Oct. 7 Celebration Rallies Are on the Way

Imagine if, on the upcoming anniversary of 9/11, crowds of people filled America’s streets to praise the devastating terrorist attacks as an act of “resistance.” We will witness something similar later this year, when anti-Israel advocacy groups plan to celebrate Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 in Israel, or the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

In a recent Instagram post, a coalition of pro-Palestine groups declared Saturday, Oct. 5 to be an “International Day of Action” and published a tour-style list of rally locations across the U.S. and Canada. They say this will mark “one year since our people in Gaza showed the world that the Palestinian people will continue to resist their continued displacement and dispossession by their colonizer.” (READ MORE: As Students Return, So Do Pro-Palestinian Protests)

An earlier version of the post included an image of a man standing on a tank, taken straight from news coverage of the Oct. 7 invasion. Meta took it down for violating its rules against supporting “dangerous” organizations, according to the Palestinian Youth Movement.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the anti-Israel activist movement has led to this. Covering it for almost a year has shown me that this love of violence increasingly shapes the cause.

Who Celebrates Oct. 7?

Many of the groups announcing these rallies also led giant protests in Washington, D.C., this summer, where I and other journalists documented numerous examples of support for terrorism. I saw flags representing Hamas, jihad, and “martyrdom,” as well as T-shirts honoring Leila Khaled, a Palestinian who hijacked planes.

People wore headbands for Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another terror group that participated in Oct. 7. There were signs saying people should “stand with Hamas” and that “Allah” will bring “the final solution” against Jews in Israel. Vandals wrote messages such as “kill another soldier now” and “Hamas is comin” on American monuments.

This kind of rhetoric didn’t come from the fringes. One sign that said Oct. 7 was “justified” appears to be a creation of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network — one of the groups promoting the upcoming demonstrations. I also watched as an activist declared in front of the White House that “Oct. 7 was the beginning of the end” for Israel and America’s “genocide,” causing a crowd to erupt into cheers.

Every radical protester I saw received little to no backlash or ostracization from the overall crowds, which wanted Israel destroyed “from the river to the sea.” But when a counter-protester held up a sign condemning terrorist groups, Palestine supporters began surrounding him and deliberately blocking the sign from view.

The extremism of these activists has become apparent across the country, especially as college campus protests turned violent. Many, if not most anti-Israel protests spring from the same network of organizations or their local chapters. Even the Palestine Solidarity Committee at my school, the University of North Texas, liked and reshared the Instagram post announcing the October rallies. The Committee is an affiliate of two groups involved: the Palestinian Youth Movement and Students for Justice in Palestine.

Much of this defense of terrorism stems from the Marxist worldview that widely characterizes the movement. I’ve seen socialist groups and themes at demonstrations from our nation’s capital to my Texas campus. Unsurprisingly, the funding trail for protests includes nonprofits connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

In fact, this ideological connection goes back decades. Terrorists in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have received backing from the CCP, North Korea, Japan’s Red Army, and the Soviet Union through the years. North Korea has also provided military aid to Hamas.

Middle East militants and communist regimes both judge “oppressor” groups in ways that excuse horrific mass violence — as do their apologists here in the West.

In the near-year since the Oct. 7 massacre, Hamas’s premeditated barbarism has been well-documented. Terrorists ran through neighborhoods shooting anything that moved, raped women and paraded their bodies through the streets, burned families alive in their homes, beheaded children, took hundreds hostage, and much, much more. Their founding charter makes it clear that “killing the Jews” is their mission. (READ MORE: Killing Hamas)

Rallying in celebration of these acts is hardly different from the idea of praising the 9/11 attacks as resistance against the West. To those who would memorialize Oct. 7, I pose the question: Who is it that supports “genocide”?

Hudson Crozier is a contributor to Young Voices and the associate editor at Upward News. His reporting and commentary have been published in the Washington Examiner, the Federalist, the College Fix, and others. He studies journalism at the University of North Texas. Follow him on X @L0neStarTrooper.

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