To mark the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, anti-Israel groups across the U.S. and Europe held protests, harassed Jews, and simultaneously celebrated Hamas’s achievements on that day and mourned the date as the beginning of the latest Palestinian catastrophe. If this weren’t perverse enough, on college campuses some Muslim groups tried to dress up these ugly display as “interfaith vigils” coordinated with Jewish students. Asra Nomani takes a close look at this strategy for turning a Jewish day of mourning into a festival of anti-Semitism:

Zainab Chaudry [is] the director for the Maryland chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and it was her organization that won a federal court ruling in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, granting the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine the right to host its “interfaith vigil” at the University of Maryland on October 7, despite protests from Jewish students and groups who felt it was insensitive to choose that specific day.

Last December, her boss, Nihad Awad, the organization’s Palestinian American cofounder, even proudly stated that he was elated about the October 7th attacks, telling a meeting of American Muslims for Palestine, “I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”

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.