MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS JANUARY 03 2024
It’s time to stop pretending that those who are marching for a ceasefire in Gaza actually want a ceasefire. They don’t. They are actively marching for the benefit of Hamas, to give Hamas time to re-arm and re-attack Israel at a later date. Everyone knows this, and everyone has known this since these marches began on October 8. This past New Year’s weekend showed more videos of these people for what they truly are: terrorists in training.
The goal of terrorism is to terrorize. There are many ways to do that. The most obvious way is to murder as many civilians as possible. These Hamas supporters in the United States are not yet ready to do that, but with each passing week we see them more emboldened. If they are allowed to continue their pseudo-terrorism unabated, the consequences are sure to be devastating.
On New Year’s Eve, hundreds of marchers wearing kaffiyehs, a symbol of terrorists, waving Palestinian flags, the flag of a would-be terrorist state, were chanting genocidal slogans in both English and Arabic while marching towards Times Square. Their goal was to terrorize the million or so people who attend the annual ball drop during a holiday.
These same people have been going from mall to mall during the biggest shopping season of the year for the past two months, shouting and screaming at shoppers who know nothing about these issues and have no stake in the conflict between Israel and Hamas. They demand that these people stop everything they are doing and join them in their anti-Israel, anti-Jewish protests.
This is the mentality of the “silence is violence” crowd. The pro-Hamas argument relies on ignorance and a belief in the “oppressor-oppressed” dynamic. The vast majority of people chanting “from the river to the sea” have no idea which river and which sea they are chanting about. They don’t know what will happen to the Jews should Israel be destroyed. They don’t know about the thousands of years of history and oppression that led to this.
The people who are “silent” are usually as ignorant as those who are shouting, but are wise enough to understand that if they don’t know about a topic, they shouldn’t speak out about it. The pro-Hamas side, just like everyone who is wrong on an issue, demands that these people receive a sliver of information that reinforces their side, and speak out about it. People who are right about an issue don’t need an uninformed mob behind them shouting to prove they are right. Usually, uninformed mobs do more to hurt a cause than help it.
Yet these uninformed, ignorant people are joining the roving crowds around the country. It’s a false comfort to claim that they are not gaining followers to their cause with these demonstrations. That’s what we tell ourselves to make each other feel better, but it’s a lie. They are gaining new followers both Left and Right. They are gaining young followers who have a moral vacuum within them and see passion and follow it. They are gaining rabid “America First” followers who see any American involvement in foreign conflicts as a betrayal of America itself. They are indeed gaining followers.
While they gain followers, their tactics are getting bolder. Videos emerged this weekend of Hamas supporters blocking the roads to JFK Airport. These are overt Hamas supporters, as they are seen waving Hamas flags in addition to Palestinian ones and have the words “Intifada” written on the windows of their cars.
Another video emerged of a large balloon being launched into the airspace of JFK Airport while planes were taking off and landing. The clear intention was to have the balloon with the unidentified item that was strapped to it be sucked into the engine of an airplane, possibly killing hundreds of innocent people.
This is no longer a nuisance. This is federal crime territory. Between all of these marches, demonstrations, violent acts, and now federal crimes, there has been no reporting of prosecution by any of the DAs in the area. People are being arrested and presumably being let out under New York’s no-cash bail law. Then they are back on the streets and ready to terrorize again.
How much longer can we as a society allow this? These people need to be arrested and charged with unlawful assembly and incitement of violence, and every other crime that they are committing on a daily basis. Enough is enough. If we don’t take our streets back from these would-be terrorists, then we never deserved to have them in the first place.
