Is it antisemitic? I know that "Free Palestine" was one of the chants used by the 10/7 murderers during the massacre, so does that add a new antisemitic meaning? Is that even new, has it always been antisemitic? Surely they don't mean to free Palestine from Hamas, even though that's universally more appropriate. I feel like unless one means "from Hamas," it's a really dumb thing to say. Am I wrong? It's so vague. I mean... from what?

EDIT: Thank you all for the wonderful discussion and information. I guess now when I see someone say that, I'll have to ask which way they meant it.

Honest question- what are the actual demands since I believe it is more than a slogan?'

I have tried to understand this war and for the life of me I still cannot comprehend what is going on. It’s just too confusing. In the simplest terms can someone explain this war? Is it oil, religion, or just everything? I’ve read both sides and googled but I’m left with this question. Why does “free Palestine” seem to be the thing that upsets so many people?

The slogan "Free Palestine" was originally coined by the Jews living under the British Mandate

The "Free Palestine" slogan, ubiquitous today in demonstrations and on university campuses in the West, has a fascinating and ironic history going back to the British Mandate period and the partition of Ottoman Palestine at the end of the era of colonialism in the Levant. It was originally a slogan used by the Jews during the Mandate to rally support for the development of the eventual state that would replace colonial rule with a multicultural, free and democratic Israel.

Before 1948, all people living in British Mandatory Palestine, whether Jewish or Arab, carried Palestinian passports issued by the British; they were all Palestinians. Golda Meir spoke publicly of being a Palestinian for decades before independence; both of Netanyahu's parents were Jewish Palestinians. The Jews in Palestine during that period willingly, conspicuously, and in a very general and systemic way called themselves Palestinians and embraced that identity at the time. It's remarkable really.

The biggest Jewish newspaper in the Levant during the Mandate was called the Palestine Post, still published today under the title Jerusalem Post. The Palestine Symphony Orchestra is another of many examples; it was founded by violinist Bronisław Huberman in 1936, at a time of the purge of Jewish musicians from European orchestras during the Holocaust. When Israel declared independence and dropped the colonial name for the region, the group became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, which like the Jerusalem Post is still in business today.

The modern appropriation of the slogan by Arab nationalists and its repurposing to lure Western progressives into the movement

Today, however, repurposed for use by the modern Palestinian nationalist movement and its perpetual "armed struggle" against the Jews, the slogan "free Palestine" is much less about actually freeing Palestine per se than about making the whole region judenfrei. This is apparent in the official statements of the leaders of the Palestinian government in Ramallah and their "pay for slay" fund, as well as the founding covenant of Hamas that makes clear the movement's core goal of a perpetual Islamic religious war against the Jews.

So many eager and enthusiastic well meaning young people today are proud to oppose the existence of Israel, ironically the only multicultural liberal democracy in the region where citizens enjoy the freedom that westerners take for granted. The ultimate purpose of the movement they have joined, however, has been concealed from them by a well funded campaign of propaganda that was contrived in the Soviet Union by academic "Zionologists" and has subsequently been very successfully introduced into western academia by Arab nationalists with the support of Qatari money.

The modern purpose of the slogan "Free Palestine" is the polar opposite of its original usage and meaning

Shouting "free Palestine" on Western university campuses today and identifying as an antizionist is more about advertising an identity and being part of some seemingly important movement that superficially appears righteous and positive. Despite the popular narrative, it has little to do with supporting democracy and real freedom, although its western supporters would vehemently and reflexively disagree.

On campus, the new ideology is literally taught in university classes to young, impressionable students in programs sponsored and supported by Qatari money. The young people demonstrating on campus clearly mean well, but just don't have the wherewithal or opportunity to think independently.

Demonstrating against the brutal authoritarian regime in Ramallah that keeps its Palestinian citizens in a perpetual and self-defeating victimhood, for example, or advocating for a new democratic government there that would finally grant its citizens the civil rights they claim to care so much about would set them squarely against their friend groups and social circles; it would require the cognitive sophistication and independent thought that they just haven't been able to develop for themselves in the current climate.

"Free Palestine" was originally the slogan of Jews in the Levant to rally international support for the development of what would eventually become Israel

The irony that the slogan "Free Palestine," was originally created by the national liberation movement that created Israel may be surprising to young people on western university campuses today. This was the subject of a recent video on the travelingisrael channel on YouTube:

FREE PALESTINE' Was Invented by Jews - Here's How Arabs Hijacked It

https://youtu.be/0gEOYJerWZI?si=A4UyyFDcuxaDv5f7

From the video description on YouTube:

"Have you ever heard the phrase "Free Palestine?" Here's the twist: it actually began as a Jewish slogan in the 1940s - long before the Arabs adopted it and weaponized it against Israel. In this video, I reveal how the phrase was born, how it was transformed, and how the Soviets, the Arab world, and modern propaganda reshaped its meaning. The real history is far more surprising than the slogan itself."

This is not a sarcastic question.

What I am asking for are the practical, concrete steps and conditions that would satisfy the calls for "Free Palestine". This sub already has lots of moralizing and long history lessons. I am asking for specifics.

I would also hope for answers that consider the ramifications of their proposals. For example, if Free Palestine means the immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces and control from Gaza and the West Bank, the dismantling of all settlements, and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, then what is Israel entitled to do when it is inevitably attacked? (This is a fair assumption as at least 35-40% of Palestinians do not favor 2 states, and Iran certainly does not).

If your proposal is one state, do you expect Israel to give up its Jewish identity? If you acknowledge that will never happen, what should Palestinians do, keep fighting? If Jews are mistreated in this new state, are they entitled to engage in violent resistance?

Seen a lot of videos lately of people asking others on the street if they believe in a “Free Palestine”, what do they mean? Is this a general term with multiple meanings? Technically Palestine is free in Gaza and Area A of the west bank, are they referring to the removal of troops from Gaza? Are they referring to changes they want in area B and C? Do they want Israel not to exist or a one state solution? Is it not simple and can have multiple meanings? If someone asked you “Do you believe in a Free Palestine”, what do you think they are asking?

Recently I’ve heard a lot of people chanting this and I’m unsure what it actually means. Obviously there are extremes in any group but Is there some sort of a majority consensus as to what would constitute a free palestine?

Are the majority people that are chanting this also simultaneously Implying that they want to see the complete annihilation of Israel? Or are they simply In favor of either the 1 or 2 state solution and what do those solutions actually look like?

I saw a picture of an arab / muslim girl on social media today. It was just her hanging out smiling. On top of the image were the words "Free Gaza". On the bottom of the image were the words "Free Palestine.

Since I read top to bottom, at first I only saw "Free Gaza" and wow, what an odd experience it was.

I am what some might call a "diaspora Jew" living in the US. I support Israel's right to exist, and its right to (within reason) defend itself from attack. I don't as a rule harbor resentment towards peaceful muslims, and believe civilians on all sides should be able to live in peace . So although I am not directly involved or impacted by the ongoing war, I have found this time period to be upsetting to say the least.

But, as a Jew, reading the words "Free Gaza" on an Arab person's social media feed was one of the most calming things I have experienced in months.

It's the first time that this conflict was framed in a way that made sense, and seemed reasonable. It's the first time I thought "wow, this person and I may not agree or be on the same side, but I think we can have a dialogue. I think progress is possible." Think about it:

• It would be reasonable for Gazans to want to be free of Hamas

• It would be reasonable for Gazans to want to be free of IDF incursions and bombings

• It would be reasonable for Gazans to want to be free of the Israeli naval blockade

• It would be reasonable for Gazans to want to travel between other countries, unrestricted

• It would be reasonable for Gazans to want economic opportunity on par with Israeli's

• Generally I agree. I too want a "free Gaza"

"Free Gaza" implies there is a physical place / country where people live in sub-standard conditions. And as a slogan, it supports a very legitimate humanitarian cause, which is that of freeing people from violent, dangerous, or inhumane conditions.

"Free Palestine" on the other hand, has the opposite effect on me. These words don't seem to be humanitarian. They don't seem to be standing up for anyone, or interested in liberating anything. While they don't clearly articulate any thing, when I read them the interpretation I have is "This land belongs to muslims, just because we say so," or "there is no room for compromise," or "Jews don't have a right to land or peace or a home, only muslims do".

So I have a few questions for the group, and would appreciate some input from Arab Muslim members of the sub:

1. Would you be open to using the slogans "Free Gaza" or "Free West Bank" instead of "Free Palestine"?

2. Are you aware "Free Palestine" may be interpreted as more anti-semitic than "Free Gaza"?

3. To you, does "Free Palestine" mean give all land from the river to the see to arab muslims?

4. How should the world determine who should get to control any specific peace of land?

5. Is there a difference between fighting to support one group, and fighting to tear down another?

I have empathy for the innocent civilians of Palestine. I do not agree with the tactics of the Israeli government in this conflict. I’m sure 90 % of the world agree that we don’t condone terrorism as well. Hamas is obviously in control of Palestine, so what exactly do people mean and want from a free Palestine?

The "Free Palestine" movement to me seems very surface-level. It doesn't address the issue of what part of Palestine should be free: the West Bank and Gaza, or "from the river to the sea." Then there's the issue of what comes next when Palestine is free.

If Israel were gone tomorrow, you would be left with Hamas in Gaza, which would seek to claim territory in the south, and the Palestinian Authority, which would claim the north. Differing ideologies and strategies between the two groups would likely fester into renewed conflict in the region.

If Israel chose to leave the West Bank and Gaza or if a ceasefire is called, Hamas would simply regroup and reacquire the strength to attack Israel again, breaking another ceasefire as they did on October 7th. This would lead to Israel reoccupying Gaza and the West Bank for security reasons.

I see the movement as being driven by strong emotion and moral outrage, which is fine for spreading awareness about the war and civilian casualties. But what then when your slogan is "Free Palestine"? All it seems to do in the West is cause unrest via protests. Additionally, the movement is already heavily discredited with some members supporting Hamas and justifying their actions on October 7th.

There are no real actionable proposals by the "Free Palestine" movement that address the political, economic, and security dimensions of the conflict. The movement largely resorts to sloganeering to gather people who have been emotionally affected by the conflict, leading to a lack of critical thinking and lots of shouting and spewing figures, which does nothing to resolve the conflict but cause a headache.

I ask this of those who are WITH free palastine, because too often do I see people who do not support it speak for those who do. I hear that they "want to end isreal" "antisemitism" and that it is an attack on isreal as a nation and jews as a people. I hear this most of all from people not of that group. There is a historical meaning to "free palastine" from 2003 when an antisemitic Syrian born Palastinian built the movement saying "there is no reason for coexistence" between isreal and palastine and to "hunt [the Israelis] down to the end of the world, and prosecute them for their massacres". Due to this factor, Palastinians THEMSELVES could have this opinion, or they may not. I am not from there. If you are, I would love the clarification.

Like many American pro-palastine's I did not know of its origins or implement those ideals into the saying "free Palastine" and have not considered the meaning that Palastinians puts into those words. My own meaning being to end aparthied, give palastine independence, and figure out either a two plan solution, or a one plan solution. Creating a single state in which all religion and ethnicities are welcome, giving both Palastinians and Jews the Right of Return. Many protestors echo these ideas, and while both online and in real life will say the same, there are antisemitics, some even holocaust deniers, hopping on this train making it difficult to communicate peaceful ideas for ending the war and instead inciting fear in both jews and isrealis alike. Or is THAT what pro-palastine is? The best thing I could come up with was figuring out exactly what Pro Palastine means to the majority of that group. Is it peaceful, or does it imply historical context against the existence of Isreal? Again, I will NOT be excepting definitions from those not of that group as they do not speak for pro-palastine. I am asking PRO PALASTINE to speak for themselves.

I mean, it's just a vapid slogan. Ascribing any meaningful intention to the person saying it is giving more credit than they're due.

I was originally in favor of a two-state solution but as time went on I realized that it sounds like a terrible idea.

My opinion is, that it's better to tackle any social injustices happing in Israel. If Palestine was left to it's own devices, they would be left to the mercy of Hamas and that's where the real social injustice begins. For instance: women and LGBT are safe in Israel. Under Islamist regime, however, there is a problem. Israel has no state religion and that gives a lot of freedom and self-determination to people, especially ones that would otherwise be oppressed or persecuted for religious reasons.

Furthermore, I'm not convinced Palestine as a state would last very long against its Muslim neighbors, who would probably incorporate it very quickly.

I've stumbled across this video and I found many of my opinions expressed. Let me know your thoughts and how you imagine this conflict to be resolved.

Nowadays, I'm not sure what the stance of most Pro-Palestinians is on what they actually want. I support all the civilians that are part of this conflict, no matter what ethnicity and want them safe.

Zionism, to me, is self-determination of Jews in the homeland but that does not exclude the same for the other ethnicities whose homeland it also is.

What is your ideal future?

I'm honestly interested in a civilized discussion. War sucks and people are justifiably emotional about it BUT we are not the ones responsible and that's why I said that I support the civilians on Israels and Palestines sides.

Does Free Palestine mean kicking out all Jews in the region, and making it Muslim exclusive? Isn't this kicking and taking the Jewish people's homeland? Is it 1 state run by a Hamas? Is it a state where only Palestinians vote for the leaders and Jews don't get voting rights? Is it that Palestinians and Jews are equal and vote for a leader together? I don't see how the last one would work. So many Palestinians are pro-Hamas and are anti-semitic while there are Jews who don't want Muslims in their country. Also hasn't Palestine never been a real country?

“Free Palestine.”

I grew up on those words.

In Lebanon, most people around me wanted a free Palestine for a very practical reason — to send the Palestinian refugees back. The civil war that tore my country apart was ignited in no small part by the Palestinian armed factions who turned Lebanon into their launching pad. “Free Palestine” meant: free us from them.

In Damascus, where my father’s family lived, the sentiment was different but equally self-serving. Palestine must be returned to the Arabs, its righteous owners. No one asked follow-up questions. No one was expected to.

Palestine was central to Islam, most Arabs are Muslim, therefore supporting the Palestinian cause was reflexive. A non-brainer in the most literal sense — no brain engaged at all.

Nobody stopped to point out that Palestine is not an Arabic word. Nobody found it strange that Jerusalem, the supposedly third holiest city in Islam, is not mentioned once in the Quran. Not once. Nor is Palestine. The entire theological and political architecture of this cause rests on a foundation that their own scripture doesn’t bother to acknowledge.

What was actually happening was indoctrination. A systematic, generational rejection of Jewish sovereignty — and frankly, of any minority sovereignty. Jews, Christians, Druze, Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis — the Arab world has been remarkably consistent in how it treats people who are different. We just don’t talk about that.

Instead, in the West, we talk about Palestine.

In the West, a civilization that has elevated human rights to its highest moral currency, the Palestinian cause has become the one exception to every rule. In the queue of human suffering, Palestinians cut the line every time. Homosexuals executed in Gaza and hanged from cranes in Iran? Palestine first. Women imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for campaigning for the right to drive — a right they were denied until 2018 — girls sold into marriage in Afghanistan, women erased from public life entirely under the Taliban? After Palestine. Political dissidents ground into dust in Syrian and Egyptian prisons, journalists disappeared in Libya, children starving in Yemen while their rulers wage proxy wars, entire populations hollowed out by hunger in Sudan? All of it waits. Christians ethnically cleansed from Iraq and Syria, the Arab world methodically emptied of every Jewish community it once held — a demographic erasure carried out across a century with surgical patience and near-total Western silence?

Palestine is still first.

So let’s end where we started. Free Palestine. Which Palestine, exactly? The Roman invention? The British administrative line? The British Mandate covered the entire territory of what is today Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan. In 1921, 78% of that mandate was handed to the Hashemite family — a dynasty imported from Hijaz in present-day Saudi Arabia — and became the Kingdom of Jordan, which it remains to this day. A foreign royal family, on the majority of historic Palestine, ruling it as a monarchy. Nobody protests that. No flags, no chants, no encampments. The remaining 22% was designated for the Jews, became Israel, and is the only part that any pro-Palestinian activist has ever had a problem with.

So when you say Free Palestine, you mean that 22%. You mean the Jews.

And free it from whom? From a people with a three-thousand-year-old documented presence in that land, to restore the glory of a name coined by Roman colonizers, a name lifted from the Torah, a name that has no roots in Arabic, no mention in the Quran, and no history as a sovereign state?

You are not chanting for liberation. You are chanting for colonialism — the Roman kind, repackaged for social media.

Free Palestine is not a cause. It is a colonial term, coined by invaders, recycled by the indoctrinated. The least you can do is have the intelligence to understand it and the decency to reflect on your position.

-Rawan Osman

--

I’m a Westerner, college-educated, and generally pretty liberal. So on paper, I’m exactly the kind of person who is supposed to instantly nod along with “Free Palestine.” But that slogan has always felt off to me.

Not because I think Palestinians shouldn’t have rights, safety, or self-government. They should. But because the slogan skips over a huge amount of history and turns it into a lazy, malicious trope: one side is morally righteous, the other side is cartoonishly evil (think "training rape dogs"), end of story.

The way this gets framed in the West, you’d think Israel just appeared out of nowhere and shoved aside some ancient, unified Palestinian nation that had been peacefully sitting there forever. But that’s not what the history looks like. The land was ruled by the Ottomans, then the British. Modern Arab nationalism was forming. Modern Jewish nationalism was forming. Borders were being drawn all over the Middle East by empires and war. The whole region was in flux.

And yet somehow, when people talk about all this today, the one thing they act like is uniquely illegitimate is the existence of the one Jewish state.

That’s what I can’t get past.

There are over twenty Arab states. Arab identity, Arab nationalism, Arab-majority rule....none of that is treated as some shocking moral scandal. But one Jewish state, in the historic homeland of the Jews, is treated as an offense against humanity. If self-determination is good, then why does it seem to apply normally to everyone except Jews? If nationalism is bad, then why is Jewish nationalism treated as the special evil while everyone else gets a pass?

And then there’s the part nobody seems to want to talk about: most of the original British Mandate of Palestine did not become Israel. The land east of the Jordan River became Transjordan, later Jordan. In other words, the vast majority of that territory was already split off into an Arab state. But when that happened, nobody built a global moral movement around it. Nobody treated that as some unforgivable theft. Somehow that was fine.

But a much smaller Jewish state in the remaining land? That became the great crime of history.

Why?

That question alone blows a hole in a lot of the activist talking points, which is probably why it almost never gets asked.

Another thing that gets consistently overlooked is how badly Arab states themselves treated Palestinians. If the Western activist version were true, then you’d expect Arab governments to have welcomed Palestinians as brothers, integrated them, given them full rights, and helped build a Palestinian state whenever possible. But....nope.

Jordan fought Palestinians. Lebanon restricted them for years. Egypt controlled Gaza for nearly two decades and didn’t create a Palestinian state there. Syria used Palestinian groups when it suited Syrian interests and crushed them when it didn’t. Palestinians were often treated less like beloved brothers and more like political tools.

That doesn’t mean Israel is innocent. It means the story is not “good guys versus bad guys.” It’s a regional power struggle where Palestinians were often used by Arab regimes as a weapon against Israel, while being denied a normal political future.

And that matters, because in the West the entire moral burden gets dumped onto Israel, as if everyone else in the region had clean hands.

They didn’t.

The slogans are another problem. “From the river to the sea” gets defended by a lot of Westerners as some vague call for freedom or equality. But the Arab translation is much more straight-forward: "from water to water, Palestine is Arab" and, the slogan has had a pretty obvious meaning: the whole land, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean should be Arab. No Israel.

And if that’s the vision, then what exactly happens to the millions of Jews already living there? Do they just vanish? Leave? Submit and pay the jizya? Become a minority in a state founded by people who spent generations denying the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the first place?

A lot of people chanting that slogan never answer that question honestly, because the honest answer is ugly.

The same pattern shows up in the history of peace deals. A lot of people today talk as if Israel simply refused peace over and over again because it enjoys domination and cruelty and plans to exact a genocide on the Palestinians despite simultaneously innoculating 1,000,000+ Palestinian children against polio during a potential outbreak. But....partition plans were rejected. Two-state ideas were rejected. Negotiation windows opened and closed. Palestinian leadership repeatedly chose "winner take all" over compromise, and ordinary Palestinians paid the price for that. Yahya Sinwar reduced their suffering to strategic value: "we only make headlines with blood...no blood, no news."

Israel has made mistakes. But the cartoon version, Israel bad, Palestinians rising up against apartheid opressors, is patronizing horseshit.

Yasser Arafat is a good example of how history is conveniently trivialized. In the West, he was often treated like the face of a stateless people heroically demanding justice. But he was an Egyptian-born product of the wider Arab political world, and when serious opportunities came, he did not prove to be a great architect of peace. He kept ambiguity alive because ambiguity preserved leverage. That may have helped his politics, but it didn’t help build a functioning Palestinian future.

And then there’s the identity question. Palestinian nationalism developed within a broader Arab nationalist world. For long stretches, “Palestine” was treated by Arab leaders not as a separate nation with its own fixed destiny, but as one front in the larger Arab struggle against Israel....basically a strategic pawn. As Zuheir Mohsen, former head of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) famously said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity... Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. "

He was assassinated shortly thereafter.

But modern Western discourse hates complication, especially in academia. It wants every conflict translated into its preferred categories: white versus brown, colonizer versus colonized, oppressor versus oppressed. Once that template gets slapped onto Israel and the Palestinians, a lot of people stop thinking altogether. Israel gets shoved into the “settler colonial white power European” slot, Palestinians get shoved into the “indigenous brown resistance” slot, and then history becomes optional.

The problem is that Jews are not foreign to that land. Jewish history there is ancient. Jewish exile from that land is ancient. Jewish longing to return is ancient. Large-scale modern Zionism may be recent, but the Jewish connection is not. So the whole “European invaders stole somebody else’s homeland” story works great as activist theater, but not nearly as well as actual history.

Another ridiculous aspect is the refugee issue. In most conflicts, refugee crises are tragic but eventually resolved through resettlement, citizenship, and rebuilding lives somewhere. The Palestinian case became different. It became permanent. Refugee status became hereditary. Camps remained camps. The problem was preserved instead of solved.

Why? Because solving it would have reduced its political usefulness.

That is one of the cruelest parts of this whole story. Generations of Palestinians were taught not to build a normal future where they were, but to remain symbolically suspended until history was reversed. That may be emotionally powerful, but it is not a recipe for a stable life or a workable peace.

And this is where the modern Western left really loses me. It claims to care about human rights, democracy, pluralism, women’s rights, gay rights, and minority protections. But then it turns around and romanticizes movements and regimes in the Middle East that are openly hostile to all of it, as long as they can be marketed as “anti-colonial/anti-western.”

It’s treating powerlessness as innocence and treating success as guilt. It’s assuming that if one side is weaker, then it must also be morally purer. Weak groups can be cruel. Strong groups can be justified. Reality does not care about activist templates.

None of this means Palestinians deserve misery. None of this means Israel should never be criticized. But criticism that starts by erasing Arab agency, ignoring repeated rejection of compromise, downplaying Islamist extremism, and pretending Jewish self-determination is uniquely illegitimate is not serious criticism. It’s just propaganda dressed up as morality.

That’s why “Free Palestine” lands wrong for me. In theory, it could mean something reasonable: build a real Palestinian state next to Israel, guarantee rights and security for both peoples, end the fantasy that either side is going away.

But in practice, a lot of the people shouting it are calling for something simpler and more malicious: that Israel should not exist. Full stop.

So no, I don’t buy the simplified Western narrative. I don’t buy that this is just a story of one innocent people being crushed by a uniquely evil state. I don’t buy that Arab nationalism is normal but Jewish nationalism is unforgivable. I don’t buy that every failed peace effort was Israel’s fault. And I definitely don’t buy that chanting slogans in English while ignoring the actual history of the region is some kind of moral wisdom.

If the goal is peace, then both peoples have to be treated as real. Both have claims. Both have histories. Both have suffered. And both are staying.

Any politics that cannot admit that basic fact is not serious. It’s just performative.

Some Arab countries want Israel erased from Earth. That much I know. But what about people around the world in support of them?

Let's entertain the idea, for a second, that the pro-palestine protests around the world are right, Israelis are settlers, and they should be expelled for eternity from the middle east. Then what? There will be ten million refugees, mostly civilians, with no where to go. What exactly is the proposal here?

I personally see the Hamas-Israel conflict as quite complex, but often simplified by the statement in the title. Obviously, I think Israel needs to stop bombing innocent Palestinians. But I also am not entirely sure what people mean when they say “free Palestine.” If it means give Israel back to Palestinians, I don’t entirely see this as a solution while Hamas is running the show. That would just put Israelis in danger. Not to mention, I don’t think the Israeli government would ever let this happen. The meaning I can get behind is aiding the Palestinians in overthrowing Hamas, but I don’t know how effective this would actually be. Historically when different countries try to take on the work of ridding a region of terrorists, those terrorists only stay gone so long as that country is still present. Best example I can think of is Afghanistan.

So my question is, what do you think the realistic resolution is here? What does free Palestine mean to you?