MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky In 'Wall Street Journal' Op-Ed: 'Hamas And Hezbollah Threaten The U.S. – American Supporters Are Increasingly Open About Their Allegiances'

On October 3, 2024, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by MEMRI Executive Director Steven Stalinsky titled "'Hamas And Hezbollah Threaten The U.S.," subtitled "American Supporters Are Increasingly Open About Their Allegiances."[1] The following is the op-ed in full.

The day after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called for a diplomatic solution between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the U.N. General Assembly to "set the record straight" regarding some speakers' "lies and slanders." Photo: Lev Radin/Zuma Press/Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images

Public support for terrorist organizations would once have shocked Americans. Now it's common. On social media and college campuses, kaffiyeh-clad protesters openly embrace Hamas and Hezbollah, both U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations.

Labor Day marchers in New York City waved the Hamas flag even as news broke that the group had executed Israeli and American hostages in Gaza. On Sept. 10, protesters outside the presidential debate in Philadelphia waved Hamas flags and held a banner stating: "Amerika is the head of the snake." They chanted in support of Hamas's military leader, Yahya Sinwar.

Islamist organizations and preachers at extremist mosques openly mourned the death of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas's political bureau. Haniyeh, a State Department-designated terrorist who helped organize the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, was killed in Tehran on July 31.

"Tonight we mourn Ismail himself but know his martyrdom is not in vain," tweeted Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in San Francisco. In a Friday sermon delivered Aug. 2, Sheikh Ismail Hamdi of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, N.J., called Haniyeh a "great leader," adding "we are happy for him that he was martyred." Imam Raed Alsawaier of Washington State's Pullman Islamic Center compared Haniyeh to the American revolutionaries of 1776 while calling for the annihilation of "the plundering Zionists." "Count them one by one," he said. "Scatter them, do not spare a single one of them."

In Dearborn, Mich., local religious leaders and activists staged a Sept. 29 vigil for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed two days earlier in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut. Attendees chanted, "We heed your call, oh Nasrallah," "Death to Israel," and "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return"—a reference to a seventh-century slaughter of Jews in what is now Saudi Arabia. Hezbollah has branded its retaliatory strikes against Israel "Operation Khaybar."

U.S. authorities have warned about the possibility of domestic attacks by American supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray told a Senate committee on Oct. 31, 2023, that his "most immediate concern" is that "violent extremists" inspired by Hamas will "carry out attacks against Americans." The FBI, he revealed, had "multiple, ongoing investigations" into Hamas-affiliated subjects. In July, federal authorities detained three Palestinian migrants with possible terrorist ties at the San Diego border crossing.

Among the terror supporters whose online activities my organization monitors is a New Orleans man who regularly praises Hamas and recently tweeted, "America needs to get October seventhed." Another is a Maryland man who works as an "energy infrastructure contractor" and boasts that he has a federal security clearance. He posts on Twitter about his support for Hamas and warns he has access to sensitive government sites.

Hamas itself has called for attacks on the U.S. "Oh Americans, Allah will punish you" and "declare war on you," Haniyeh once warned in a speech. Top Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri called for "violent acts" against America in December 2023. In a speech posted online on Aug. 20, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal ordered his followers among them students in the West to conduct "martyrdom operations," meaning suicide bombings, on Israeli and Western targets.

For nearly a year, American supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah have been freely promoting terrorism, often targeting and trying to intimidate the nation's Jewish communities. Jewish student groups on college campuses have been attacked, as have Jewish-owned private businesses, synagogues and nonprofits across the country. It's past time that these people are exposed and their activities condemned and investigated.

*Steven Stalinsky, Ph.D., is Executive Director of MEMRI.