Is October 7 the Exemplar of the ‘Palestinian Cause?’ The Western Left Says Yes

By Seth Mandel

Monday, March 09, 2026

 

Rarely is the phrase “the bigotry of low expectations” more aptly applied than to the Palestinians, whose Western “supporters” treat them as incapable of rational thought and possessing no agency whatsoever. This is in stark contrast to how the Israelis treat them, by the way: by repeatedly offering Palestinians a state and all the responsibilities that come with it.

 

This dynamic was taken to absurd levels after October 7. The crimes of that day have not been seen since the demise of Nazi Germany. To support October 7, or even to rationalize or justify or minimize the Palestinian violence of that day, is to put oneself outside the bounds of civilization.

 

And that is where we recently found anti-Zionist artist and newly minted New York City first lady Rama Duwaji. While her husband, Zohran Mamdani, doesn’t need to answer for Duwaji, she should have to answer for herself. On Friday, Jewish Insider revealed several social-media posts liked by the Houston-born Duwaji. These included some that “unambiguously celebrated the terrorist attack, which saw nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign workers killed, thousands wounded, 251 civilians and military personnel kidnapped and numerous episodes of sexual assault.”

 

She also appeared to support the celebratory rally thrown together immediately after the attacks by left-wing groups and Beijing propaganda proxies, a rally so grotesque even Mamdani distanced himself from it. Other progressives criticized the rally as well; openly celebrating sexual torture and the mass murder of over a thousand innocent civilians was too much for the usual anti-Israel crowd.

 

The social media activity suggests Duwaji has embraced a worldview that can only be described as evil. But arguably just as interesting was the response from the Gaza left. The New York Times’s subhed on its article on the controversy was: “Rama Duwaji, Mr. Mamdani’s wife, had liked Instagram posts that supported the Palestinian cause in the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.”

 

Well, she liked posts that supported October 7. This, the Times characterizes as the “Palestinian cause.” The text of the article likewise describes it as “a handful of instances in which Ms. Duwaji had liked Instagram posts supportive of the Palestinian cause immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks.”

 

Duwaji and the Times both speak like any Western leftist about the conflict. But the larger question is whether they are correct. Is it true that, as the Times reports, the Palestinian cause is what Hamas and hundreds of other Gazans did on October 7?

 

Again, the Hamas apologists who brand child murder as “resistance” seem to think they’re helping the Palestinians somehow. But this euphemism game has exactly the opposite effect: In the public’s mind, it connects the Palestinians to the worst actions of their worst representatives.

 

Many people would support the “Palestinian cause” if it were defined as self-determination in the areas currently governed by Palestinian institutions. Fewer would support the “Palestinian cause” as the Times describes it: unfiltered bloodletting.

 

For example: Palestinians kidnapped a baby, then killed him with their own hands and mutilated his corpse to hide their work. Hamas soldiers then put the remains in a coffin and danced around with it in a public ceremony.

 

Is this the Palestinian cause, or is it an aberration? Is it the rule or the exception? The Palestinians’ so-called supporters in the West say it is the cause in its purest expression.

 

Jared Kushner, who represents the Trump administration, doesn’t believe that. Nor do most Israelis (and certainly they did not before October 7). Which is to say: The parties who are supposedly irredeemably biased against the Palestinians would never talk about them in the kind of harsh, dehumanizing terms that their champions use.

 

Which tells us much about these champions. Whatever the Palestinians might consider their “cause,” the pro-Palestine movement in the West lustily describes it as a nightmarish, phantasmagoric horror show. And they absolutely cannot get enough of it.

 

They might be wrong about the Palestinians—that is, Palestinians themselves may still believe in a cause with more noble ambitions. But we are not wrong about these Western activists: They have traded human decency for a life of fetishized and demented violence, especially against Jews. They have become something truly monstrous, and they want us all to know it.