Trap · reasoning move
◆ Same slogan, different goals
Sounds like: “We all want the same thing: Free Palestine.”
A broad coalition — Western progressives, Palestinian and Arab movements, Islamist groups — marches under one slogan, assuming shared goals.
Signs
a slogan whose supporters give incompatible answers to 'what happens next?'; different messages in different languages; embarrassing statements from allies met with 'context' rather than disagreement.
Questions to ask
What would the people I march with build if they won — and would I want to live under it? Does the Arabic (or the organisers') version say what the English one says? What would my own values say about the parts I'm asked to ignore?
Example
a progressive marching for 'freedom' beside a group whose charter defines the future state as Islamic.
The mirror
liberal Zionists aligned with far-right parties whose goals — annexation, expulsion rhetoric — they don't share.
The price of unity: explaining away.
Keeping the coalition together means not naming its anti-Jewish parts: after October 7 some groups offered 'context' instead of condemnation (e.g. a New York DSA rally on 8 October 2023; a Harvard student-groups statement holding Israel 'entirely responsible'). Others on the left did condemn — US Senator Bernie Sanders condemned the attack and left antisemitism; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez condemned the DSA rally's 'bigotry and callousness' — which shows explaining away is a choice. Naming it risks exclusion from the coalition (see 'purity-loop'). Verify each case before publishing.
Why it works on us
- Everyone in the coalition sincerely opposes the suffering in Gaza and the occupation.
- Coalitions always contain differences; demanding agreement on everything would make any movement impossible.
- Secular, left and progressive Palestinian traditions and diaspora voices genuinely exist.
Where this trap shows up
Your side does it too — look at both columns.