The moments of clarity keep piling up. The latest one is thanks to the newest progressive hero, Abu Obeida, a senior Hamas official and spokesman for the terror group’s “military wing.”
It would be silly to pretend that anybody could’ve mistaken Obeida for a well-meaning functionary in the past, but he did us the favor this week of making his evil—and thus his admirers’ moral depravity—inarguable.
After Hamas executed six hostages less than a week ago, and their remains were discovered by IDF troops less than a mile from where they had just rescued another hostage, Obeida explained that such horrific crimes were now officially Hamas policy: “Let it be clear to everyone that, following the incident in Nuseirat, new instructions have been issued to the Mujahideen tasked with guarding the prisoners. These instructions outline how to handle the situation if the occupation army approaches the location where the prisoners are being held.”
The “incident in Nuseirat” is the IDF rescue of four hostages in a residential neighborhood in Gaza, including Noa Argamani. If Hamas fears hostages will be rescued, they will execute them in cold blood.
So says Abu Obeida, the Che Guevara of the tentifada.
That characterization is not an exaggeration, either.
At the Northwestern camps, a protester donned a hoodie with what is becoming the iconic picture of Abu Obeida, masked and in military fatigues with a finger in the air, on the front. Ohio State’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine sold oil paintings of the image. The University of Wisconsin-Madison protests featured a banner with Obeida’s picture on it with the words “Glory to the Resistance.”
In case it was unclear why they admired Abu Obeida, the University of California-Santa Cruz encampments featured the written slogans “Death to Israelis” and “Glory to Abu Obeida.”
A Harvard graduate student, at a protest in New York, led the crowd in a chant of: “Strike, strike, Tel Aviv. Abu Obeida, our beloved.” Footage shows him leading chants at tentifada rallies at Columbia and the City University of New York.
Not much is known for certain about Abu Obeida, including his real name. According to the Qatar-aligned site Middle East Eye, Obeida has been in this role for 20 years, beginning with the second intifada, giving his first press conference in October of 2004. The site also notes that Obeida “rarely speaks outside of war.”
That last part is key to understanding the vapidity of the modern campus radical. Rather than follow some pseudo-intellectual around campus like baby ducks, they would prefer to keep their distance from anything that might possibly contain an idea or require even rudimentary analysis. The modern radical is an illiterate caveman, grunting in appreciation of the violence done by others. There was once a time when “elite” colleges were filled with people who at least tried hard to sound smart. The wordless zoo-fenced goons at Columbia and Harvard and elsewhere are becoming those schools’ poster children.
A couple weeks into the current war, an IDF Arabic spokesman claimed to have unmasked and named Obeida. “This is Hudhaifa Kahlout, who hides behind the nom de guerre Abu Ubaida, and behind his red keffiyeh, just as Hamas hides behind civilian buildings to launch rockets towards Israel,” the spokesperson posted. “He and other Hamas-ISIS leaders like to hide inside tunnels and behind women and children, as well as behind masks and shadows. Hudhaifa Kahlout, you have been exposed. It is time to drop the cover.”
The exposed headshot of the supposed Obeida/Kahlout is far less dramatic than the scarf-wrapped Shredder-wannabe adorning the clothes and banners and Instagram pages of his Western fans. I have yet to see a trend-thirsting hoodie with Hudhaifa Kahlout’s yearbook picture on it.
The campus protests have stopped even pretending to be anything other than objectively pro-Hamas. At their height last year, the brooding trust-fund martyr-groupies on campus would appear to take offense at the suggestion that they support the bloody mass murder of Jews. No, they would say, they are humanitarians.
They were never humanitarians. The ones who aren’t wearing Abu Obeida gear are marching alongside the Obeidniks. And anyway, if you’re joining a demonstration celebrating the execution of Israeli and American hostages, it doesn’t much matter what—or who—you’re wearing.
