On Oct. 7, 2023, numerous bands of terrorists -– reporting to Hamas, controlled and funded by Iran -- poured over the wall separating Gaza from the main body of Israel.  In a matter of hours, they slaughtered some 1,200 civilians living in kibbutzes and dancing at a music festival, as well as injuring and kidnapping many others.

It’s worth remembering who the Gazans’ direct targets were: they were peaceful people going about their day, both old and young.  These bloodthirsty attacks were committed by hundreds of sadistic terrorists -– who encircled partygoers on motorcycles, shooting into crowds to pick off terrified, unarmed targets at random, then charging towards individuals, beating and raping, slashing and killing -– in the fields, in the woods, in tents, or in homes.  It was scene after horrific scene of Iranian-funded, U.N.-supported monsters torturing and murdering whole families of innocent farmers and harmless revelers.

That was the terrorists’ plan, executed exactly as intended.  There were no errors, no misfires, no incidents of friendly fire; Hamas didn’t kill little old ladies and little babies by mistake.  Those were the intended targets; whatever happened to them was exactly what Hamas wanted to do.

Israel responded, as any rational government must.  Israel has conducted surgical strikes against the terrorists of the Gaza Strip for the past six months, bombing out and destroying the now-famous terror tunnels, rocket launch pads, weapons stores.  Israel has gone from town to town, often from door to door, rooting out both Hamas’ terror leaders and their ground troops, who dress like civilians themselves, but with giveaways -– such as the weapons they store in and under their apartments.

Israel is far from finished; the administration of Gaza has been single-mindedly focused on developing terrorists for generations.  In some areas of the Gaza Strip, every other household is a sleeper cell.  In some areas, it’s worse than that. Israel has its work cut out for it.

But there is a truism, as well-known in law enforcement as in politics and public relations: The more distance there is between events, the more the original righteous anger fades, and the more of a chance the remaining players in the story have to win public opinion to their side, no matter how undeserved.

On October 7, the world was horrified by what they saw, and global public opinion supported Israel’s retaliation before it even got started.

But as the months have gone by, there has been a careful effort -– not just by Hamas and Al Jazeera but by the mainstream media and the anti-semitic global Left itself -– to gradually turn public opinion the other way.

They have flooded our college campuses with rent-a-tent protesters -– funded, transported, and outfitted by leftist front groups.  They have tied up our business districts with massive demonstrations, causing traffic jams, disrupting commerce, scaring tourists and shoppers away.

But why?  

This isn’t our fight, our war.  Israel is defending itself against the terrorists of Gaza, and high time.

Still, these pro-terrorist demonstrations are designed to drive public opinion in the United States, with a specific goal in mind: to turn Israel’s ally, the United States, into an anti-Israel country, as so many other Western nations already are.

On April 29, 2024, the Hawaiian state legislature -– almost unanimously –- voted for a “ceasefire resolution,” calling for Israel to abort its police action against the terrorists before the job is done.

And while Hawaii is the first American state to do so, such efforts are being mounted, largely under the radar, all over the country.

Over a hundred cities and villages across the United States have also passed such anti-Israel, pro-terrorist resolutions, unwittingly doing the bidding of Iran. Big cities like Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco.  Counties like Washtenaw and Wayne. Coastal neighborhoods and Midwestern communities.  Areas with high Arab populations, and even areas with minimal Arab populations.  But certainly all these jurisdictions have one thing in common: a well-funded, well-organized and empowered left-wing presence.

These resolutions -– passed by jurisdictions that have no authority in foreign policy, you may have noticed -- are not organic in the least.  City aldermen and county boards have their own problems: unfunded pensions, rampant crime, a shrinking tax base, a swelling underclass. The only foreign policy position most of these local politicians have ever voted for was “sanctuary city” status, and boy, are they regretting that one nowadays, as the illegal alien invasion buries their cities in crime, homelessness and blight.

Mayors, city councils and county boards are under incredible pressure to pass these ceasefire resolutions, because advocates can make the harmless-sounding case that “It doesn’t cost you any tax dollars; it just shows your commitment to the moral high ground. It shows your opposition to the killing of innocent civilians.  You are opposed to genocide, aren’t you? Aren’t you???”

Note the gall in this argument.  Hamas has always attacked innocent civilians; the murder of innocent civilians has been their stock-in-trade since the beginning.  But the ceasefire advocates keep their eyes on the prize: applying pressure until an unprepared council relents and passes that resolution, so the agitators can show that another domino has fallen.

The Hamas lobby’s goal is to be able to confront congressmen and senators with these resolutions.  “Look, three communities in your district have called on Israel to pull back.  How dare you support funding Israel’s war, against your constituents’ wishes? How dare you send munitions to Israel to use against Gaza? When are you going to get with the program, and support a full statehood process for the Palestinians???”

Looking at the big picture, it is shocking how well-orchestrated this campaign is.

All of a sudden, in mid-October, our cities were filled with so-called “Palestinian flags” -– professionally produced signs and banners, hundreds or even thousands of marchers who neither have nor seek normal 9-to-5 jobs to keep them out of the streets -– or maybe this is their job.

Not long ago, Hamas was known worldwide as a vicious terrorist organization.  And yet, here we are, watching an active movement by foreign agents to affect American military policy, global diplomacy, and federal funding from the bottom up, without so much as a half-hearted effort to enforce America’s many restrictions against unregistered lobbying by non-citizens, campaign spending regulations, and sanctions against terrorists and international criminals.

This is part of a well-established pattern by islamic activists in the West:  Move in. Use local tolerance and political openness to grow dominant as a powerful minority. And then once they become the majority, clamp down and disassemble all the social systems that enabled them to rise, so that others can’t regain power and save their country.

The battle isn’t just in Congress, the White House, and the Courts. It’s now in the state houses and the town halls, the schools and the evening news.

The terrorists of Hamas and their American spokesmen are masters of P.R.  We must never allow ourselves to forget who they really are.  As many weeks, months and years may go by, putting October 7 in the distant past, we must keep those thousands of crimes fresh in our collective memory.

Hamas isn’t some innocent looking woman at a clinic; it’s the rocket launchers based inside it.  Hamas isn’t some sad-looking child wearing a backpack; it’s the demons who loaded his backpack with explosives.  Hamas isn’t some harmless little medical clinic; it’s the cache of weapons stored behind the doors marked “operating room” or “supply cabinet.”

And Hamas isn’t just a vocal group of demonstrators, parked outside your local village hall, promoting some harmless-looking referendum; Hamas is the Gazan subsidiary of the mullahs of Tehran, who have terrorized the Middle East and threatened the civilized world for 45 years now.

To say that their peaceful-looking “ceasefire referendum” is a wolf in sheep’s clothing is putting it mildly.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer and speaker. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I,  II, and III).