Familiarity with anti-Zionism breeds contempt. And also a justified cynicism.

After 16 months of “well maybe the protesters really do just want a cease-fire” and “let’s give them the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t just twisted pro-Hamas sickos,” we can now acknowledge what we all knew to be true from the beginning: They’re just twisted pro-Hamas sickos.

According to documents obtained by the Telegraph, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign contacted London police while the Hamas rampage of Oct. 7, 2023, was in full swing. Their request: Permission to hold a public rally.

“By the time the PSC spoke to the police, Hamas had taken hostages and killed hundreds of people across towns and villages next to the Gaza Strip,” the Telegraph reports. “Videos had also circulated on social media, showing terrorists taking Israeli hostages to Gaza on motorbikes.”

The PSC reached out to the police before 1 p.m. on the day of the attack. It was at a time when the public already knew the attack was under way and some of the gruesome details, but before Israel could even contemplate a military response. The attack and the search for infiltrators went on for two days. During that time the PSC was planning its event.

Let there now be no doubt: This was a celebration rally. Like other such demonstrations in the West, Londoners were joyously reveling in acts of barbarism against Jews that hadn’t been seen since the Nazis. The police confirmed the timing to the Telegraph with a statement: “The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest. The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”

It’s good to have confirmation, but we should remember that we already knew this about protests in the United States as well. Chicago saw hundreds march downtown on Oct. 8, the day after the attacks. No one would even bother to try and claim that such an event was spontaneous, right? That march was in the pipeline as soon as it became clear what Hamas was doing.

Oct. 8 also saw an “all out for Palestine” rally in Dallas and a demonstration in Athens, Georgia, which organizers said was to mark the fact that “the Palestinian people, yesterday, fought back successfully against Israeli occupation.”

The lesson: Some were honest, some weren’t—but the protest movement that began that hellish weekend was a movement celebrating the massacre and sexual torture of Jewish men, women, and children.

Let me repeat: The protest movement that began that weekend. Not simply the protests that weekend, because the ones that followed weren’t any better. Remember, the Telegraph story is about a demonstration that took place a week after the attacks—but was coordinated in the middle of the first day of the attacks.

These weren’t “cease-fire” protests. They didn’t stop after the first cease-fire and they haven’t stopped since the signing of the current cease-fire. Instead, they pivoted. A couple days ago there was a protest at the University of Washington with a prominent banner that said “Free all Palestinian prisoners,” a reference to the murderers and others in Israeli prisons serving time for terrorism-related offenses.

No, it was never about a cease-fire. One of my favorite photos from such protests was taken at a demonstration last year. Marchers are holding a sign that says “Cease-fire Now” over a banner that says “By Any Means Necessary.” In the minds of the protesters, slaughtering Jews and a cease-fire have always been linked, because the cease-fire was just for Israel. Nobody in that photo wants peace, that much is obvious.

Now, were there occasionally a few people here and there who attended Gaza protests because they were genuinely concerned about the welfare of Palestinians? Sure, such people do exist (although I don’t know why they’d show up to a tentifada protest that is clearly just a terrorism pep rally). But this “protest” movement was born on Oct. 7, 2023, because it liked what it saw that day. We didn’t need more proof, but we have it anyway.