Today, the far left across the globe holds opposition to Israel as one of its signature issues. While radical leftists once romanticized, apologized for, or embraced the murderous ideology of Bolshevism, today many do the same for jihadism. No individual embodies this transformation more than Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known to the world as Carlos the Jackal. After an over-two-decade career in terrorism, Sánchez was arrested in 1994 and remains in a French prison. He recently granted a rare interview to two Israeli film directors, Yaron Nisi and Dani Liber. They write:

Sánchez . . . was born in Venezuela to a wealthy family. His father was a devout Communist who hated the West and—against the objections of his wife—even named his son after the Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Already from a young age, Carlos was involved in political struggles, and according to his own confession was only fifteen when he first kidnapped and killed someone.

His terror activities led to the deaths of over 1,500 people, mostly while working for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to which he was first exposed after getting expelled from university and joining a training camp for foreign volunteers of the PFLP in Jordan in 1970. He experienced the events of Black September firsthand when King Hussein had thousands of Palestinians, who had set up military training camps in Jordan, massacred.

Carlos fought on the Palestinian side and later joined the PFLP as a member. During this time, he terrorized targets in Israel and Europe.

Sánchez describes himself thus:

I am a Communist, just like my father, a Stalinist Communist. I believe in God. I am a Sunni Muslim. I believe in the goal of Palestine. I was the first non-Arab person to join the Palestinian struggle. I have killed at least 83 people myself, and between 1,500-2,000 have been killed at my command.

The PFLP appears to have expelled Sánchez after he reportedly pocketed millions of dollars in exchange for releasing hostages and refraining from assassinations. As comfortable with entrepreneurship as he is with religion, this self-professed Stalinist then started his own terrorist group that sold its services to the highest bidder.

Robert Clark explains why the resumption of hostilities is both just and necessary:

These latest Israeli strikes come after weeks of consistent Palestinian provocation; they have repeatedly broken the terms of the cease-fire which they claimed they were so desperate for. There have been numerous [unsuccessful] bus bombings near Tel Aviv and Palestinian-instigated clashes in the West Bank. Fifty-nine Israeli hostages are still held in captivity.

In fact, Hamas and their Palestinian supporters . . . have always known that they can sit back, parade dead Israeli hostages live on social media, and receive hundreds of their own convicted terrorists and murderers back in return. They believed they could get away with the October 7 pogrom.

One hopes Hamas’s leaders will get the message. Meanwhile, many inside and outside Israel seem to believe that, by resuming the fighting, Jerusalem has given up on rescuing the remaining hostages. But, writes Ron Ben-Yishai, this assertion misunderstands the goals of the present campaign. “Experience within the IDF and Israeli intelligence,” Ben-Yishai writes, “has shown that such pressure is the most effective way to push Hamas toward flexibility.” He outlines two other aims:

The second objective was to signal to Hamas that Israel is not only targeting its military wing—the terror army that was the focus of previous phases of the war up until the last cease-fire—but also its governance structure. This was demonstrated by the targeted elimination of five senior officials from Hamas’s political and civilian administration. . . . The strikes also served as a message to mediators, particularly Egypt, that Israel opposes Hamas remaining in any governing or military capacity in post-war Gaza.

The third objective was to create intense military pressure, coordinated with the U.S., on all remaining elements of the Shiite “axis of resistance,” including Yemen’s Houthis, Hamas, and Iran.