Column: ‘Long Live October 7,’ Anti-Israel Mob Tells Us

‘Why are they so annoying and obnoxious?’

— Ylana Shechter on Facebook

Leave it to those “annoying and obnoxious” champions of the Palestinians to intrude on the work of a non-profit group that helps women who struggle with addiction and face domestic violence.

What did these women ever do to the Palestinians?

During the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 slaughter, U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman explained that these champions once installed a poster on a building near his Cincinnati district office with the message, “This Ken supports genocide” over an image of his face one month after Hamas terrorists massacred 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel. Landsman said they “vandalized the wrong building” – where the non-profit group’s office was located.

Their violation of the women’s support group came to light after anti-Israel demonstrators moved into an encampment outside Landsman’s home Sunday night complete with sleeping bags, cots and tents to mark the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 raid, The New York Post reported. Landsman, a Jewish Democrat, had voted for a pro-Israel measure and the poster was a play on an ad for the movie “Barbie.”

There goes the congressman’s neighborhood for the night of Oct. 6 into Oct. 7. It was among a series of incidents in which anti-Israel demonstrators stained the spirit of the Oct. 7 remembrance as Jewish organizations held vigils nationwide to mark the tragedy.

“I don’t think they have any boundaries at this point,” Landsman said. “They’ve done this to my staff and me for nearly a year, and now they’re doing it to my family and neighbors.”

In Manhattan and West Philadelphia, they marched en masse through the streets, which Seinfeld nemesis Newman might describe as “a more offensive spectacle I cannot recall,” as he did after he witnessed Jerry and his girlfriend necking during “Schindler’s List.”

During one of the Manhattan treks, a shocking episode that inspired the “annoying and obnoxious” Facebook retort left Todd Richman, 54, bloodied after being struck in the face. He was surrounded by more than a dozen courageous champions for the Palestinians who likely noticed his Star of David necklace.

“They started telling me, ‘Long live Oct. 7’…then they started banging drums in my face and I was literally just walking down the street doing absolutely nothing,” he told a New York Daily News reporter.

A video apparently depicting the same incident showed Richman pull an Israeli flag from inside his coat and unfurl it in front of the mob. A chubby woman grabbed one end of the flag and they engaged in a tugging match until he retrieved it.

“Then the guy hit me in the face and threw a tambourine and they hit me in the face with a flag,” he added.

In Maine, Palestinian-American Fateh Azzam questions the claim that Israel has the right to defend itself, saying, “Do Palestinians?”

Defend themselves against whom? By all means, the deaths of 40,000 Gazans through Israel’s response – Hamas claims – is a legitimate concern, but what of Hamas that forces Palestinians to become human shields? Retired nurse Jamila Levasseur, who is Jewish, said she regards Oct. 7 as “a justified reaction to decades of occupation and being imprisoned in Gaza,” according to The Portland Press Herald.

“When people are imprisoned, what do you expect them to do? Are they supposed to just sit down and take it and slowly starve to death?” the Waldo resident asks. “Or are they supposed to stand up and fight back? These are people who have seen Israel’s war against them throughout the course of their lives.”

Maybe she gets news late since she lives 100 miles north of Portland, the state’s largest city. She has not yet learned that Israel offered the Palestinians a state of their own 24 years ago. Then-Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat rejected the offer and followed up by starting or facilitating a war.

Even without these incidents or misleading attitudes, the pro-Palestinian groups did not need to intervene on the anniversary of the Jewish people’s most despairing day in modern history. It is as if they crashed a funeral and rioted amid the mourning crowd.

They have the right to protest on the Oct. 7 anniversary, but it was crude conduct to do so when they have their choice of 364 other days in the year.

Mention of the remaining Israeli hostages and the 1,200 dead on Monday was rare, as it usually is. That is no surprise, considering that they are cheering terrorists whose goal is to murder or subjugate all Jews.

How Israel responded is a move that I have difficulty understanding, but it is necessary for Israel to act to prevent similar attacks.

Notice that these champions of the Palestinians rarely if ever blame Hamas for using their own people as human shields and then exploiting their deaths to blame Israel. So much for serving their own people.  

Perhaps they can observe a day to remember the thousands of Palestinian civilians who died in Gaza and those Lebanese who have died so far.

Oct. 27 seems like a suitable day for a yearly mourning period for Palestinians and Lebanese. That is the day when Israel opened its ground invasion, according to The New York Times.

I bet that many Jews would be willing to join in remembering them. That is more than their champions have done for us.