This past Friday, the United Muslim Relief chapter at the University of Texas at Austin hosted its second annual “Let Palestine Shine” event, an apolitical charity dinner that provides direct relief to Palestinians in the form of sustenance, shelter, healthcare and education. This event was publicized to the general Austin community. In fact, the organization spent several days tabling and passed out several hundred flyers. Yet the participants of the event were mainly Muslims despite the fact that the event wasn’t religiously charged.
This could be due to, in part, the stigmatization of the Palestinian cause as religiously charged. After years of propaganda and lobbying, people in America equate Zionism with Judaism and Judaism with Israel and Islam with Palestine. Thus, if you are anti-Zionism, you are anti-Semitic and even worse, anti-Israel. If you find such deductions implausible, just consider history; in fact, not long ago, here in America during the Red Scare, being a communist meant you were anti-American and surely a Soviet spy.
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