Victor Davis Hanson

The pro-Hamas, anti-Israeli, and anti-Semitic protests grow stronger, more frequent, and more surreal each week.

Now demonstrators in New York are condemning the U.S. for protecting global transport in the sea-lanes of the Red Sea. In other words, they sympathize with the terrorist Houthis of Yemen who have been currently preemptively trying to kill Americans.

Now there are promises from federal workers to strike soon on behalf of Hamas’s demands for a ceasefire. Is their insurrectionary aim to shut down the federal government?

So is there any outrageous act that the pro-Hamas throng will not consider?

Defacing the national cemetery of American war dead in Los Angeles? Defiling the Lincoln Memorial? Disrupting Christmas services in New York? Shutting down major freeways? Causing commute traffic to halt on the Manhattan and Golden Gate Bridges? Cornering and confronting Jewish students on campus? Chanting for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people?

In her early response to questions about the growing anti-Semitism, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre infamously snarked, “We have not seen any credible threats, I know there’s always questions about credible threats, and so I just want to make sure that’s out there. But look, Muslim and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks, and certainly President Biden understands that many of our Muslim, Arab, Arab-American and Palestinian-American loved ones and neighbors are worried about the hate being directed at their communities.”

What message did that send to the pro-Hamas mobs, even when she later claimed she “misheard” the question?

Joe Biden has been absolutely quiet about the expanding anti-Israel/anti-Jewish protests, even when they have become violent. Instead, he becomes briefly animated not by pro-Hamas, anti-American violence, but only by the “semi-fascist” and “ultra-MAGA” nearly half of the country who voted against him in 2020.

So he, talks endlessly of the January 6th “insurrection”, a protest that for a few hundred descended into a buffoonish riot, but nothing comparable, for example, in terms of deaths, destruction, looting, and attacks on an iconic federal courthouse, police precinct, historic church, or the White House grounds to the 120 days of rioting of summer 2020.

Of those violent days, Kamala Harris bragged they would not cease even as she rooted on the “protests”. (“But they’re not gonna stop. They’re not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they’re not gonna stop… they’re not going to let up — and they should not. And we should not.”)

In his recent Phantom of the Opera 2.0 Ultra-Maga harangue at Valley Forge, Joe Biden seemed also to praise the BLM/Antifa glory days of 2020 as “the historic movement for justice in the summer of 2020”.

More recently, pro-Hamas protestors have trumped January 6th by both the duration and intensity of their increasingly violent demonstrations. As for an “insurrection”, pro-Hamas protestors stormed the Capitol rotunda, in aims to disrupt Congress. Will they face years of imprisonment for “illegal parading” and imperiling congressional business?

In California, the first day of the legislature was cancelled after pro-Hamas demonstrators took over the chambers and prevented the proceedings to continue. Insurrectionary?

We can expect four themes in 2024: 1) Biden will step up pressure on Israel to pull out of Gaza and to refrain from going after terrorist leaders; 2) there will be a lot more, and increasingly more violent, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic protests; 3) the 2024 election-mode White House will respond by ignoring anti-Jewish protests and exaggerating rare anti-Islamic incidents; and 4) it will continue to beat the dead January 6 horse, even as it increasingly canonizes the street and downtown take-over violence of 2020.

Common denominator to the madness?

At home, Biden is worried about even small defections in Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania of traditionally Arab-American Democrat constituencies, and he is increasingly terrified of larger apostasies among black voters. In contrast, he feel that Jewish voters will either not really defect or their numbers are concentrated in mostly blue, taken-for-granted states like New York and California.

Abroad, an appeasing Biden is terrified that his laxity and erosion of U.S. deterrence prompted Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis to act—and that they will further become emboldened to the point of waging multifront attacks later in the year‚ right around election time.