Thread by @davidfrum

You've probably seen this image, or some version of it. (thread)

The image is created by and for western sympathizers with Palestinian violence. The slogan after all is written in English. (2/x)

The people who display the poster do not intend to participate in the violence themselves. They live in western countries with effective police. Violence, in their imagination, is work for poor Third World people to do for their entertainment. (3/x)

Violence is entertaining, however, only when sanitized. The gunman in the image is not fighting. He is posing. He is not aiming the rifle at a target. Aiming requires two hands. He needs one of his to flash Churchill's V for victory (English, again!) at the photographer. (4/x)

If that photogenic masked Palestinian gunman dared make an actual in-person appearance on the Gaza battlefield against Israel's defense forces, he would get very, very dead, very, very fast. (5/x)

The uselessness of the gunman's posing raises a question about the slogan around him. Is terrorist violence in fact a "necessary means"? If so - follow-up question - to what end is terrorism the necessary means? (6/x)

The iconography of the poster-the scarf, the color scheme - evokes Palestinian nationalism. Presumably the "end" to which the gun is the "necessary means" is Palestinian aspiration. (7/x)

Palestinian Arabs have often tested the promise in the poster. They have sought to achieve aspirations by violence again and again since the anti-Jewish Hebron pogrom of 1929. Not once has the promise come true. How can something be "necessary" when it never works? (8/x)

The violence celebrated by today's poster-carriers is the mass murder/rape/infanticide/abduction of October 7, 2023. However enthralling that experience felt to anti-Israeli onlookers at the time, it has led to utter destruction for the perpetrators and their community. (9/x)

Palestinian gains, when they have been achieved, have been achieved by diplomacy under US authority. If you want an accurate image for your "By Any Means Necessary" poster, it's this. (10/x)

Or this. (11/x)

Or - if you're truly a Palestinian determined to make any sacrifice for your people, however distasteful - even this (12/x)

That's the way, and the only way. The image below is just play-acting in front of a mirror and a selfie-cam. (13/x)

If you seek a peaceful and prosperous national existence for Palestinian people, cooperation with Israel under US protection is the only way. But of course, that's not the "end" that the poster carriers have in mind for their "necessary means." (14/x)

For them, violence is the end - violence as ideology, violence as redemption. Middle Easterners do the killing, Middle Easterners do the dying, Westerners get the show, Westerners get the thrill. In English. For Instagram. (15/x)

When the current spasm of violence subsides, Israel will emerge stronger than ever. Palestinian self-rule will recede further away than ever, because Palestinians will have deprived themselves of the truly requisite "necessary means": Israeli trust and American support. (16/x)

The people who carry the "any means necessary" posters won't care. They've had their fun. They'll soon shift to their next cause - or no cause at all, meditation maybe. They're not sleeping in tents where homes used to stand. (17/x)

But if you actually do care, send this message to the people of Gaza, the West Bank, South Lebanon, etc.: lay down your arms. Your wars against Israel have failed. Make peace. Accept cooperation. By any means necessary. END.