Editorial: Hamas wins the PR war thanks to US left

Boston Herald editorial staff, Boston Herald on Oct 8, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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It’s been three years since Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border and launched a savage assault, killing, burning, kidnapping and raping innocent men, women and children.

The massacre on Oct. 7, 2023 and ensuing war can be chalked up by Hamas as a PR win, thanks to their allies on the American left.

The terrorist group was nothing if not savvy to the undercurrent of antisemitism that lies ever in wait for a catalyst to spark afresh. The unwritten code: Jews can be attacked, but they aren’t allowed to fight back.

Indeed, calls for a ceasefire, with hostages still hidden inside Gaza, came less than two weeks after the massacre.

College students with scant, if any, knowledge of the region’s history packed campus encampments around the country, wore performative keffiyehs and chanted “Free Palestine.”

That Palestinians deserve to live freely, and not under the authoritarian rule of Hamas, is lost on the anti-Israel crowd. The left holds “No Kings” rallies, but glides over the fact that there haven’t been elections in Gaza since Hamas seized control in 2007.

Footage from the attack, called “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” wasn’t released publicly, but viewed by journalists, public figures and leaders around the world. The terrorists captured their savagery, and the graphic nature of the footage, which included mutilations as well as killings, shook seasoned reporters to the core.

Its existence did not stem antisemitic attacks, nor did the stories told by released and rescued hostages after they were freed. Torture, rape, abominable conditions. No, to the left, Israel was conducting “genocide,” and public figures from Capitol Hill to Hollywood kept up the drumbeat.

Hate had found a fresh opening and acolytes willing to disseminate it. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there have been more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. in the year since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

While they haven’t abated, there are slivers of hope that anti-Jewish hatred is finding some resistance.

Austin Franco, a Cornell University student who went viral for declaring that he’s “not interested in working for a Jew” has become a pariah among his peers, according to the New York Post.

“He’s been getting dirty looks, sitting alone in class,” one student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Post.

Vogue editor Anna Wintour had the bright idea to honor John Galliano at the 2027 MET gala, despite antisemitic remarks made by the designer in 2011. A wave of pushback put an end to those plans.

And accusations of Hamas acting against Palestinians, dismissed as propaganda, are finally seeing the light.

The United Nations accused Hamas of disrupting aid deliveries in Gaza this summer, alleging members of the militant group stormed a food depot, ABC reported. A senior UN official said staff were “endangered.”

There will doubtless be more revelations such as this, and hopefully more people willing to call out antisemitism where it rears its head. Not enough to undo the damage, but enough, perhaps, to let the current strain of anti-Jewish hate die from lack of oxygen.

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