In 2025, Hamas and Hezbollah flags became regular sights on Ivy League college campuses, a Muslim immigrant who embraced an unindicted coconspirator in bombing plots in New York City became its mayor, presidential envoys chatted with Hamas and an Al Qaeda leader who used to have a $10 million reward on his head visited the White House and met with the president.

The mainstreaming of Islamic terrorism didn’t happen overnight. A decade ago, the Obama administration backed the Al Qaeda militias that would eventually go on to take over Syria and first forced Israel to negotiate with Hamas after the kidnapping and murder of three teens.

What went on under the cover of plausible deniability a decade ago, where our government pretended we were backing the Free Syrian Army, a ‘democratic’ and ‘secular’ movement, (which critics like me pointed out was just Al-Qaeda in drag), or where our negotiators did not directly meet with Hamas, where anti-Israel campus groups claimed that they supported BDS rather than mass murder, and Muslim politicians denied they were terrorists, is out in the open.