Decades of Denial: How Islamists Won the War against Western Values.

In the wake of pro hama–sorry, pro “resistance” rallies and encampments, it seems that everyone’s jaws are on the floor. People just cannot believe that US college students are aligning themselves with terrorist regimes. Boomers scratch their heads while younger Jews, who have been sounding the alarm on this for years, roll their eyes, for they understand that the United States has slowly become completely desensitized to terrorism.

The notion that the US has normalized terrorist acts is not hyperbole, nor is it alarmist; it is a categorically true statement and, contrary to popular belief, was evident pre-October 7. To be clear, I am not talking about offhand statements that leave room for plausible deniability. I am referring to unambiguous, outright support for terrorism. And no, this isn’t coming from the fringe either. It includes mainstream organizations that all your favorite politicians follow, whose representatives are regularly given airtime on mainstream media. In a sick twist of irony, one of the most well-known organizations currently doing so is Jewish Voice for “Peace” (JVP).

In 1969, 21-year-old Rasmea Odeh planted two bombs in a Jerusalem supermarket, the resulting explosion killed two people and injured nine. In 2017, Odeh was a guest of honor at JVP’s national membership meeting. Amid pushback, JVP claimed that Odeh was wrongly convicted of the terrorist attack; a claim that would have been more credible had JVP’s social media not been littered with support for terrorists like airplane hijacker  Leila Khaled or Lod Massacre mastermind Ghassan Kanafani. A few months later, JVP published a paid advertisement in The Forward supporting another terrorist. This time their terrorist of choice was  Marwan Barghouti, who’s imprisoned in Israel serving five life sentences for his involvement in three separate terrorist attacks.

After seeing a “peace” organization flagrantly endorse terrorism, I spent months searching for a book about the relationship between Islamism and the progressive left. I landed on Woke Army by Asra Nomani. Admittedly, the title almost threw me off, but I eventually reasoned that Nomani could provide insight far too fascinating to pass up. Nomani was a colleague and close friend of Daniel Pearl–a reporter for the Wall Street Journal who was abducted and murdered in 2002 while on assignment in Karachi, Pakistan. She was also an immigrant, a practicing Muslim, and a single mom, and thus offered an intersectional perspective–even if it was the wrong kind of intersectional perspective.

I began reading Woke Army in August 2023; little did I know how relevant it would become in just two short months. Nomani discussed the Holy Land Foundation trial, in which five former leaders of a US based Muslim charity were convicted of funneling over $12 million to Hamas. Nomani wrote of connections between designated terrorist organizations and contemporary Muslim organizations like MSA and CAIR. After further research to corroborate this, I discovered that what sounded like a Fox News conspiracy theory was actually a decades long open secret made up of three components:

1. Support for terrorism is alive and well in the US

2. The “worry for Palestine” was never about Palestine

3. This issue is truly about Western civilization

Why was everyone so seemingly and worryingly unaware?  I chalked it up to concerns about Islamophobia in a post-9/11 world.

As part of the evidence compiled in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the US government obtained a document issued by the Muslim Brotherhood titled An Explanatory Memorandum for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Goals in North America. Among other things, the goals included establishing a Muslim Brotherhood-led movement in the US and “presenting Islam as a civilization alternative”. The memo went on to explain that a Muslim’s role in North America is a “grand jihad” which involves “eliminating and destroying the western civilization from within...” until Islam becomes “victorious over all other religions.” The document acknowledged the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and dozens of Muslim American organizations, one of them being the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) which, interestingly enough, also issued a fascinating memo used in the HLF trial.

The IAP’s 1991 document  was beyond damning, with the organization admitting that their cause wasn’t about indigeneity, nationalism, or land. In fact, they never even “believed in Palestinians or other nationalities” and considered such markers, “mere geographical divisions and nothing more.” According to the IAP, the “Palestinian cause” was really just “Islam’s cause in Palestine.” The memo read, “our dealing with the Palestinian cause is not from a national or regional perspective...but it is mandated by Islam.” It elaborated that the Palestinian cause was unique and deserved special attention precisely because it involves “a struggle with the Jews…who constitute a danger to Arabs and Muslims [worldwide].” For this reason, the IAP stressed the need to form special committees for Palestine which would publicize “the savagery of the Jews.” Muslim countries were instructed to contact international organizations to “denounce the crimes of the Jews in Palestine”.

The strategy was clear: in an Arafat style rebrand, there was a need to reverse victim and offender - there would now be a soft war aimed at showcasing the “crimes of the Jews.” Despite the foresight of its success, the ‘soft war’ strategy seemed akin to a blindfolded dart thrower striking a bullseye. Yet, it worked - the world has become uniquely obsessed with the “crimes of the Jews in Palestine.” Their fixation on the world’s only Jewish state rears its ugly head whenever Israel is given any kind of representation on the world stage. Whether it's the UN’s blatantly selective resolutions, athletes’ consistent refusal to compete against Israelis, or students urging their universities to implement a total academic boycott of Israel, it is clear that the contempt for Israel is completely unprecedented and unmatched. A 2011 statement from the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement (BDS) titled Israel’s Exceptionalism: Normalizing the Abnormal asserts that Israel should not be treated as a “normal state with which business as usual can be conducted.” If you judged Israel solely by its portrayal on the global stage, you would think it was a brutal dictatorship or perhaps the world’s worst human rights violator. Yet, Israel is consistently rated “free” amid a sea of totalitarian states.

Map of Freedom Status in the Middle East, with Israel highlighted as 'Free' amidst surrounding “Not Free” and “Partly Free” nations.

Like every other nation in the world, Israel has imperfections that merit scrutiny, but it’s crucial to remain balanced. This is not a country whose actions are so uniquely cruel and egregious that it deserves to be treated like a pariah state. The immense backlash leveled at Israel, which has long predated the current war, has nothing to do with any specific policy or law. Chants heard across the globe at so-called protests say as much, “We don't want two states, we want ‘48”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab”, “There is no God but Allah and the martyrs are beloved by Allah.” It is important to note that not all protesters adopt this Islamist ideology. In fact, many are in the streets simply because they believe they are supporting a persecuted people and require self-assurance that they are, indeed, good people.

Harsh as it may sound, these protests are not born out of a genuine concern for human rights. Take this op-ed, The Case for Closing NYU’s Tel Aviv Site — for those unaware, NYU has three main campuses: New York, Shanghai, and Abu Dahbi. It also owns several “academic learning centers” scattered across six continents, one of which is located in Tel Aviv. The op-ed touted concerns about the mere existence of the Tel Aviv location, which, according to the author, contradicted NYU’s commitment to academic freedom, and equality for all students. Interestingly, the author did not seem to have any qualms with NYU operating a campus in China–who received a score of 0/4 on Freedom House’s academic freedom scale (Israel scored 3/4). And don’t even get me started on China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. The op-ed’s faux concern for equality is also laughable seeing as the author seemed to have no issue with NYU operating in the UAE—a nation where women languish under draconian guardianship laws, LGBTQ individuals face harsh criminalization, and many are rendered stateless – an actual apartheid state. The selective outrage highlighted by the op-ed reflects not mere oversight but a symptom of a pervasive and strategic campaign.

Hamasniks on college campuses are not there by accident, they are the foreseeable result of a brilliantly executed plan that has been well in the making for over 30 years. These developments tie back to documents leaked during the Holy Land Foundation trial, which exposed a broader agenda where support for such extremism is a key component of a larger Islamist cause. The IAP’s own internal documents admit that the unique and severe treatment of Israel is a deliberate component of the broader Islamist strategy to “teach the enemies of God the lessons of prophets and Mujahedeen” either by “triumphing over them” or “martyrdom.” Contemporary pro Palestine organizations are not shy about this. 

Abdullah Akl, an organizer at Wolpalestine explained that the ultimate goal of the movement is “submission to Allah'' and freeing Palestine is merely a “vehicle for submission.” This does not mean that every Palestine supporter’s eventual goal is an Islamic caliphate. After all, many are feminists, members of the LGBT community, and political dissidents, none of whom would fare well under an Islamic theocracy. In a vast show of suicidal empathy, self-righteous westerners exploit human suffering abroad to boost their egos but are too idiotic to realize that they are pieces on a chessboard where checkmate also means an end to western civilization, including their right to support the Houthis or freely chant “death to America.”

The success of this whole charade, draped in the noble cloak of justice and human rights, starkly illustrates the potency of ideological warfare, where truth has become the primary casualty. As we face a soft war defeat, the situation worsens with Qatar pouring billions of dollars into American universities and creating state media outlets like AJ+, specifically targeted at western audiences. This strategic investment reshapes academic discourse and sways public opinion, further eroding the foundational principles of critical thinking and democratic values in our society.