OPINION:
To put 300,000 terrorist sympathizers in the streets of Washington on short notice, you need a well-oiled machine that constantly requires a cause to advance its agenda.
One week, they’re marching against racism or protesting fossil fuels. The next, they’re demanding a cease-fire in Gaza — a lifeline thrown to Hamas.
Suddenly, pro-Hamas demonstrations are popping up all over the country, like poison mushrooms after a spring rain.
They’re the result of a coalition of radicals united by their hatred of America and the West — a coalition that reduces everything to a conflict between oppressors and the oppressed and which is willing to condone the most horrific violence to advance the revolution.
They are supported by groups with wealth, prestige and political clout — all resolutely leftist, if not openly Marxist.
The Democratic Socialists of America — aka Class Struggles Are Us — is an outgrowth of the old Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas Socialist Party USA. The party supported President Barack Obama in 2008 and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described “democratic socialist,” in the 2020 Democratic primaries.
Thanks in part to greater visibility, its membership has grown from 8,000 in 2016 to 25,000 today, including nine members of Congress. It organized an Oct. 8 rally in New York’s Times Square “in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid.”
The Democratic Socialists saw 9/11 as an act of retaliation for American imperialism and the Oct. 7 atrocities as payback for Israeli oppression.
The ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition started just three days after the murder of 3,000 Americans in midtown Manhattan and organized mass rallies against the war on terrorism while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking.
ANSWER sees Israel as a capitalist outpost of the West, proudly displays Hamas and Hezbollah flags at its rallies, and was deeply involved in the D.C. terrorist love-in.
In a 2015 statement on an earlier Israeli incursion, Black Lives Matter declared: “We remain outraged at the brutality Israel unleashed in Gaza. … We remain sickened by Israel’s targeting of homes, schools, U.N. shelters, mosques, ambulances and hospitals. We remain heartbroken and repulsed by the number of children Israel killed in an operation it called defensive.”
They are simultaneously outraged, sickened, heartbroken and repulsed. That much is clear.
And then there’s the Open Society Foundation, funded by leftist billionaire George Soros. Open Society, which operates in more than 70 countries, had assets exceeding $10.7 billion in 2017.
Among the beneficiaries of its largesse is IfNotNow, which stormed the U.S. Capitol on Oct. 18.
The group received grants totaling $400,000 from 2017 to 2023. Jewish Voices for Peace, whose Torah is Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” got $650,000 from Open Society in multiyear grants beginning in 2017.
Other recipients include Linda Sarsour’s Arab American Association of New York (a leader of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement), the Alliance for Global Justice and Within Our Lifetime. All support wiping Israel off the map. (“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”)
In a 2007 editorial, Mr. Soros insisted that “America and Israel must open the door to Hamas.” He claimed the terrorist group had a “more moderate political wing.” That would be those who merely behead women but don’t rape them first.
The red-green alliance goes back over a century to the 1920 Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku by the Soviet Union and the Communist International.
The Marxists then were so eager to enlist Muslims in the worldwide revolution that they treated Islam with grudging respect, even though Muslims were clearly addicted to the opiate of the masses.
Their successors see Islam as the religion of the oppressed and the vanguard of the war against capitalism and Christianity.
You’ll get none of this from the establishment media. At marches, reporters interview soft-spoken Arab Americans who agonize over civilian casualties in Gaza. The death head of the American left remains discreetly in the background.
Those who marched against the Vietnam War (which led to gulags and killing fields after our withdrawal), who sided with the Taliban and al Qaeda following 9/11, and became accessories to the looting and burning during the 2020 riots that followed the killing of George Floyd have become a cheering section for Hamas.
This will not end well. The left has a history of supporting carnage and oppression.
• Don Feder is a columnist with the Washington Times.
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