A year ago today, Hamas conducted an orgy of brutality against innocent civilians. Such things have happened many times, but this case was unusual in attracting the support of a small but significant number of Americans. I don’t normally venture this deep into politics, aside from First Amendment issues relevant to writing, but I have to say something today.

I’m not talking about people who want peace or who object to Israel’s conduct in the war that followed. I’m talking about people who supported the massacre and want Israel wiped off the map. Also, we have to recognize that even groups with despicable goals have the right of free speech. They do not, however, have the right to physically interfere with other people’s legitimate activity.

Yesterday, as reported in the news, “Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators temporarily blocked traffic on Storrow Drive in Boston on Sunday during an emotional rally on the eve of the first anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.” Given the timing, any protest should have said something against that slaughter. The report doesn’t mention anything of the kind.

It focuses on an organization calling itself “Jewish Voice for Peace Boston.” This group says that “we see Zionism as anti-human rights as racist.” It’s possible for Jews to argue that Zionism was a bad idea, that an explicitly Jewish state was the wrong way to escape persecution. But claiming that the very existence of Israel is “racist” tells me this is some kind of puppet organization.

The report says “thousands moved onto Storrow Drive, walking through traffic with signs in hand and locking arms so cars couldn’t get by.” That’s not protest, it’s physical intimidation. The people who did that should have been arrested.

This is just the latest in a steady trickle of Nazi-like activity over the past year. Professor Russell Rickford at Cornell said he was “exhilarated” by the slaughter. He spat on Palestinians who didn’t share his exhilaration, declaring that “they would not be human.”

In June, a mob invaded a New York subway station and dared people to admit that they were Zionists. Some of them engaged in vandalism, and at least one person was charged with attempted coercion.

We’ve seen these despicable attitudes even in fandom. The CRIT Awards excluded Zionists from eligibility. They didn’t exclude any other category of personal views. In principle, you could be a member of the Putin Fan Club and get an award, but Zionists as people were ineligible, even if their work had nothing to do with Israel.

The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival issued a lifetime ban to Miriam Libicki for having served in the Israeli army and writing a book about her experience there. They claimed that their failure to ban her more quickly caused unspecified “harm.” In the future, they declared, they would “be adhering strictly to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) guidelines.” The convention ultimately apologized to Libicki.

As a government (technicalities aside, it functions as one), Hamas has a terrible record on human liberties. Blasphemy is a crime. Hamas’s Islamic University segregates students by sex and requires women to cover their heads. People criticizing the Hamas authority have been arrested and questioned. Unapproved public gatherings have met with police violence. Homosexual acts are illegal, and Hamas executed one of its own commanders for homosexuality.

The people who support Hamas — again, distinguishing them from those who criticize Israel, want a better deal for the Palestinian people, or just seek an end to the killing — are despicable scum. It’s important, especially today, October 7, to reject their vile doctrines and say that they don’t represent American ideals, or those of any free or semi-free country.