Wednesday marks a grim anniversary. Three years have passed since October 7, 2023, the day when Hamas (and allied) terrorists swarmed from Gaza into peaceful Israeli settlements, murdering, raping, burning, and kidnapping. Shockingly, “many people are now criticizing Israel for the conflict that’s happening in the Middle East,” exclaimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. Such inversion of moral judgment can only be described as perverse.

In 2006, Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza and allowed the Palestinian Arabs living there to choose their own government. It also allows Arab citizens of Israel to form their political parties and vote. Hamas returned Israel’s conciliation of Gaza by preparing a surprise attack it viewed as an opening salvo in an existential struggle with Israel, with the Jewish state’s “annihilation” as its publicly declared objective.

Yet Israel’s critics blamed the victim from the beginning. On October 7, 2023, the very day of the attack, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) sneered, “Today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime.”

“We unequivocally condemn the killing of all civilians,” the DSA statement continued. But then it equivocated, “We cannot forget that the Israeli state has systematically denied Palestinians the right to self-determination for decades. This was not unprovoked.” That the Israeli state systematically permitted self-determination in Gaza, and that Gazans elected a terror group sworn to Israel’s destruction as its government, did not merit attention.

At the intersection of socialism and anti-Semitism, the DSA has become a credible force in Democratic politics, with close to a dozen House candidates and several Senate candidates claiming its backing in the 2026 midterm election.

One DSA-aligned candidate is Abdul El-Sayed, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan. According to recent media reports, El-Sayed not only blames Israel for terrorist actions committed against it, but applies the same standard to the U.S.

After a suicide bomber killed U.S. servicemembers at the Kabul airport during President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal, El-Sayed blamed “what’s happening in #Kabul today” on “the fateful choice 20 yrs ago to wage endless, aimless war in pursuit of an undefined mission under G. W. Bush.” He also blamed “our country’s imperialism” for the hostility of the Iranian regime.

Such claims play an encore to Osama bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America,” written in 2002. “Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple,” bin Laden said. “Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.”

“(a) You attacked us in Palestine,” bin Laden elaborated. “The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.” Thus, Islamist terrorists date their opposition to the West all the way back to the creation of Israel in the 1960s.

But Israel was only the first item on bin Laden’s list. “(b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon,” he continued.

Readers who stopped after these two items might conclude that America could escape Islamist terrorism by halting all military action against Islamic countries, and military support of the countries engaged with radical Islam. But they would be wrong.

Bin Laden adds five more reasons for attacking the West, including (c) support for moderate Muslim regimes which “prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah,” (d) buying cheap Arabian oil, (e) occupying military bases in the Middle East, (f) imposing sanctions on Iraq under Saddam Hussein (he would likely make a similar argument concerning Iran today), and (g) recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Bin Laden’s argument was that, if the West stopped doing all these things offensive to Islamic extremists, the terrorism would stop. But, of course, if the West were ever so craven as to comply with such outrageous demands, the extremists would only be encouraged to add more demands, and the terror would continue.

But the arguments common to bin Laden, El-Sayed, and the DSA share one fatal flaw: it is morally illegitimate to blame the victims of terrorism for the crimes of terrorists. Even the debatable contention that Muslim Arabs have been wronged does not justify their escalating to terrorist activity against innocent civilians.

America affirming Israel’s right to exist, buying Middle Eastern oil, or supporting friendly regimes against insurgents does not justify jihadi terrorists flying airplanes into buildings, detonating suicide vests in crowded markets, or filming themselves torturing Jewish babies.

“Look at the videos that the terrorists themselves took” on October 7, 2023, declared Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) on “Washington Watch.” “This was a horrific incident, when you videotape yourself beheading someone or shooting someone at close range.”

The indiscriminate killing committed by Hamas only foreshadowed the indiscriminate killing of its state sponsor, the Islamic regime of Iran, which has spent the last seven months “retaliating” for America’s strikes on legitimate military targets by firing barrages of missiles at non-combatant neighbors, striking civilian airports, malls, oil refineries, and other such targets.

The damage has not been confined to the nations within range of Iran’s missiles. Since the conflict with Iran, Western nations have also experienced a noticeable uptick in Islamist terrorism, some of which have been traced directly back to Iran.

Jewish sites in the U.K. suffered a series of arson attacks, while Belgian Jewish institutions were hit with arson, bombings, and attempted assassinations. Those are just the successful attacks. The British intelligence service said it had disrupted 20 plots linked to Iran over the past 12 months, and an apparent plot against American bombers at a British airbase induced the Pentagon to relocate the fleet.

“Surely, many of the successful and attempted terrorist episodes above were merely inspired by the conflict with Iran,” suggested National Review’s Noah Rothman. “But it’s hard to miss the Iranian fingerprints on several recent plots. And with pressure mounting on the Islamic Republic, it is growing bolder. … At the very least, the audacious nature of this plot, with all its complex moving parts, suggests Iran is pulling out all the stops.”

Iran’s terrorist proxies may be pulling out all the stops, too. “Israeli forces have been placed on high alert following intelligence that suggests Hamas may be planning attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza on the anniversary of October the 7th,” Perkins pointed out.

The Iran-inspired attacks have even crossed the pond. Texas authorities arrested a man last month who planned a mass shooting at the Texas State Capitol over Israeli funding. Two radicalized Islamists threw an improvised explosive into a New York crowd in March (while the conflict with Iran was still in its early stages), and another carried out a shooting spree at Old Dominion University. Other Islamist targets of recent terror attacks include a Michigan synagogue, Jewish institutions in New York and Los Angeles, attacks on U.S. servicemembers in Kansas and California, and a conspiracy to bomb the New York State Capitol.

After the recent attempted hijacking of a flight to Israel — which also seems to have an Iranian connection — United Airlines on Monday re-suspended a pilot who had praised the “brave” Hamas terrorists on October 7.

Terrorist activity in the U.S. even goes beyond violence. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice arrested three men in the U.S. for fundraising on behalf of Hamas, “playing upon the sympathy of Americans” by “allegedly solicit[ing] donations under the guise of providing humanitarian relief to Palestinians in Gaza while actually funneling money to Hamas,” Perkins said.

Two of the men were brothers from Covington, La. “You wouldn’t think that we would have a funding network for terrorists in the state of Louisiana,” reacted Perkins, a Louisiana resident. But “this ideology is sweeping through our country. … It is a growing threat. The warning signs have been there, and we ignored them, and it’s now spreading.”

“Americans need to wake up,” Self agreed. “I have no idea why this is not more of an election issue across the country. In my polling in my district, it’s … the second most important” issue to voters. “We have got to wake up to the dangerous political ideology that Islam represents.” Self added that Islam was incompatible with American religious freedom, because “they will kill you if you leave or try to leave Islam.”

Self’s vision of conflict with political Islam reaches beyond the current round of conflict with Iran. Reacting to President Trump’s prediction that the conflict will likely wind down soon after the midterms, Self noted that Trump “set two criteria” for ending the conflict. “The most important one is the nuclear material that they have — the 900 pounds or so [of enriched uranium]. Secondly, the Strait of Hormuz: get oil moving through it. Those two things would mean the end of this conflict.”

“I commend the president because we do need to keep our eyes upon the mission,” Perkins agreed. “The goal, as was stated at the outset, was to ensure that they did not have a nuclear weapon. I think anything short of that would not be mission accomplished.”

On Sunday, a British outlet allegedly financed by Qatar criticized a TWS piece for supporting the Trump administration’s conflict with Iran, “Nowhere in the piece does the author pause to ask what the policy is for, how much it costs or when it ends.”

Not every piece can reiterate every detail, but this point is apparently worth reiterating more frequently: the point of the conflict with Iran is to keep the genocidal regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon; it ends when that is accomplished, and the stakes urge the U.S. to sink as much treasure as necessary into accomplish that goal.

However, Self harbored no illusions that the Islamist threat would vanish with the Iranian mullahs. He expressed concern with a new mutual defense agreement joined by Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. “They are not natural allies,” he said. In fact, “they are the countries that will be vying to be the major power in the Middle East once Iran is down.”

Their unity creates more headaches for Israel, which is currently on a collision course with Turkey over Syria. Turkey is a NATO ally,” Self acknowledged, but “Erdogan has turned it into an Islamic dictatorship. … And frankly, he has designs more in the Middle East than he does in NATO today.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not the last Islamist threat the West will confront, but it is the current one. And those who wish to see America emerge stronger should spend their energies contriving ways for America to win, not contriving ways to blame America and our allies (like Israel) when Islamist terrorists attack us.