The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)—responsible for a series of high-profile hijackings in 1968 and 1970, the 2014 Har Nof synagogue massacre, and countless other acts of terror—received some attention last week when major videoconferencing platforms refused to host a talk given by one of its leaders. Besides its active involvement in terrorism, the PFLP runs a sophisticated political operation that garners support from various private and public institutions in the West. Yossi Kuperwasser explains:

For many left-wing organizations in the West, cooperation with the PFLP comes naturally. It is a reminder of the “glorious” era when the Soviet Union was a superpower competing for global dominance against “the corrupt capitalist West” (the PFLP still uses this kind of vocabulary). When the Soviet bloc collapsed, these groups had to find a new cause célèbre around which to unite. The PFLP was among the first groups to understand the potential of recruiting softer anti-Israel elements into its networks and to leverage those elements to gain financial support from naïve international donors.

It does so often by creating non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that can work as front groups, such as Addameer: a self-described “civil institution” devoted to “human rights” and led by such men as Salah Hamouri, who orchestrated a plot to murder Israel’s former chief rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in 2005. And this strategy has achieved success:

The grotesque terror-NGO hybrid that the PFLP has perfected is especially notable for its success in gaining funding from the EU and from individual European countries such as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden. These entities are entirely aware of these organizations’ affiliation with the PFLP and the roles that terror activists play in the PFLP’s network of “human-rights” NGOs.

“Dream Defenders,” a relatively small Florida-based radical organization that operates within the Black Lives Matter coalition and has on its board well-known figures like Angela Davis and Linda Sarsour, cooperates with the PFLP directly. For them, no fig leaves are needed; the PFLP itself is a symbol of struggle, apparently including its commitment to stabbing, shooting, and blowing up innocent people. . . . Earlier this year, Dream Defenders co-founder Umi Selah, also known as Phillip Agnew, was hired by the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.