Many people intuitively assume that the radical left and Islamist movements should be natural enemies. The radical left often speaks the language of feminism, LGBT rights, labor rights, secularism, and “liberation” from traditional authority. Islamist movements, by contrast, frequently pursue theocratically framed political power and enforce conservative social rules when they gain control. Yet across the West, and especially in debates about Israel, these two currents repeatedly converge in protests, rhetoric, and political pressure campaigns.
This resource article is designed for readers who do not already know the history, terminology, and mechanics behind that convergence. The goal is not to claim that “the left” as a whole supports jihadism—many liberals, social democrats, and center-left voters reject extremism and support Israel’s right to exist and defend itself. Rather, the focus here is the recurring pattern in which a radicalized segment of the activist left forms practical alliances with Islamist networks and with state actors that sponsor or enable those networks, producing an ecosystem that is consistently hostile to Israel, and often hostile to the West’s own democratic foundations.
The result is a political paradox: in the name of “human rights,” “anti-racism,” and “decolonization,” parts of the radical left end up laundering or rationalizing movements that are explicitly anti-liberal, anti-pluralist, and in many cases antisemitic. The deeper cost is not only to Israel’s legitimacy and security, but also to the integrity of democratic discourse in Western societies—where intimidation, disinformation, and ideological coercion increasingly replace evidence-based debate.
Clarifying terms
Before analyzing the alliance, we need clean definitions.
The radical left, in the context of this discussion, refers to movements and subcultures that treat liberal democracy not as an imperfect system to improve but as an illegitimate structure to overthrow. In practice, this often includes strains of revolutionary Marxism, anti-Western “anti-imperialism,” and certain forms of critical-theory activism that interpret almost every conflict through a simplified oppressor–oppressed framework. This worldview tends to reduce complex national struggles into moral theater: one side is “colonizer,” the other is “indigenous”; one side is “white,” the other is “racialized”; one side is “power,” the other is “resistance.” Evidence that complicates the story is treated as betrayal.
Islamism is a political ideology that seeks to order society under an Islamic governance framework. Policy Exchange’s extensive essay on “Islamism and the Left” discusses the phenomenon as more than a tactical partnership; it frames it as an “epistemic alliance” between Islamists and leftist currents that share hostility to the liberal order, even if their ultimate goals differ (1). This does not mean all Muslims are Islamists; it means Islamism is a political project that can operate inside open societies, often using the language of rights while aiming at power.
Jihadism is a violent subset of Islamism that explicitly sanctifies armed struggle and terror as a political method. Hamas and Hezbollah are widely recognized in many Western jurisdictions as terrorist organizations (or at minimum as having terrorist wings), and scholarship has extensively explored their relationships with Iran and Syria as part of a regional “axis” of refusal/rejectionism (2).
So the “alliance” described here is not that every leftist supports every Islamist, but that in high-salience arenas—especially Israel-related mobilization—radical-left networks and Islamist networks repeatedly cooperate in ways that amplify propaganda, increase social pressure, and normalize extremist narratives.
The central mechanism
The most consistent bridge between radical-left activism and Islamist movements is a particular style of “anti-imperialism.” In its most principled form, anti-imperialism can mean skepticism toward military adventurism and a desire for national self-determination. But in its radicalized form, it becomes something else: a reflexive assumption that any actor opposing the United States, Israel, or the West is morally “resisting imperialism,” regardless of that actor’s internal ideology, human-rights record, or methods.
This is how the moral logic flips. Liberal democracies—precisely because they are strong, complex, and globally influential—are cast as uniquely illegitimate. Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes and armed Islamist factions are rebranded as “anti-colonial” or “liberation” movements, even when they employ repression, censorship, religious coercion, or the deliberate targeting of civilians.
Policy Exchange captures this dynamic by describing a blending of discourses that are, by ordinary standards, incompatible—yet increasingly merged in elite and activist spaces through academic and ideological currents that contest the moral foundations of the Western liberal state (1). Once the Western state is defined as inherently oppressive, any opponent of that state can be framed as a “victim” or a “subaltern,” and therefore beyond normal moral judgment.
In the Israel context, this logic is especially potent because it can reframe the Jewish state—an indigenous-national revival movement with a democratic system and minority rights—into a simple cartoon: “white settler colonialism.” The radical left then treats Israel not as a country with legitimate security needs and a complex conflict environment, but as a symbol to be destroyed. Islamists benefit because the same framing obscures their ideological goals and sanitizes their violence as “resistance.”
The Cold War disinformation and the afterlife of “Zionism = racism”
To understand why anti-Israel narratives spread so quickly in Western institutions, it helps to understand that some of the most enduring slogans were deliberately engineered for political warfare during the Cold War.
A significant body of reporting and analysis argues that Soviet “active measures” helped popularize anti-Zionist frames that were effectively antisemitic in function, culminating in the notorious “Zionism is racism” campaign at the United Nations (3). Even where individual activists today have never read Soviet history, the rhetorical architecture remains: Israel is singled out as uniquely evil; Jewish national self-determination is redefined as racism; and the conflict is stripped of Jewish indigeneity, regional history, and the reality of terrorism.
Network Contagion Research Institute’s work on antisemitic disinformation emphasizes how modern networks disseminate coordinated narratives and how older propaganda frames can be adapted to new platforms and movements (4). This matters because the radical-left/Islamist convergence does not operate only through street protests; it operates through repeated memes, slogans, and moral scripts that travel faster than fact-checking.
Russia’s contemporary information warfare also exploits polarizing conflicts to weaken Western cohesion. Analyses of how Russia capitalizes on Israel-Gaza discourse point to modern digital disinformation techniques and the continuity of Soviet-style tactics (5). You do not need to believe every online claim about “bots” to recognize the obvious incentive: adversarial states benefit when Western publics are fractured, when Jews feel unsafe, when Israel is delegitimized, and when the U.S.-Israel alliance is weakened.
The important takeaway for readers is this: the propaganda environment around Israel is not organic “people power” alone. It is also a long-running arena of geopolitical influence, where hostile actors exploit moral language to produce political outcomes.
The 1979 lesson: when leftists ally with Islamists, they are often discarded
A recurring historical example cited in debates about Islamist-left alliances is the Iranian Revolution. In the broad coalition that opposed the Shah, leftist groups helped mobilize revolutionary energy, only to be suppressed once Khomeini’s Islamist faction consolidated power. Contemporary commentary revisits this history to warn that tactical cooperation can empower the most disciplined, ruthless faction often the Islamist one (6).
The exact details of Iranian revolutionary factionalism are complex, but the political pattern is straightforward: revolutions are not won by who has the most idealistic slogans; they are won by who has the tightest organization, the deepest networks, and the least scruple about coercion. Islamist movements often have all three, especially when backed by state resources.
This is why the term “useful idiots” persists in political language: it describes the tendency of idealistic activists to become instruments for forces that do not share their values. Whether one likes the phrase or not, the dynamic it points to is real: radical-left activists can provide moral cover, social legitimacy, and mass mobilization for Islamist agendas, without understanding what those agendas would mean if actually implemented.
The “Axis of Resistance” and the weaponization of the Israel issue
Any serious discussion of jihadist networks and anti-Israel mobilization must address Iran. Iran’s leadership positions itself as the champion of “resistance,” but its strategy is better understood as building a regional arc of proxy forces capable of pressuring Israel, destabilizing Arab states, and challenging U.S. influence.
Academic and policy literature has examined the relationships among Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria, showing how these ties have evolved and how they form a broader strategic axis (2). The Middle East Institute likewise discusses Iran-Hamas relations beyond the region, emphasizing Tehran’s interest in strengthening partnerships for utilitarian strategic reasons (7). You do not have to agree with every policy prescription from every institute to accept the basic premise: Iran gains by sponsoring proxy forces that keep the region inflamed and Israel pinned down.
This is precisely where the radical-left alliance becomes useful. Iran does not need Western activists to love the Iranian regime; it needs them to hate Israel and distrust the West. If radical-left activism can mainstream “Israel is genocidal,” “Zionists control everything,” or “America is the real terrorist,” then Iran’s adversaries become politically constrained in their ability to respond. The point is not to win Western hearts for Tehran; it is to paralyze Western resolve and fracture Western alliances.
Hezbollah and Hamas: moral asymmetry and why “false equivalence” is the propaganda prize
One of the most effective propaganda outcomes is false equivalence: the claim that Israel and jihadist groups are morally identical. This rhetoric typically works by isolating images of suffering (which are real in war) from the causes, tactics, and intentions behind them, then asserting that any military response to terrorism is the same as terrorism itself.
But scholarship on Hezbollah’s development highlights its ideological roots and its relationship to the Iranian Revolution’s pan-Islamic and “Third-Worldist” ideas (8). Other research examines Hezbollah’s ties to Hamas and Iran (2). These are not simply local “civil society” groups. They are ideologically motivated, armed, and in many cases integrated into state-backed networks.
Democracies can and should be criticized when they make mistakes. Israel’s policies, like those of any democracy at war, deserve scrutiny. But scrutiny is not the same as moral inversion. Terror organizations intentionally embed in civilian areas, cultivate martyrdom culture, and treat civilian deaths as propaganda assets. Democracies, by contrast, are accountable to courts, voters, media, and law. The radical-left/Islamist alliance works relentlessly to erase this distinction, because once moral boundaries collapse, terrorism can be reframed as “resistance,” and self-defense can be reframed as “oppression.”
This is not a technical debate; it is a moral one. And the stakes are high because the normalization of false equivalence makes democratic self-defense politically impossible.
How the alliance operates in the West ?
The alliance is not usually a formal coalition with membership cards. It functions as an ecosystem. Several recurring arenas matter:
Universities and cultural institutions become high-leverage targets because they shape elite opinion, media narratives, and future policymakers. When campus discourse is captured by a simple oppressor/oppressed framework, Israel becomes the permanent “villain,” and Jewish students are pressured to denounce Zionism to be accepted. This is not merely an “argument about foreign policy”; it becomes a social sorting mechanism.
Foreign funding can amplify this ecosystem. Mitchell Bard’s report on Arab funding to American universities emphasizes the scale and transparency concerns associated with foreign donations and the potential impact on campus climate and programming (9). Again, the point is not that every foreign donation equals propaganda. The point is that money buys access, prestige, institutional partnerships, and sometimes the subtle shaping of what is studied, what is hosted, and what is discouraged.
Think tanks and researchers have also examined the ways Islamist-linked networks seek legitimacy through civil society and political engagement, while maintaining ideological objectives hostile to liberal norms (10). Even when violence is not directly advocated in Western contexts, the ideological infrastructure can still cultivate grievance narratives, antisemitic tropes, and hostility to Israel’s existence.
Meanwhile, street mobilization and social media supply the emotional engine. They create spectacles that intimidate institutions into adopting activist demands, even when those demands are incoherent or discriminatory. When chants and slogans blur into explicit or coded antisemitism, the radical left often rationalizes it as “anger,” “context,” or “misunderstanding,” while holding Jews and Israelis to impossible standards.
Policy Exchange’s “Islamism and the Left” argues that this convergence has contributed to “closing down of debate” and resistance to counter-extremism and policing, as well as broader challenges to liberal principles (1). In practice, this looks like the stigmatization of mainstream pro-Israel voices, the policing of language in only one direction, and the insistence that acknowledging Israeli security concerns is itself a moral crime.
Why conspiracies spread so fast in these circles
Every political camp can fall for misinformation, but the radical-left/Islamist convergence around Israel has a particular vulnerability: it is anchored in a grand narrative of hidden power. Once you believe the world is run by “imperialists” and “Zionists,” any counterevidence can be dismissed as propaganda, and any atrocity by “resistance” forces can be denied as “fabrication.”
Analyses tracing the origins of anti-Israel narratives emphasize how older propaganda frames persist and mutate, including the “Zionism = racism” smear that was pushed internationally (3). Network Contagion’s work on antisemitic disinformation underscores how modern networked environments can coordinate, spread, and reinforce these narratives (4). This is especially dangerous because antisemitism is uniquely adaptive: it can present Jews as hyper-capitalist exploiters in one era and as communist subversives in another, but always as the hidden enemy.
When radical-left discourse merges with Islamist grievance politics, antisemitic conspiracies can spread under the cover of “anti-Zionism.” The tell is not criticism of Israeli policy—criticism is normal in a democracy. The tell is obsessive double standards, demonization, and the denial of Jewish peoplehood and national rights while affirming those rights for everyone else.
Qatar, soft power, and the legitimacy shield
Not all influence is violent; much of it is reputational and institutional. Qatar is often discussed in Western debates as a state that uses media, diplomacy, and funding to increase its global leverage. In the context of Islamist networks, researchers have raised questions about how state-linked ecosystems can provide platforms or legitimacy to Islamist ideologues and causes.
Bard’s university funding report highlights the wider phenomenon of large-scale Arab-state funding and the transparency issues it raises (9). The question for democratic societies is not whether foreign states may ever donate or partner; it is whether these relationships are transparent, whether they compromise academic independence, and whether they contribute to environments where antisemitism and Israel demonization become normalized.
In a healthy liberal society, pluralism means many viewpoints can be aired. The problem arises when “pluralism” becomes a one-way ratchet: Israel is treated as uniquely illegitimate, Zionist speakers are shouted down, Jewish students are harassed, and institutions quietly decide that the safest path is to appease the loudest faction.
Why Israel becomes the obsession?
The radical left often treats Israel as a symbol of the West: modern, democratic, aligned with the U.S., and resilient against terror. Islamists often treat Israel as a religious-political affront and a strategic barrier. Russia and China can treat Israel-related outrage as an opportunity to fracture Western unity and distract from their own actions. The convergence is not accidental. Israel becomes the intersection point where multiple agendas overlap.
This obsession also functions psychologically. For the radical left, Israel offers a “moral certainty” story: if the world is complicated, at least this conflict can be simplified into a decolonization drama. For Islamists, Israel offers a permanent mobilization tool: a grievance that can be used to recruit, radicalize, and justify authoritarian control at home (“we must repress dissent because we are at war”). For authoritarian states, the Israel issue offers a way to weaponize Western empathy and manipulate Western media cycles.
The tragedy is that this obsession often harms ordinary Arabs as well as Israelis. It freezes regional politics into perpetual grievance rather than pragmatic development. It incentivizes maximalism over compromise. And it keeps populations trapped under corrupt or authoritarian leadership that can always point to Israel as the reason they cannot deliver freedom and prosperity.
How to critique policy without empowering extremism?
A pro-democracy, pro-human-rights approach must be able to do two things simultaneously: defend Israel’s legitimacy and security, and insist on moral seriousness and factual accuracy in discussing the conflict.
That means recognizing the moral asymmetry between a democracy fighting terror and terror organizations that target civilians, even while also recognizing that war is messy, painful, and prone to error. It means refusing to launder antisemitism as “anti-Zionism.” It means rejecting calls for Israel’s elimination as incompatible with peace. And it means seeing how propaganda networks—state and non-state—exploit Western openness.
Policy Exchange’s analysis warns that the Islamist-left convergence can corrode liberal order by narrowing debate and turning legitimate policy disagreements into moral excommunication (1). Democracies need the opposite: robust debate, rule of law, equal civil rights, and a clear boundary against political violence and intimidation.
How to recognize when “activism” crosses into extremist enabling?
People often ask: how do I tell the difference between someone advocating for civilians and someone effectively advancing jihadist or authoritarian goals? The distinction is usually visible in patterns, not single sentences.
When the “activism” is genuinely humanitarian, it tends to be consistent: it condemns the deliberate murder of civilians regardless of who commits it; it demands accountability from terror organizations as well as states; it supports peace frameworks that recognize mutual legitimacy; and it avoids conspiracy theories.
When the “activism” is part of the radical-left/Islamist convergence, it tends to show recurring traits: it denies or excuses terrorism; it employs double standards; it singles out Israel for eliminationist rhetoric; it uses dehumanizing language about “Zionists”; it harasses Jewish communities abroad; it rejects any historical Jewish connection to the land; and it treats authoritarian anti-Western regimes as morally preferable simply because they oppose the U.S. and Israel. In that ecosystem, “human rights” becomes a branding tool rather than a principle.
The alliance is real, the stakes are larger than Israel, and democracies must respond intelligently
The convergence between radical-left activism and Islamist political networks is not a conspiracy theory; it is a recurring political pattern with documented ideological and institutional dimensions. Policy Exchange describes it as more than tactical, emphasizing a shared hostility to the liberal democratic order and a blending of discourses that closes down debate (1). Scholarship and analysis of Iran’s proxy relationships with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas shows how regional strategy depends on mobilization against Israel (2)(7). Research on antisemitic disinformation highlights how narratives are coordinated and spread, often by exploiting older propaganda frames (3)(4).
For Israel, the danger is delegitimization: the attempt to strip the Jewish state of the right every other people claims—the right to self-determination and self-defense. For the West, the danger is internal corrosion: intimidation replacing debate, propaganda replacing evidence, and the erosion of moral clarity about terrorism.
The democratic response should not be censorship or paranoia. It should be intellectual courage, transparency, law enforcement against violence and harassment, and a renewed insistence that human rights are universal—not a weapon used selectively to destroy one democracy while excusing the crimes of its enemies.