For many many years the 2-state solution was the mantra of diplomats, the US, the West, and even the Palestinians – when the latter were speaking in English to a Western audience, that is. “From the river to the sea” was heard at times, but it was kept rather hush-hush in general, and the idea of obliterating Israel was more subtle and mostly noticed only by those who delved into Palestinian textbooks or Arab-language speeches. There were pro-Palestinian anti/Israel demonstrations in cities at times, to be sure, but they were usually relatively small.
Campuses were hotbeds of the BDS movement, but like so many dangerous elements of university life it was easy for the mainstream to ignore. And those who advocated all these anti-Israel measures were usually careful to frame them as anti-Israel and anti-Zionist but not – oh no of course not – anti-Jewish.
October 7 put an end to those days of hiding the truth, which is that the movement is and always has been devoted to Israel’s extermination, profoundly anti-Jewish, and the product of a nasty wedding of Islamist jihadi ambition combined with postmodern leftist gobbledygook – the same wedding that toppled the shah and in which the left in Iran was defeated and purged by the mullahs who remained standing, wiping the leftists’ blood off their hands.
That should be a warning to the left as to where their own interests lie right now, but they haven’t learned from history and probably never will. Do they even know history?
So, why is the mask ripped off the pro-Palestinian movement now? They must believe it’s in their interest. Nor are these demonstrations spontaneous. They are well-organized, I suspect by an amalgam of groups from those two entities that form a potent odd couple: jihadis and leftists.
But why the decision to go ahead with such a barbaric and widespread massacre in the first place? I do know some of the ostensible goals of the massacre, which I will list: to derail Israel’s rapprochement with the Saudis; to embarrass and humiliate Israel; to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1973 war and avenge their defeat; to inflict tremendous suffering on Israel, Jews, and their supporters; to take advantage of Iranian coffers filled by Joe Biden’s administration; to take advantage of Israel’s bitter political disarray; and to take advantage of the fact that Biden is weak and probably would not fully support Israel and might even undermine it. In addition, the BLM Floyd protests and riots and the reduction in police forces probably convinced them that subsequent pro-Hamas demonstrators couldn’t or wouldn’t be stopped by the authorities.
All those things seem to be operating. But I still wonder why Iran and Hamas believed that the massacre would help their cause more than it would hurt it. One might think it would undermine them in the eyes of the world, but I suspect that one reason they went ahead is that they know that terrorism and barbarism actually only increase their support on the left (at least, they seem to have worked that way in the past), since the left takes both as evidence of Palestinian sincerity and the depth and intensity of Palestinian despair. Another is that violence sells in the movies, at least to a certain crowd, and the same appears to be true in the real world (alas). Another is that they are sadists and just wanted to do this. There also may be (and probably are) other reasons of which I’m unaware.
Did they kill more people and torture more people and kidnap more people on October 7 than even they expected? Perhaps. I wouldn’t know, but it’s possible, and so perhaps that’s why they didn’t expect quite the strong and determined response Israel has mounted so far. But they also may have calculated that, whatever Israel did or didn’t do, most of the world (and certainly most of the Western MSM) would condemn Israel and support the Palestinian cause. They may have thought that ultimately this would make Israel quit too soon, as it so often has in the past.
And of course, the hostages were the Palestinians’ insurance policy, an actual real-life get-out-of-jail-free card by which they thought they’d get all their comrades back. Why not? It had happened before in a thousand-to-one ratio, and now they had hundreds to exchange.
But once October 7 happened, and the clear-eyed could no longer deny the genocidal intent of Hamas and other Palestinian jihadi groups, and the genocidal sympathies of so much of their brainwashed-from-childhood population, then there would be no reason not to unleash crowds of demonstrators yelling “gas the Jews” and similar Nazi-esque sentiments.
Do they also think they’ve reached some sort of critical mass of power in Europe and the US, due to immigration and the takeover of the universities? Did they also think they needed to strike while Biden was still president, on the off chance that a Republican might get elected in 2024?
