Islamophobia during the genocide in Gaza.

 

Since the escalation of hostilities in Israel and Palestine in October 2023, Islamophobia has been on the rise in the United States. Between October and December 2023, 3,578 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents have been reported to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a 178 percent increase from the previous year1 . This data is directly linked to the Israeli government’s attacks on the Palestinian people. In the months following Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, a number of political leaders, corporations, institutions of higher education, media executives, and social media networks have promoted or otherwise relied on Islamophobic tropes to justify the Israeli government’s apparent intent to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Islamophobia has historically been weaponised in Israel-Palestine discourse to perpetuate racist tropes targeting Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians that serve to discredit legitimate critiques of Israeli state policy and ultimately deny the Palestinian people from “realising their full civil, political, national, and human rights.” Among the most widespread tropes invoked against supporters of Palestinian human rights is one that posits Muslims and Arabs as, by nature, prone to violent action. Although non-violent action has been “far more prominent and consistent” in the Palestinian call for self-determination, American politicians and media executives have depicted Palestinians as “almost entirely violent”. Relying on this trope, the largely peaceful and principled calls of Palestinians and their Muslim and Arab supporters for human rights have been portrayed as dangerous and threatening.

Another Islamophobic trope in operation is that Muslims and Arabs possess animosity and act violently specifically towards fellow religious minorities. Any protest against Israeli state policies by Muslims, Arabs, Palestinians, and their sympathisers is therefore framed as a form of bigotry towards entire religious minority, a dangerous and inaccurate conflation that has been repeatedly revoked by human rights activists4 . As a result, the legitimate criticism of Israeli state policies of apartheid, which have also been levied by expert scholars, are immediately discredited, due to a belief that Muslims, Arabs, and particularly Palestinians, cannot possibly be objective or trustworthy observers. This suspicion towards any Muslim, Palestinian, or Arab call for Palestinian human rights ultimately lends itself to the dehumanisation of Palestinians, who are rendered “casualties of war” rather than victims of state-sanctioned violence. These Islamophobic tropes have been promoted by a number of actors since October 2023, including those in the highest levels of political office in the United States. Rather than confront the Israeli government over reports and footage of the massive death toll in Gaza, President Biden dismissed the credibility of the Palestinian Health Ministry’s reports: “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.” His remarks relied on the trope that Muslims and Arabs are inherently biased and therefore cannot be legitimate critics of political affairs when he questioned Palestinians’ ability to be trustworthy sources of information. However, while President Biden promoted Islamophobic stereotypes in public, reports have emerged that the US State Department has “regularly cited ministry statistics without caveats” and “the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which tracks deaths in the conflict, has found the ministry’s numbers to be reliable after conducting its own investigation.” Other US government leaders, like National Security Council official John Kirby, also relied on Islamophobia to dehumanise Palestinians. After at least 10,000 Palestinians, including 4,000 children, had been reportedly killed in Gaza, Kirby, who with visible emotion mourned the lives of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian forces, claimed in reference to civilians in Gaza: “And being honest about the fact that there have been civilian casualties and that there likely will be more is being honest, because that’s what war is. It’s brutal. It’s ugly. It’s messy.” Rather than heed the calls of Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs to consider Israel’s actions as evidence of crimes against humanity, Kirby dismissed Israeli activity as “war” and suggested that Palestinian lives were ultimately expendable in this pursuit.

Outside of political leadership, Islamophobia has been deployed by civil society organisations seeking to stifle criticism of the Israeli government’s policies of apartheid against the Palestinian people in the past and now amid the ongoing crisis. As reported by the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights over the past several years, pro-Israeli organisations have responded to a public shift towards sympathy for Palestinians by increasingly doubling down on anti-Muslim rhetoric. For example, in its most recent attempts to target critics of the Israeli government in October, the Anti-Defamation League, in collaboration with the Brandeis Center, released a letter to the presidents of nearly 200 colleges and universities calling on them to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups for “providing material support to Hamas”. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) quickly blasted the move, arguing that the accusations were made “without citing any evidence” and that “calls to investigate, disband, or penalize student groups on the basis of their exercise of free speech rights” should be rejected. The ADL’s call not only threatened students’ free speech but also relied on an anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian trope that supporters of Palestinian human rights are by nature violent and would therefore fund violent activities abroad. The use of these Islamophobic tropes to draw suspicion towards Muslim, Palestinian and Arab critics of Israeli apartheid has also extended to corporations. While many corporate leaders simply refused to acknowledge the existence of Palestinian civilians while releasing public statements, others explicitly sought to stifle any condemnation of Israeli attacks on Gaza, specifically painting student activists critical of Israel as biased.

As an example, Citadel LLC CEO Kenneth Griffin claimed that he used his considerable influence as a major donor to urge Harvard University administrators to “come out forcefully in defense of Israel,” seemingly seeking to counter a viral statement released earlier by students. When asked by the New York Times if Citadel would ever hire the head of a student group who signed the statement, Griffin reportedly responded with an unequivocal no. Also in response to the statement released by Harvard students, on social media platform X, Pershing Square Capital Management CEO William Ackman publicly called for Harvard to release a list of signatories to CEOs so that they do not “inadvertently hire any of their members”. Multiple other CEOs, including those at FabFitFun, EasyHealth, Dovehill Capital Management, and Sweetgreen, have publicly supported him in threatening the careers of students. Universities and political leaders have also seemingly targeted students for expressing vocal support for Palestinian human rights. In October, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis asserted he had closed two chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), an organisation advocating for Palestinian rights, in his state. These chapters were reportedly ordered to “shut down because they violated the state’s anti-terrorism statute”. In November, Brandeis University became the first private university to ban a student chapter of National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Columbia University administrators reportedly altered event policies 17 days before suspending Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace student groups for violating university policies. Since October 2023, traditional and social media platforms have also censored those who have attempted to raise concerns regarding the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinian civilians, particularly Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians, further promoting the Islamophobic trope that renders any criticism of Israel unacceptable. Both Al Jazeera and Newsweek have produced comprehensive lists of journalists who have faced consequences for supporting Palestinians. Reports also emerged indicating that Upday, a news aggregator app that is a subsidiary of the publishing giant Axel Springer, handed down directives to amplify Israeli perspectives and minimise the Palestinian civilian death toll in October. Finally, social media platforms like Facebook have not only failed to protect Muslim, Palestinian and Arab voices from hateful rhetoric and potential attacks; they have also reportedly participated in censoring those very same voices from sounding the alarm over human rights abuses in Gaza. In December, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting 1,049 cases in which “peaceful content in support of Palestine ... was censored or otherwise unduly suppressed” by Meta. Indeed, these apparent attempts at censoring Palestinian or pro-Palestinian voices seem to be systemic. In October, i n t e r n a l documents r e l e a s e d demonstrate that Meta had been reportedly hiding Palestinian comments at a greater rate than Israeli comments. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Normally, Meta only begins to hide such comments when its systems are 80% certain that they qualify as what the company calls hostile speech…” Temporarily, “Meta cut that threshold in half over a swath of the Middle East, hiding any comment deemed 40% likely to be inflammatory…” and later further lowered “the bar to hide comments from users in Palestinian territories if Meta’s automated system judged there was at least a 25% chance they violated rules”. In other words, Meta has seemingly judged that Palestinian social media posts are more likely to promote hateful language, once again relying on the trope that Palestinians cannot possibly be reliable sources of information. The incidents presented here are only a few of the ways in which Islamophobia has been deployed in recent months to discourage criticism of the Israeli government. This rhetoric not only puts Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians in danger but also continues to be used to justify the Israeli government’s apparent intent to commit genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.