Variety recently reported on an open letter signed by nearly four-hundred members of the film industry in response to the Israeli Defense Forces’ killing of Palestinian photojournalist and war documentarian Fatima Hassouna.

Hassouna, her pregnant sister, and nine other family members were killed in her home in northern Gaza on April 16, days before her wedding and twenty-four hours after the Cannes Film Festival announced that it would premiere a documentary featuring Hassouna the following month. (That film, titled Put Your Soul in Your Hand and Walk, played at Cannes on May 15.) Given the IDF’s longtime targeting of journalists, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that she and her family were killed in response to that announcement. (Predictably, the IDF claims that it was trying to kill a Hamas member.)

Much of the statement focuses on the industry’s indifferent response to the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. But in its closing stretch, the letter includes a bizarre and out-of-place paragraph that perfectly symbolizes the Western, pro-Palestine movement’s misguided insistence on coupling opposition to the war with completely unrelated issues:

“The far right, fascism, colonialism, anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+, sexist, racist, islamophobic [sic] and antisemitic movements are waging their battle on the battlefield of ideas, attacking publishing, cinema and universities, and that’s why we have a duty to fight.”

Intersectionality is poison. The notion that the “liberation” of various grievance groups in the West are tied to the fate of the Palestinians is morally illiterate. Any effort to wed opposition to Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip to divisive agendas—particularly ones that most Palestinians find offensive—is destined to fail. Some, if not many, of the letter’s signatories were probably willing to overlook its embrace of asinine cultural talking points because it drew attention to an indefensible war crime. But the fact of the matter remains that the death and destruction in Gaza is completely unrelated to whether Western legal systems recognize transgender identity, nor is such death and destruction exclusively the province of the far right.

Opponents of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip should focus their energies on honoring people like Fatima Hassouna by calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, not by using the antiwar movement’s newfound momentum to promote a culture war.