This past July, as anti-Israel crowds took to the streets of Washington, D.C,, to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address to Congress, Zaid Mohammed Mahdawi, 26, climbed atop a monument at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station and allegedly spray-painted an ominous message: 'HAMAS IS COMIN''. He punctuated the warning with the red, inverted triangle that the terrorist organization uses as a symbol to mark its targets.
Nearby, demonstrators pulled down and burned a U.S. flag to ashes, tackled U.S. Park Police officers trying to arrest agitators and spray-painted other menacing graffiti, including 'DEATH 2 AMRIKKKA,' on memorials.
At 3:26 p.m., the U.S. Park Police pulled the protest permit, which had been issued to the ANSWER Coalition, a Washington-based, self-declared socialist organization. Later, the FBI charged Mahdawi and other protesters with destruction of government property.
"The permit holder failed to answer his phone and the call went directly to voicemail," an FBI agent wrote in a fascinating affidavit that revealed that someone at a gym Mahdawi used sent the FBI a tip on his identity.
Nearly six months later, the ANSWER Coalition is poised to get a new permit to host another protest on Monday, according to a copy of the application I obtained from the National Park Service. The event name: "For Peace & Justice - Free Palestine." The target is obviously the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Past behavior indicates the protests will bring mayhem to the capital's streets. Yet, National Park Service spokesman Michael Litterst told me that current legal precedent makes it difficult to deny permits based on prior incidents.
Critics, like leaders of the Clarity Coalition, a network of Muslims, ex-Muslims and allies who oppose extremism, say it's long past time to deny the permits. At a minimum, the public must have its eyes wide open about who is behind these protests.
As the protests unfold, media coverage will likely frame them as 'organic,' 'grassroots' activities. But make no mistake: These events will be part of a larger, well-funded operation. The demonstrators are aligned with adversaries to the U.S., including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Hamas, and are united in an unholy alliance that blends socialism with Islamism, or political Islam.
This coalition, which I call the "Woke Army," operates as a red-green alliance, the red symbolizing socialism and communism and the green representing Islam. These are the same groups that stoked the encampments of the so-called campus intifada around the country last year. Their ultimate goal is to dismantle American democracy and replace it with a socialist, anti-capitalist order. The first way to counter this threat is through transparency, vigilance and a commitment to truth.
The application lists the same "Person in Charge of Event," as it did in July: Brian Becker, the self-proclaimed Marxist founder of the ANSWER Coalition.
Protest organizers say they have at least 50 "endorsing" groups, and their motives are far from grassroots. I've created a public database as part of my work at the Pearl Project, a nonprofit journalism initiative, and, according to my analysis, 25 of the groups are self-described socialist organizations, five are Muslim, Arab or Palestinian, and the final 20 are "socialist adjacent."
The "red" in this alliance includes:
The "green" of this axis includes:
In July, I went to the corner of C Street NW to report who had rented buses to ferry protesters to the first "HAMAS IS COMIN'" protest. It was the Party for Socialism and Liberation. This time, if you go to the "We Fight Back" website's donation page, you'll see who is getting the donations for the Jan. 20 protests. It's The People's Forum, whose logo and tax ID number appear on the donate page.
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On Nov. 5, four days after Trump's electoral victory, an anonymous person bought the website domain wefightback2025.org. Now the protest's digital hub, it features an embedded Google Map geo-locating 80 planned "actions" across the country.
It even includes a "J20 media kit" with pre-designed Instagram graphics, a Canva template and printable protest posters emblazoned with slogans like "Stop the Genocide in Palestine" and "Defeat Extreme-Right Trump's Billionaire Agenda!"
The kit even provides social media captions, complete with a megaphone emoji. They have their right to protest, but the world must have eyes wide open about who is behind the megaphones.
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