Why I Left the pro-Palestine Movement

As a Chinese-Swedish Muslim convert and human rights advocate, using my platform for Palestine after October 7 felt inevitable. But when the pro-Palestinian movement cheered hatred and collective punishment, and legitimized Hamas, I sought alternatives

Louise Xin
Oct 26, 2025

There's finally a cease-fire in Gaza.

But the horror that was livestreamed and broke the world over the last two years cannot be repaired by politics or diplomacy. It exposed something deeper in all of us: a collapse of meaning, morality, and of a shared reality of the world.

On October 7, 2023, my social media feeds turned into a stadium scoreboard: Israeli vs. Palestinian flags. As a Chinese-Swedish Muslim convert and human rights advocate in progressive circles, I quickly adopted the dominant narrative: Israel as oppressor, Palestine as victim. On a personal level, supporting Palestine wasn't just a social or moral responsibility. It felt like a spiritual duty.

Six years earlier, burned out by Sweden's hyper-individualistic, materialistic lifestyle, I converted to Islam in search of meaning and framework. My debut fashion show – exposing the Uyghur forced labor that still taints 20 percent of global cotton production – opened doors in fashion, politics and human rights. So when, in response to October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched his war on Gaza, using my platform for Palestine felt inevitable.

I was among the first in my industry to publicly call for a cease-fire. I wore a keffiyeh dress and an End Genocide coat at major fashion events, spoke at the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, and used every stage to demand peace.

How could I not? Images of children pulled from rubble haunted our screens while Western leaders justified the bombings. Each strike and siege swelled the movement. For many, Palestine became the ultimate symbol of resistance to an unjust world.

Then something shifted.

My first disillusionment came when, in pro-Palestinian circles, I heard the oppression of the Uyghur people dismissed as "Zionist/Western propaganda," the same circles that also praised Iran, China, and Russia for their "support." At first, I thought these were fringe voices. But very soon, with deeper interaction within the movement, I realized much of it was no longer just anti-war and anti-occupation but anti-West, anti-white, anti-system.

What began as outrage over Israeli war crimes turned into something darker. Hate speech spread like wildfire: "Jews control the media." "Israel was behind 9/11, 10/7 and all the world wars." Comment sections cheered wildfires in Jerusalem as "God's work," while praising rockets launched at Israeli civilians from Yemen and Iran. On the streets, protesters chanted "Globalize the Intifada." Bring Them Home posters, referring to the hostages held captive by Hamas, were torn down; kidnapped babies were called "little colonizers who deserved to die."

Protests and boycotts have, in many cases, turned into collective punishment against all Israelis – even those fighting tirelessly against the very crimes they're blamed for.

Most alarming was the moral exception made for Hamas, a group whose brutality has hijacked the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people. While most terrorist groups are universally condemned, many in the pro-Palestinian camp branded Hamas as a legitimate "resistance" movement, despite executing dissidents, torturing Gazans, and murdering, raping, and burning Israeli civilians. Meanwhile, Gazans themselves, protesting under banners like Let Us Live, were ignored by the very activists who claimed to fight for their freedom.

I started to feel shame and sadness, witnessing how many Jews and Israelis have been fighting tirelessly to end Palestinian suffering, calling for an end to the war and the occupation while too few Muslim voices have been willing to pressure Hamas to lay down its weapons, release the hostages, and end the escalating hatred against Jews around the world.

Many insist, "We are against Israel, not against Jews." But that distinction collapses in practice. Last week, in Malmö, Sweden, the Jewish Film Festival was cancelled after threats of violence resulted in a situation where no cinemas in the entire city dared to host the event. From Europe to the Middle East, synagogues have been attacked or burned down these two years, Jews protesting for the hostages or at prayer have been shot and killed; in some cities entire neighborhoods have become no-go zones for Jews.

For many, an Israel backed by the United States has become the ultimate villain, the symbol of everything they despise about the West. The rage is not only political; it's existential, wrapped in guilt and fear. It's the projection of Western liberals disillusioned with capitalism and guilt for the past, the global south fed up and scarred by post-colonial trauma, and of Muslims tired of Islamophobia and see Israel's actions through the lens of their own historical wounds. The narrative fulfils the ancient human need to project evil onto something tangible.

But if we open our eyes, it's crystal clear: evil has never belonged to any one people. No nation, no movement, no faith is immune. The Chinese Communist Party proclaims solidarity with Palestine while crushing Uyghurs, Tibetans, and threatening Taiwan. Putin condemns Israel while bombing Ukraine. Iran funds terror groups while brutalizing its own citizens. Meanwhile, millions die, starve, and are oppressed in Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo, Syria, and Afghanistan – victims of war, hunger, and terrorism – in silence. There seems to be no mass motivation to protest on their behalf.

For years, I wrestled with the contradictions of being Western, Chinese, and Muslim. But through that struggle, I saw there's no path to utopia, no perfect system. The never-ending bloodshed between Israel and Palestine is not only a tragedy in the Middle East; it is a mirror held up to the West – exposing our own ideological wars and every unresolved tension of the modern world.

So what is the alternative?

The answer came when I met Maoz Inon, whose parents were killed by Hamas on October 7, and Aziz Abu Sarah, whose brother was killed by the IDF. Instead of revenge, they are working worldwide, building peace and reconciliation through their NGO, InterAct. Through them, I found a network of over 60 Israeli and Palestinian peace-building organizations, among them Standing Together, ALLMEP, Women Wage Peace and Women of the Sun.

Earlier this year, I attended high-level peace conferences in Jerusalem and Paris. There, I glimpsed hope – not only for Palestine and Israel but for humanity itself. People looked beyond race, religion, and inherited hatred and pain, choosing to build justice and peace not by blindly vilifying the other but by working together. Yet their voices are systematically crushed, overpowered by louder, more radical narratives following the old "no-collaboration, no-normalization" script. But only in such spaces, where two people choose to live rather than erase each other, can a future take root.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the injustices Palestinians have endured need the world's support more than ever. I didn't leave the mainstream pro-Palestinian movement because I stopped caring, on the contrary.

While the vast majority of its supporters are well-meaning people who genuinely care, the movement – like the pro-Israeli counterpart at the other extreme – too often amplifies outrage and buries nuance, fueling radicalization on both sides. It failed to ease suffering; instead, it inflamed it, pushing both peoples further apart from any real chance for peace. By refusing to hold all parties accountable, it narrowed the space for real action and long-term solutions.

Most dangerous of all, it became fertile ground for hatred – actually contributing to the continuation and escalations of this over 75-years cycle of bloodshed.

As Yuval Harari wrote in his books, the best institutions are those with self-correcting mechanisms. The same must apply to communities, peoples, and nations. Any movement, faith, or ideology that cannot hold itself accountable is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own blindness.

It feels good to be told you're on the right side of history, and terrifying to be branded a traitor. The applause of righteousness and the seduction of a simple, zero-sum story – the victim, the villain, and the hero –cast a dangerous spell. It blinds us with moral certainty, offering the comfort of clarity instead of the burden of complex truth.

But the long and hard battle for the future of Palestine, Israel, and all our societies will not be won by those who shout the loudest or blindly vilify the other side, only those who dare to confront the oldest war we know: the one inside our own human heart.

(Louise Xin is a multi-award-winning fashion designer, human rights advocate, EU Sakharov Fellow, Creative Society Member of Human Rights Watch, and founder of the Open Story Foundation)