In the past year, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) agenda seems to have been replaced with an agenda that is "pro" the terrorist group Hamas as the newest, most efficient way to seek the destruction of the United States and by extension, the West.
In a new report, "How the Revolutionary Eco System Sustains Pro-Palestinian Protesters and the BLM Movement," published on June 25, Mike Gonzalez and Mary Mobley of the Heritage Foundation concluded:
"The infrastructure of organizations sustaining the anti-Israel protests today is virtually identical to the one that has supported the Black Lives Matter organizations since their birth in the middle 2010s.... It is deceptively powerful, already having altered America in profound ways. Today, this ecosystem—which consists of activist organizations, fiscal sponsors, donors, and radical media groups—is being tapped by the anti-Israel protesters, but they aim to do much more than destroy Israel. Their goal is to dismantle Western democracies, values, and culture, and their primary target is the United States. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that regimes such as communist China, Cuba, and Venezuela are increasingly part of this ecosystem."
In a separate article, describing the report, Gonzalez wrote:
"Well-known examples of the activist groups we examine are American Muslims for Palestine (AMP); Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP); the Palestinian Youth Movement; Codepink; The People's Forum; and the Act Now to Stop War & End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition...
"Among the fiscal sponsors... are the Alliance for Global Justice; the Tides Foundation; the Westchester Peace Action Committee (WESPAC); the Common Counsel Foundation; Thousand Currents, etc. The donors are also well-known: George Soros's Open Society foundations: the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Grassroots International, etc.
"The radical media groups we examine are somewhat less well known: BT Media; Common Dreams; the Grayzone; and Tricontinental."
The authors contend that the pro-Hamas ecosystem, if left to cause the havoc it continues to unleash, could cause the kind of fundamental damage to the US that the BLM movement has been allowed to do since its establishment in 2013, including diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training and principles in virtually all areas of life, defunding police, the acceptance by major cultural institutions, including schools, the false claim that the US is "systemically racist" and is ruled by "a regime of white supremacy."
Pro-Hamas protesters have managed to put pressure on President Joe Biden to take measures against Israel and have orchestrated Jew-hatred to explode in the US, especially on university campuses and in K-12 schools. The mainstream media, the authors say, is complicit because it fails to vet the activists and financiers behind the pro-Hamas ecosystem, preferring instead to portray the protests as if they are spontaneous occurrences.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The university encampments, it turns out, were planned as early as November 2023, belying any claims that the student protests occurred organically and spontaneously. America's universities, in addition, appear to be deeply infiltrated by the "guards" of this revolutionary ecosystem, eager to make American students cadres in the Islamist-Sino-Russo-Communist revolution that they would apparently like to see ending democracy, economic opportunity, the free-market system, freedom of speech, individual rights, equal justice under the law, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and everything else that the US represents.
Gonzales writes:
"The protesters are being generously funded and expertly coached by the same anti-U.S., anti-capitalist, anti-West puppet-masters who sprang Black Lives Matter on us a decade ago.
"It's all part of a giant web, a revolutionary ecosystem, that spans the globe from Havana to Shanghai and coordinates and sustains these often-violent, always-threatening protests."
They evidently do not hide their goals in any way. At the May 2024 "People's Conference for Palestine" in Detroit, featuring US Rep. Rashida Tlaib, among many others, the People's Forum's executive director Manolo De Los Santos, to great applause, called for the complete destruction of the United States:
"We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room."
The People's Forum, it seems, is closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.
Osama Abuirshaid, executive director of American Muslims For Palestine, openly told students in April, at the George Washington University Encampment, what his organization is plotting:
"Now, we know what America stands for. We know what these elite colleges stand for. They are only structures in an imperial project. Israel is only another structure in an imperial project. Zionism is no less evil than white supremacy or any sort of supremacy... we are going to change this country forever... You don't need to be a Palestinian, or Arab, or a Muslim to stand with justice and to stand with the Palestinians...We will take back these colleges as we will take back America, as we will take back Palestine, as we will take back our humanity."
While Islamists and Communist revolutionaries seem to share only one thing in common – their hatred of the US and Western civilization – protesters have made no secret that their actions are only nominally about Palestine. One protester said:
"The actual conversation is getting rid of this country, getting rid of America, getting rid of the West. This is what this [the protest] is for. Everyone here understands that at some level we need to get rid of America completely."
He was then asked where Americans should go if the protesters get rid of the US. "Decolonization," he said.
"The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution," a writer in the 1960s radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) publication New Left Notes wrote.
The Communist protesters evidently do not want to just "Free Palestine" by "genociding" the Jews; they want to get rid of everyone that stands in the way of their revolution, which is why fighting this "revolutionary ecosystem" is not only about antisemitism and the Jews but an issue for everyone who wants to preserve Western civilization.
Several of the tax-exempt groups inside this revolutionary ecosystem, as mentioned by the Heritage Foundation and others, apparently have links to terrorist organizations, about which the US Treasury Department, while targeting allegedly "conservative organizations," seems to have done exactly nothing.
US Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) wrote a June 27 letter to the IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, asking, among other things, for the IRS to examine the tax-exempt status of these groups. Banks wrote:
"[T]he Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) has retained its tax-exempt status despite funding Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a cutout for the designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
"Samidoun held a 'Resistance 101' virtual training at Columbia University in March 2024 and then helped set up an encampment on its campus. Though the IRS hasn't imposed any legal or financial consequences on the AFGJ yet, PayPal and other payment platforms have banned the group due to its illegal connections to the PFLP. A similar organization, the Westchester People's Action Coalition (WESPAC), sponsored far-left anti-Zionist organization Within Our Lifetime until at least 2022. Within Our Lifetime openly supports Hamas, PFLP, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and has organized disruptive protests that shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, in violation of local ordinances."
On July 4, Within our Lifetime, among other pro-Hamas activist groups, sponsored protests to "flood the 4th of July with Palestinian flags for Gaza" in yet another act to teach young people to subvert American traditions. American and Israeli flags were burned, in the style of Iranian mullahs. In Washington Square Park in New York City, young people, decked out in keffiyehs and facemasks, were photographed setting fire to an American flag.
Banks, in his letter to the IRS, pointed out that tax-exempt organizations that incite civil unrest do not qualify for exemption:
"The IRS has previously ruled that organizations that incite civil unrest and violate local ordinances do not qualify as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3). WESPAC also sponsors Grassroots Global Justice, an alliance of over 60 U.S. groups including the Palestinian Youth Movement, which sent a delegation to Cuba in violation of U.S. sanctions. Grassroot Global Justice has organized anti-Israel protests, including an illegal protest at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in December 2023 resulting in 50 arrests.
"Additionally, WESPAC is the principal sponsor for National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and Al-Awda. NSJP is the largest organizer of anti-Israel campus protests, and was founded by Hatem Al Bazian, a former fundraiser for a pro-Palestinian organization that had its assets frozen for aiding Hamas, a designated FTO."
The issue of tax-exemption should have been dealt with ages ago. The time for sending polite letters is over, as anti-American, pro-terrorist organizations and networks, enabled by a corrupt or uncaring political class and media, use race, lawfare, Gaza and "Palestine" to achieve their authoritarian nirvana.
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
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