The one debatable aspect here is what it means to care for Gaza, or have sympathy for the Palestinians. The encampments are vocally pro-Hamas and against a two-state solution, so if you’re a supporter of Palestinian self-determination these protesters are trying to stand in your way. These demonstrations also want Hamas left in power in Gaza. I am not a Palestinian in Gaza, and I do not assume to speak for them, but it is certainly the case that many Palestinians there have expressed their deep opposition to living under Hamas’s totalitarian thumb. Sympathy for such Palestinians is not a motivating factor in the formation of these encampments.

Then of course there’s the fact that many of these demonstrators are consumed by anti-Semitism to the exclusion of pretty much anything else. They are chanting and marching against the Jews—not Israel, but the Jews—because they hate Jews.

“Sympathy for the Palestinians,” it turns out, is among the least-likely reasons one might find themselves at the tentifada.