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The Leftist Empathy Gap and Decolonizing Leftist Spaces for Palestine
How empathy and strategic solidarity can transform the movement for Palestinian liberation
It is human connection, or the lack thereof, that decides the fate of revolutionary movements. History proves this from the to. Leftist spaces online reveal a contradiction: while championing justice for marginalized groups, young activists often fail to employ the empathy necessary to create sustainable change.
This pattern is clear on platforms like Facebook, X, and Reddit, where discussions about Palestine involve users with Palestinian flag emojis in their usernames and profiles blocking Jewish users who express grief about or; where groups and subreddits see moderators blocking users and remove posts and comments, even from Palestinians and other Arabs who question Hamas’s tactics.
This empathy gap undermines . It prevents the creation of alliances across diverse groups to achieve shared goals, which is crucial because no single community possesses enough power alone. Moreover, the empathy gap reproduces patterns of exclusion.
Leftists study systems of power. We analyze structures and identify patterns of oppression that shape lives. This analysis equips activists with powerful conceptual frameworks to understand injustice but sometimes creates distance from the humans within these systems.
People become symbols. Zionists become monoliths, where the violent, racist, extremist settler; the misinformed American donor; and the moderate Israeli peace activist blur into one undifferentiated enemy. Complexity disappears.
I understand this complexity intimately. I come from a Palestinian heritage, with roots that stretch back generations. Many years ago, my family fled Gaza to the United Arab Emirates where they faced subtle prejudice. The Palestinian identity often comes with complicated baggage in the Arab world.
My family adapted by downplaying their background and assimilating. This concealed history wasn’t shared with me until later in life. Through this personal experience, I’ve learned that our loyalty must remain with people, not abstract nations, states, or notions.
If those who read this story take away anything, then it should be this: being pro-Palestinian and pro-Jewish is not mutually exclusive. We must advocate for Palestinian liberation while rejecting harm toward Jewish people, no matter their age, gender, or place of birth. We must not let Zionism extinguish our compassion, especially as we consider what indigeneity truly means beyond simplistic claims about historical precedence.
When discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict, the concept of indigeneity itself requires careful examination
Indigeneity exists in contrast to colonization, not as a claim about who arrived somewhere first. Native peoples on (the indigenous term for North and Central America), for example, never called themselves “indigenous” before colonist contact.
Many nations used terms in their own languages meaning simply “the people.” Palestinians’ connection to their land isn’t merely about historical precedence but their continuous presence before modern colonization. Legitimate decolonization movements seek land sovereignty and self-determination. They do not advocate mass deportations or apartheid systems against settler descendants.
That is to say, we do not advocate the harm or death of Israeli civilians and their children or Jewish people broadly. The path forward requires reconciliation, not genetic ancestry tests to determine land rights.
Many in the digital age live in bubbles, isolated from experiences different from our own. Activists who champion liberation sometimes reproduce exclusion through the dismissal of perspectives deemed intuitively incorrect. Too many pro-Palestinian advocates on social media risk reducing the Israel-Palestine conflict to simplistic narratives that foreclose dialogue, just as happened during various where ideological purity sometimes fractured potential coalitions. Critical analysis must not destroy our compassion for the full spectrum of suffering the Israel-Palestine conflict produces.
That is to emphasize: empathy in leftist activism is vital. Empathy functions as a methodology for transformation. , as a critical tool of empathy-making, creates space for experiences challenging dominant narratives.
Palestinian works like Refaat Alareer’s poem “” or Mohammed El-Kurd’s , when amplified through personal stories rather than abstract arguments, transform how CNN viewers and New York Times readers understand the conflict. This personalization transforms abstract casualty statistics () into lived reality through individual stories of doctors, teachers, and children.
For Palestine to thrive, Palestinians require allies across the political and international spectrum
Coalition-building, which may also be called empathy-making, demands intentional relationship development that bridges differences, recognizing that transformative community-building happens through genuine one-on-one engagement. The strategy needed to bring people together and affect meaningful change centers, therefore, on trust-building across pronounced, sometimes even bitter, differences.
Conversations about Palestine, therefore, require thoughtfully balancing our commitments to justice with recognition of complex, occasionally inconvenient, identities and histories. When we value people over ideological purity, multiple truths can coexist, creating space for authentic, empathetic solidarity rooted in shared humanity.
However, empathy without strategy limits the latter’s effectiveness. For example, White people in the United States have historically often supported racial justice primarily when they recognized the possibility of a mutual benefit, as Derrick Bell in school desegregation cases. Effective organizers and advocates, therefore, must work to understand people’s core motivations and meet them where they are with minimal, or even without, judgment. Creating substantive change demands building shared buy-in across constituencies, and carefully cultivating coalitions and empathy to withstand inevitable tensions while remaining focused on concrete, realistic outcomes.
For Palestine, strategic empathy means recognizing that decolonization requires more than moral condemnation and theoretical deconstruction. It demands narratives connecting liberation struggles across contexts, similar to how South African anti-apartheid activists . This coalition successfully united diverse groups, from Black South Africans to international university students to religious organizations, through a shared moral framework while maintaining and centering Black South African leadership.
Similarly, the 1960s in the US created effective coalitions between Black organizers, White allies, religious leaders, and labor unions around shared principles of nonviolent resistance. Building strategic empathy requires helping diverse audiences understand their stake in justice while maintaining clarity about power asymmetries. And importantly, this advocacy, this necessary work of focused empathy-making, can never justify violence against civilians on any side.
To aid this end, leftist movements require . Effective activism necessitates that we reflect on our thinking processes, examine our assumptions, work to understand others’ viewpoints, hold contradictory ideas in tension (), and envision justice while acknowledging challenges and facts inconvenient to our causes. The Palestinian liberation movement benefits when its advocates recognize the legitimate and the problem of while maintaining clarity about and the by Israel’s occupation.
Young activists sometimes approach marginalized communities with preconceived ideas, focusing only on deconstructive oppression narratives. Genuine solidarity requires meeting a marginalized community’s actual needs. That is, listening, engaging in reconstructive planning and thinking, not talking, sharing, and attacking to make ourselves feel virtuous. Palestinians need agency rather than perpetual victimhood narratives that primarily serve the emotional needs of their allies, just as indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador have insisted on rather than liberation by external saviors.
Of course, empathy alone cannot transform systems
Facebook’s , many of which have in 2025, changed little . Some White Americans wept over George Floyd’s death while . executives and CEOs while against labor protections and rights. Diversity training without structural transformation. Google’s made headlines while .
Rights frameworks can separate people rather than create respectful, cooperative communities. The Israel-Palestine conflict requires both empathic understanding and structural critique of colonization, occupation, and violence.
Decolonization, both as an intellectual framework and as a tangible process of dismantling colonial structures, necessitates critical scrutiny of the methodologies, assumptions, and power dynamics operating within leftist movements themselves. Leftist organizers scheduling meetings during Ramadan or student solidarity groups using methods that exclude working-class Palestinians reveal this problem. Leadership expectations often reflect dominant norms.
Young American campus activists frequently receive more media attention than Palestinian community organizers with decades of experience. Perceptions of authenticity often align with dominant White male standards in the US, where emotional Arabic speakers are labeled “too angry.” That is, expressions of empathy appear through culturally specific lenses. Many left-leaning Americans expect to be persuaded by a sort of political therapy-speak while Palestinians use poetry, essays, and storytelling. Within Palestinian solidarity movements, addressing the problem of culturally dominant frameworks overtaking causes for marginalized people means honoring both Western and Arabic/Islamic traditions of organizing.
Effective decolonization of leftist spaces creates space for diverse expressions of compassion across cultures. It prioritizes Palestinian voices in discussions of occupation while ensuring Jewish concerns about security are acknowledged and not diminished. It restores diverse ways of learning and knowing by valuing Western academic analysis and traditional Palestinian storytelling traditions, oral histories, and poetic expressions of resistance like (steadfastness) and (cultural dance). That is the heart of intersectionality.
The importance of intersectionality and counter-storytelling
Important to the cause of Palestine, intersectionality examines how different aspects of identity overlap and shape experiences. Any discourse, particularly on social media, about Palestine will benefit from adopting an intersectional perspective. An intersectional approach allows recognition that, for instance, antisemitism exists alongside anti-Palestinian racism without creating false equivalencies. It permits critique of the without essentializing Jewish identity or conflating Judaism with Zionism.
We can demand Palestinian freedom from occupation while rejecting . As a woman of Palestinian ancestry, I’ve experienced how White leftist men frequently speak over me when discussing both women’s problems and Palestine, illustrating precisely why counter-storytelling becomes essential to reclaiming narrative power. Indeed, I am employing counter-storytelling at this very moment.
Counter-storytelling is among the most powerful critical tools for challenging dominant narratives through lived experience. It is a primary instrument of empathy-making. Advocacy for Palestine benefits from centering Palestinian voices from Gaza, the West Bank, refugee camps, and diaspora communities. The Nakba testimonies from elders who witnessed the challenge media narratives that erase Palestinian humanity.
Jewish groups like speaking against Israel’s occupation similarly deserve amplification. The suffering of innocents, whether or , must never become acceptable collateral damage.
Counter-stories ultimately create the foundation for dialogue across differences, which is essential for any political movement’s sustainability. It is important to recognize and discuss how terms like “terrorism,” “resistance,” and “self-defense” carry different meanings across communities. The in Maine (US), which brings together teenagers from conflict regions including Israelis and Palestinians, exemplifies effective conversation across divides. Since 1993, this program has provided a neutral space for dialogue and understanding.
We need more dialogue and strategic empathy on the path to transformation and liberation
No matter where such discussion occurs, however, protecting voices without authority prevents marginalization, such as ensuring Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have equal speaking time with Palestinians from Jerusalem. Conversations surrounding Palestine necessitate spaces where people can express pain, ask questions, and process complexity without fear of condemnation; spaces where Jewish students can process family trauma from what they perceived as terrorism while acknowledging Palestinian dispossession, allowing for mutual growth.
Dialogues across differences illuminate the core idea: that strategic empathy represents both the greatest challenge and most promising path forward for pro-Palestinian leftists. The empathy gap within leftist spaces, rather than merely a problem to critique, likewise offers a revolutionary opportunity for transformation. By weaving together unflinching structural analysis with genuine human connection across differences, activists can forge movements with moral clarity and strategic sustainability alike.
When liberation movements truly embody the values they champion — dignity, justice, and recognition of shared humanity — transformation becomes inevitable. The path toward Palestinian liberation requires an uncompromising critique of militarized occupation and tender recognition of the human complexity that defies borders.
Our ultimate loyalty must remain with people: the grieving Palestinian mother in , the frightened Israeli child in , and communities yearning to live without fear, not with flags, borders, or abstract concepts of nationhood.
