Since when is gang rape, hostage-taking, and the slaughter of women and children “a desperate act of self-defense”?

Answer: since never.

And yet, that’s what a coalition of 26 Black Lives Matter chapters across the U.S. called the barbaric October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, in which Islamist terrorists murdered more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 30 Americans, and took more than 200 others hostage.

Worse yet, as The Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr reports, the Chicago chapter of BLM “shared an image glorifying Hamas gunmen on paragliders, before walking it back amid blowback. And the movement’s Phoenix branch praised Hamas ‘freedom fighters’ for their acts of ‘resistance.’”

Kerr adds that a couple of well-known pressure groups are stirring the BLM-Hamas pot. “Echoing this rhetoric,” he writes, “are two Hamas-friendly groups — American Muslims for Palestine and the Council for American-Islamic Relations — that have for nearly a decade worked arm-in-arm with the Black Lives Matter organization to plan rallies and lobby lawmakers.”

Should we be surprised by this partnership between BLM and Hamas? No. As The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez writes, BLM’s support of this terrorist organization fits neatly within its anti-white ideology:

Embracing the vilest forms of terrorism as a means of destroying Israel is a feature, not a bug, of revolutionary “decolonization.” Israel must be destroyed, groups such as Black Lives Matter say, because it is a white settler, white supremacist state (which is also how they see us, so consider yourself warned).

This endorsement of Hamas’s recent atrocities has come from organizations that are the leading ideological voices of BLM — not, as the Anti-Defamation League and others claim, from fringe chapters that have gone rogue and are not controlled by the national organization.

Apparently, it isn’t enough for Black Lives Matter to support the everyday genocide within the urban black communities that it pretends to care about. Now, in addition to demonizing the police, calling for their defunding, and thereby facilitating the black-on-black crime that plagues these communities, BLM is also supporting an organization whose original charter called for the genocide of the Jews of Israel. In this respect, BLM and Hamas are brothers in genocide.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, corporate America is largely responsible for bankrolling all this. As our Emmy Griffin reported back in March, the Claremont Institute has compiled a database to track how much money has found its way from corporate coffers into the unaccountable pockets of BLM.

In case you hadn’t noticed, the Democrats have a Jew problem — or, more specifically, a Jew-hating problem. Not all Democrats, of course. Indeed, we’re sure that plenty of them there on Capitol Hill will swear up and down that some of their best friends are Jews.

But while Jews have historically been a reliable part of the Democrat caucus, this loyalty is becoming curiouser and curiouser with each passing year. What must American Jews think about the likes of unrepentant Jew haters like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar or her Muslim sidekick and fellow “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib?

And what must American Jews think of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a practicing Muslim whose chief of staff advertised a pro-Hamas rally disguised as a “March for Palestine” last Sunday in Minneapolis? The rally attracted more than 1,000 pro-Hamas demonstrators who repeatedly chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a stirring little slogan that calls for the eradication of the Jews’ homeland between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.

“The Black and Palestinian struggles for liberation are interconnected,” posted Omar’s and Tlaib’s partner in hate, St. Louis Congresswoman Cori Bush, “and we will not let up until all of us are free.” Bush didn’t bother to explain how these two seemingly unrelated “struggles” are “interconnected,” but whatever.

And so, the struggle continues — for Black Lives Matter and Hamas to wipe out the Jews of Israel, and for the rest of us to wake up to the hatred in our midst.