The wiry black beard could hoodwink one into believing he’s a seasoned mullah from the forbidding Waziristan mountains, but he’s a young student, and incompetent too, for he’s trying to set a flag on fire—and failing. It’s June, and I’m standing on a road embankment outside the Karachi Press Club watching the protest against the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla. It’s been organized by the student wing of the Jamaat-e- Islami, one of Pakistan’s Islamist political parties.

The Israeli assault on Gaza was a brutal and one-sided onslaught where one of the most powerful armies in the world used its deadliest weapons against a virtually defenseless population. Like the Lebanon war in 2006, Israel's military campaign was little more than a string of war crimes that succeeded only in butchering thousands of civilians (including a frightening number of children) but did little to weaken the resistance, the declared target of the war.

Author's note: The following article is from Issue #5 of the journal Upping the Anti. Please help support this "Journal of Theory and Action" by ordering hard copies and a subscription at http://www.uppingtheanti.org.

The failure of many in the US antiwar movement to fight anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is often rooted in conscious or unconscious acceptance of two interconnected racist ideologies—Islamophobia and Zionism. A good example of this is the anti-war movement’s wary response to Hamas’ overwhelming victory in this year’s Palestinian legislative elections.