With Iran’s strike against Israel over the weekend, the loudest voices for peace and ceasefire quickly turned to cheers for war. The real domestic extremists are beginning to reveal themselves, and it’s not who the Intel agencies say it is. It’s not the guy buying a rifle at Cabela’s in a MAGA hat, or the mom making demands at a school board meeting. It’s the radicals with foreign allegiances chanting “Death to America!”

Monday saw a wave of anti-Israel protests around the country. Protesters shut down San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge for several hours, chaining themselves together as police stood idly by. Similar protests blocked access to the Chicago and Seattle airports, the Brooklyn Bridge, and took over New York’s financial district all afternoon. Protesters demanded an end to American economic and military aid for Israel, part of an “economic blockade to free Palestine,” according to Rifqa Falaneh, one of the organizers.

But it’s not a coincidence that this new wave of protests came in the wake of Iran’s attack on Israel over the weekend. Anti-Israel sentiment has been steadily simmering for months in the Democratic Party’s left flank, with “uncommitted” protest votes in Michigan and Wisconsin and incessant demands for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Rabid anti-Israel protesters adopted the mantle of peaceniks past. They cosplayed as good-hearted activists sitting atop the moral high ground, determined to make “Genocide Joe” see the light. Yet when news broke of Iranian missiles flying into Israel, they showed who they really are.

As The Free Press reported, a Chicago meeting of about 300 “anti-war activists” broke into cheers and applause Saturday evening after a man took to the podium to announce missiles would soon be falling on Israel. This room full of Americans then began to chant “Hands off Iran!” — a spirited defense of a sworn, foreign enemy. This was after a group of American Muslims in Dearborn — Biden’s most sought-after constituency — chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” on Friday.

So to call these people “protesters” or their movements part of a “protest” is really an all-too-flattering mischaracterization. These words come with an unavoidable connotation in American culture. It imbues the “protester” with a moral authority, which, in this case, is wholly undeserved. Why does one protest? To stand against a perceived injustice; to fight in the name of something you know to be morally right even when the powers-that-be say otherwise. But can it ever be morally right to protest in the name of hatred, violence, and domination?

While these people claim to speak in the name of injustice, they aren’t actually standing up for the plight of the Palestinians. If they truly wanted peace and prosperity for the Palestinian people, they would demand the release of the hostages and the end of Hamas’ terror-fueled reign. Yet they support the aims of Hamas and Iran alike. They are effectively a supremacist movement jockeying for brutal domination of Israelis from “the river to the sea” — the type of hate-filled faction that liberals constantly assure us has no place in Our Democracy. To call their vile displays a “protest” is like using the same language to describe a Klu Klux Klan rally of the early 20th century. Would a Democrat ever do something audacious?

Yet that is precisely what Democrat-led areas are doing all over the country. For months, these “protesters” have been treated with kid gloves as they routinely shut down life for average Americans. Every time they take over the streets with impunity, their lack of punishment reinforces the idea that this is behavior that does not warrant punishment, that their cause is so great that it transcends the foundational principles of law and order. The state effectively reinforces their false claim to moral authority. The only real solution is to treat criminals as criminals.

Yet the Biden administration is determined to do the opposite: to criminalize every day Americans. While they hope to woo the people chanting “Death to America” in time for election day, they have no such affinity for angry parents, gun-toting individualists, or grandmothers who wandered through the Capitol on Jan 6. These are the people the administration is determined to root out, to strip of any and all moral authority. They want to paint “extremism” as a uniquely right-wing threat, to ensure only they have the legitimacy to eradicate it.  And they’ll ignore every extremist on their own side to do it. But Americans would be wise to remember: when extremists tell you who they are, you should believe them.