When I was 17, the Westboro Baptists rolled into my town with their hateful signs and crude chants, targeting the LGBTQ community, Jews, and anyone they deemed unworthy of God’s love. Back then, their protests made the news for sheer offensiveness—shouting at grieving families, picketing soldiers’ funerals, waving signs that said, “God Hates Fags.” My friend Alan Sachnowski and I decided we couldn’t just sit back. We skipped school and joined a group of counter-protesters determined to drown out their message of hate with one of acceptance. The Westboro Baptists were regarded by both the left and right as bigots making a mockery of their religion, with no place in American society.

It wasn’t that Alan and I didn’t believe in the right to free speech—we did, fiercely. But we believed there was a line where free expression became a tool of dehumanization, and we had a responsibility to stand against it. Back then, Alan and I agreed without hesitation: hate, no matter how loud or proud, deserved no place in civilized discourse.

But times change. People change. In 2021, during the war between Israel and Hamas, Alan and I had our final falling out. I already had my doubts about his morals. As rockets fell on Israeli cities in yet another war Palestine Supporters provoked, Alan posted messages of unwavering support for “Palestinian freedom.” At first, I tried to talk to him, to explain there was a difference between supporting innocent people and whitewashing a Hamas led, hate-fueled movement. I told him that blind support for an identity rooted in violence wouldn’t lead to peace, but to more war—violence that would consume Arabs first. He dismissed my concerns as paranoia, insisting it was about liberation, not hate.

I could already see where this was heading. The world was making the same mistake it had made before: excusing extreme bigotry under the guise of justice. When the October 7 attacks happened two years later, I wasn’t surprised. Horrified, yes—but not surprised. I had warned him. We haven’t spoken since.

What I saw then, and what I see now, is not just similar to Westboro—it’s identical. The slogans may change languages, but the message is the same. Westboro Baptists preach that Jews are evil and American soldiers are damned; today’s pro-Palestinian movements chant that Zionists and/or Jews are the enemy and call the US military murderers. Both glorify death when it suits their narrative. Both target Jewish communities over Christian churches, but in a conversation will admit that Christians constitute far more of the Zionists on Earth. Both refuse to acknowledge complexity or humanity in their opponents. Both wrap their hate in the language of righteousness and faith. Both claim to be the victim when they face repercussions for antagonizing fights.

Where Westboro screamed “God Hates Fags,” Palestine supporters are typically silent about the deeply homophobic nature of what they defend—a movement infamous for barbaric torture of people accused of being gay. Some Palestine supporters are naïve enough to believe they’re supporting LGBT+ rights by way of a Sharia state, while the less clueless are fully aware they’re supporting a system with zero tolerance for immodesty, let alone promiscuity, homosexuality and secular family values. And if I’m being real, the Westboro Baptists only use words. Palestinian supporters back groups that actually torture and murder gay men and women, making them far worse. In US, they have caused 100s of millions in damages, and more in diverting policing. Both the Westboro Baptists and Palestine Supporters call for the erasure of an entire people. One is just more confident in publicly expressing its religious justifications, while the other teeters back and forth between religious explanation and pseudo-intellectual humanitarian stances.

What struck me most back in high school was Westboro’s glee in suffering. They wanted grief. They needed enemies to validate their theology of hate. When they picketed funerals, they weren’t there to challenge government policy or argue for a different moral order; they were there to hurt. To parade their supposed moral superiority over the mourning.

That same gleeful cruelty is alive in today’s anti-Israel protests, masquerading as Palestinian liberation. I’ve seen them celebrating atrocities. Smiling as they chant about martyrs and resistance. Telling Jewish students they deserve to be afraid—as if fear and pain are badges of a righteous cause. I could share video after video of Palestine supporters chanting for genocide. But I’m told the Westboro Baptists are irreparably evil, and Palestine is a cause worth fighting for, despite chants of “Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahud” and the dozens of synagogues set on fire since October 7.

And to be clear, Alan isn’t the only friend I’ve lost over Westboro Baptist-level hate for an Other. I’ve hesitated to finish and publish a post more than a year old, exposing the rot that came from inside my Burning Man and music community. People who camped with me, who could have been closely connected to the Nova Festival, publicly praised Hamas on October 7—insisting they care so much about Gaza, despite everyone knowing the repercussions of egging on a pogrom.

But I will not be friends with Nazis, no matter how misguided they are. I do not care if they think they’re on the “right side of history” and “defending freedom.” The Westboro Baptists also think they’re a just cause.

While I was trying to determine if friends were alive on October 7, Laura Bassett, a head writer for Huffington Post and other liberal publications, posted Hamas symbols and paragliders to her social media stories. She camped in a tent next to mine at Burnign Man 2016, where she did little volunteering or clean up. In the last week, six or more ex-friends posted that free speech is being ruined by the Trump Administration because they dared to threaten deportation of a Hamas supporter who violated his Green Card stay. These people, one named Doug Taphouse—a man married to a Jew in name only—did not post a single time in solidarity with the hostages taken on October 7. But they posted endlessly in solidarity with a staunch Hamas supporter who abetted a kidnapping. Doug, it turns out, has more conerns for a Syrian man who harasses Jews getting to stay in US, than US ctiziens who were kidnapped from a music festival similar to those he attends.

And all I can ask is, “Where was this energy for the Westboro Baptists? Was their mistake that they said ‘Jews’ instead of ‘Zio-Jews’?” If the Westboro Baptists had just waited another decade or two, they’d have had a very different perception. Hell, it sounds like they could have converted some people to their cause on Oct 7, 2023.

I don’t imagine any of these recent “free speech absolutists” would have the same energy if they were on the receiving end of the hate. On the contrary, these cowards became free speech absolutists solely to protect themselves. They want to be spared from the vioelnt mobs they encouraged. A year ago, they would’ve made a post about how there’s no place for misgendering someone, for Trump and other felons to speak in office, for (Palestine-supporting) KKK members to be on social media, etc.

I never saw Doug Tapphouse, Katie Bassler, Justin Hayes, HeyDoc Brown call for the release of US Citizens beind held hostage in Gaza. But they were fired up to defend someone who supports their kidnapping.

As one proud Jew sarcastically wrote, “All [Khalil] wanted to do was fulfill his American Dream of facilitating his own terrorist cell. He had a right to shut down the library and take a custodian hostage in the name of unexisting Israel. Check your racism, man, we need to focus on the Nazis. They’re everywhere.”

And, yes, I’ve seen these exact same people who posted about Khalil’s “free speech” call just about eveyone Nazis, from proud Jews and descendants of Holocaust survivors, to people like Trump and Musk, but never ever the guy who passes out pamphlets for Hamas, a group that repeatedly calls to murder Jews worldwide.

The Westboro Baptists had been condemning Jews and Israel in the early 2000s, but they were less popular than the current wave of Hamas supporters. And yes, I mean Hamas supporters. Despite the on-and-off attempts from Palestine supporters to insist they can support Palestine without supporting Hamas, there is no serious effort to do so. Any condemnation of Hamas comes as an afterthought. Instead, this week Palestine Supporters have posted endlessly in defense of Mahmoud Khalil—a devout Hamas supporter who passes out Hamas propaganda, leads Hamas-inspired chants, glorified October 7, and abetted the kidnapping of a custodian. Despite the fact that ICE detains 20,000 to 40,000 people each year, it seems the sole person Palestine supporters have named as a wrongful detainee is a devout Hamas supporter. It doesn’t do much to distance themselves from the Hamas support they claim not to have.

They made their choice of who and what they support clear.

Image of Mahmoud Khalil standing in front of his CUAD cronies, including Khymani James, a man which CUAD defended saying, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” It took many months for James to get any reprucussions, which might be why people act like Khalil did nothing wrong too.

A stranger on LinkedIn rants to me about how the iNnOcCeNt jihad supporters just ‘accidentally’ tied up a janitor. They accidentally brought zipties and duck tape when they purposefully took over a building.
PS That is still kidnapping. Even if it was an accident. Which it for sure what not.

A lunatic Libertarian (capital L on purpose) and avid white supreamcist rants that his ancestors fought for Mahmoud Khalil’s right to spread Hamas propaganda without consquences.
PS The US isn’t prosecuting “free speech.” They are prosecuting someone who lied on their migraiton papers and did not disclose that they support designated terrorist groups.

Another friend defends Khalil’s acts as free speech citing a Swedish colleagues paper. Admittedly, this is one guy who *would* defend the Westboro Baptists and KKK out in the open, because he really has fought for free speech for a long time. He was also the most receptive to conversation, admitting that someone who lies on their immigration papers has reason to be deported.

What I see now is not critique—it’s fetishization of violence, justification of terror, and an utter erasure of Jewish humanity. "By any means necessary" isn’t a strategy for peace; it’s a strategy for endless war. But when I point out that calling for martyrdom and resistance is, in fact, a call for violence, the response is that all Zionists are racist—especially me, the guy who works and volunteers with Palestinians on a daily basis.

I see it clearly now: the exact message the Westboro Baptists were hated for has been repackaged and turned into the trendiest social cause on the planet. Through manipulation and false premises, the horrifically racist Westboro Baptist ideology has been transformed into a movement everyone is expected to support.

The Westboro Baptist Church was a small, fringe group, easy to dismiss as an aberration. But the Westboro Palestinian Church—remember, there is no “P” in Arabic—has millions of adherents. Some carry flags in the streets; others wear academic robes or post Instagram infographics. They sing songs of liberation while ignoring the fact that their heroes lynch gays and oppress women, stone collaborators, and launch rockets from schools. They demand freedom—but only for one side. Justice—but not for all.

Alan would say it’s different. That I’m exaggerating. But I’ve been to this protest before. I’ve heard the chants. I’ve seen where this road leads.

And I will not walk it again.

To get the ick out my mouth from the Hamas supporters, here’s some content from proud Jews: