Since the deadliest day the Jewish community has experienced since the Holocaust, protesters have filled streets across the West. Intertwined within these protests have been activists who denounce Israel as an imperialist state, a foreign entity planted by European empires that needs to be uprooted.

“They are trying to destroy you,” Osama Abuirshaid, the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, told students at George Washington University in April. “Before you succeed in bringing this imperialism to an end…. Before we bring this poison of Zionism to an end.”