the revulsion as people praised the “courage” of the men who had just murdered thousands.
That is the moral enormity of those early celebrations. Before Israel had even counted its dead, the people who attacked it were being honoured. The machinery for defending the perpetrators and condemning their victims was already turning.
Which raises a question that deserves a lot more attention than it has received: how were these protests able to mobilise so quickly and with so much ready-made collateral?
Having organised many events myself, I know what bringing people together involves. Someone must contact participants, arrange speakers, prepare publicity, organise equipment, supply banners and establish a message. The people may arrive spontaneously but the infrastructure requires significant preparation.
Now multiply that across cities, countries and continents. How much work had already been done? Who had done it? And did anyone directing that preparation know what was coming?
Within days, American student organisers were circulating a national toolkit with shared messaging, graphics and protest instructions. Promotional flyers for their 12 October mobilisation depicted fighters on an Israeli tank and a paraglider, incorporating the attack itself into the campaign.
Was this an established network reacting with extraordinary speed? Or had parts of that network already been prepared for an event whose significance only a few people understood?
I can hear the objection. Surely something on that scale would require far too many people to keep a secret? It’s a fair question – but how many people actually needed to understand the purpose of the task they’d been given? A printer needs an order. A marshal needs instructions. A local organiser needs contacts. An attendee needs a time and place.
Could people have been preparing to mobilise without knowing what would trigger their mobilisation? Could only a handful have understood what was actually approaching?
Those questions inevitably lead to just a handful of identifiable organisations and relationships that mattered. Samidoun maintained an international mobilisation calendar connecting events across countries. The Palestinian Youth Movement appears repeatedly among organisers. US based National Students for Justice in Palestine supplied campus coordination. The People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition and others subsequently joined them in organising international action. What looks like a multitude of separate local campaigns boils down to just a handful.
Then there are the money trails. That George Soros’s Open Society Foundations made documented grants to Palestinian advocacy organisations is already on the record. Research into Shanghai-based businessman Neville Roy Singham describes another overlapping network of funding, media and activism. A 2024 US intelligence report also identified Iranian-linked actors encouraging Gaza protests and providing financial support although the report fell short of claiming foreknowledge of 7 October.
So, who knew?
Were the grotesque global demonstrations a rapidly organised response, or did military preparations in Gaza have a political counterpart abroad, ready to exploit the slaughter through a wider campaign of propaganda, subversion and hatred?
And even more importantly – why? What’s the ultimate aim of these protests and how many people marching under the ‘Palestinian’ flag really understand whose objectives they are advancing and how this all ties together?
As the new symbol of anti-western hatred, the Palestinian flag is really just the latest face of Antisemitism -the irrational hatred of Jews. It has survived for centuries by finding fresh language, fresh justifications and fresh recruits. Today, it can dress itself in the language of liberation and persuade people that celebrating the murder of Jews is an expression of justice.
As such, the post 7 October anti-Israel movement doesn’t really represent a new struggle – it’s just the latest face of an ancient evil finding a new generation willing to carry its flag.
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