Anti-Israel activists in the U.S. praised the top political leader of the militant group Hamas online on Wednesday after his assassination.
Ismail Haniyeh, 62, died in an airstrike in Iran’s capital, Tehran, that the terrorist organization blamed on Israel.
Haniyeh was involved in hostage negotiations with Israel after Hamas invaded the Jewish state, killing about 1,200 people and taking hundreds captive on Oct. 7.
Haniyeh became a key target for the Israeli military after the attack, which he celebrated as “an earthquake that struck the heart of the Zionist entity and has made major changes at the world level.”
As with Iran, China, Russia, and other American adversaries, pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. publicly decried Haniyeh’s killing and praised his leadership.
The organization Samidoun, which bills itself the “Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network,” issued a statement about Haniyeh with “glory to the martyr” in the headline, calling his killing “a crime.” Western intelligence agencies say Samidoun is tied to the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which took partial credit for the Oct. 7 attacks.
Writers Against the War on Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Columbia University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine also retweeted posts on X labeling Haniyeh a martyr or an advocate for peace. Each is affiliated with “Shut it Down for Palestine,” a movement that orchestrated pro-Hamas protests around Washington, D.C., which included vandalism of public monuments.
Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in San Francisco, posted on X that Haniyeh’s “martyrdom is not in vain.” Billoo has donated almost $1,000 to political campaigns for pro-Palestinian Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Fox News reported.
A foreign-policy expert at The Heritage Foundation said that groups pushing pro-Hamas messaging are fundamentally “anti-West.”
“The reason why … they’re praising [Haniyeh] is because the guy’s a killer, and this is what they like,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at Heritage’s Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, told The Daily Signal.
“A lot of them are just opportunist, Marxist groups that are anti-America and anti-democracy and anti-capitalism,” said Gonzalez, who co-authored a Heritage report on the nationwide network and financing of anti-Israel groups.
He pushed back on claims that Haniyeh’s killing will hinder progress toward a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. He contended that the Islamist group is responsible for the latest outbreak of war and “has to be destroyed.”
“You know, we had a perfectly good cease-fire on Oct. 6,” prior to the attack on Israel, he said.
“Hamas can have a cease-fire anytime it wants”—by surrendering, he told The Daily Signal.
The Israeli military says it has confirmed the deaths of 44 of Hamas’ hostages since Oct. 7. It estimates that more than a hundred remain in captivity.