by Gary Benoit
Organized protests against Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack have been occurring in Europe and America — including in multiple locations in New York City — in recent days.
A few of the protesters in New York City were Jewish, albeit very liberal. On Friday, hundreds of protesters organized by a group called Jewish Voice for Peace filled Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, where they chanted “cease-fire now” and “let Gaza live” while disrupting the evening commute for thousands of people and refusing to leave when threatened with arrest. Most of these protesters wore black shirts saying “Not in Our Name” and “Cease Fire Now”; hundreds of them were taken into custody.
Of course, these Jews in no way represented the large Jewish community in New York City.
Many others who protested in the Big Apple last weekend were pro-Hamas and anti-Israel.
On Saturday, thousands of protesters shut down the Brooklyn Bridge. A headline in the New York Post encapsulated the scene: “7,000 pro-Palestinian protesters take over Brooklyn Bridge, call for elimination of Jewish state: ‘By any means’”
The protesters swarmed across the famous bridge from Brooklyn into Manhattan, where, the Post reported, “Some ralliers were blatantly heard screaming, ‘Long Live Hamas’ as they paraded past the corner of 4th Avenue and East 13th Street. The massive protest split into three distinct groups, with the largest sector funneling into Union Square. Demonstrators chanted ‘free Palestine’ as they mounted the iconic George Washington statue and plastered it with stickers that read ‘Zionists are terrorists.’”
Hamas is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization — the same organization that launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 7, killing 1,400 innocent people including many women and children. And Hamas is the same organization that has de facto control over the Gaza Strip, where it uses as human shields the same Palestinian people it claims to represent.
The Israeli Defense Forces have released a video about the maze of underground tunnels under the streets of Gaza that is used by Hamas. According to the IDF, destroying Hamas requires destroying the tunnels.
“Hamas destroyed what Gaza could have been,” according to an opinion piece published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Sunday.
The author, Evan Nierman, founder of the crisis communications firm Red Banyan, noted,
The Gaza Strip is run by an Islamist, genocidal terrorist organization that, weeks ago, launched a pogrom against Israel. Israel once bet on an entirely different future. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, allowing the Palestinians to have self-determination. Every single Israeli left Gaza, including dead ones exhumed from cemeteries. Israel left 3,000 greenhouses in the strip, which were to be a key part of the future Gazan economy. Palestinians proceeded immediately to loot and destroy the greenhouses. Jeffrey Goldberg, now editor of The Atlantic, called this “a perfect metaphor for Gaza’s wasted opportunity.”… Hamas did not waste any time in terrorizing Israel. “Between their [Israel’s] withdrawal and the Gaza war of December 2008 … Israeli citizens absorbed 3,335 rockets aimed at their homes. Their border towns became uninhabitable,” wrote David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy…. Many critics, and outright haters, of Israel, have it exactly backwards. They argue that Israel’s (and, don’t forget, as many of the critics and haters do, Egypt’s) blockade of Gaza has radicalized the residents of Gaza and strengthened Hamas. In fact, the blockade was implemented in response to Hamas’ firing of unguided rockets into civilian areas, which is a war crime.
So why are so many people in America protesting on behalf of Hamas? Part of the answer is surely ignorance on the part of many of the protesters. For example, video of a protest in Brooklyn shows a combined LGBT and Palestine flag being flown.
In fact, many pro-Hamas student protesters are also pro-LGBT. But don’t expect a pro-LGBT flag to be flown in the Gaza Strip with the approval of Hamas, which follows Islamic law. In the Gaza Strip, two men engaging in homosexual acts are liable to receive 10 years in prison.
But ignorance does not fully explain the support for Hamas in America. There are also radical Islamists and others here in America who support terrorism, and who are able to beguile and radicalize others in support of their cause.
And still another part of the answer is that the protests are not spontaneous events; they are organized and funded.
Regarding the funding, the New York Post reported Saturday:
Far-left billionaire kingmaker George Soros has funneled more than $15 million since 2016 to groups behind this month’s pro-Palestine protests, where demonstrators openly cheered Hamas militants’ craven terrorist attacks on Israel. A Post examination of Open Society Foundations records shows Soros’ grant-making network gave $13.7 million of the money through Tides Center, a deep-pocketed lefty advocacy group that sponsors several nonprofits who’ve justified Hamas’ bloody attacks while claiming Palestinians obsessed with the eradication of the Jewish state are the real victims.
