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Does any Jewish person outside of Israel feel completely safe celebrating a holiday in a public space right now? It’s unlikely. And that’s the point of terrorism.
“Globalize the intifada” isn’t a phrase rich in history or subtext, despite the contentions of its many apologists. Its meaning is clear. To “globalize” a thing is to make it international. That thing is “intifada,” an explicit call for violence against Jews. Intifada, “uprising” in Arabic, is just Palestinian for “jihad,” rebranded for credulous and malevolent Westerners.
Technically, the first “intifada” began in 1987, a wave of violence meant to attract Western audiences. It worked. So, Palestinians did it again with the “Second Intifada,” cresting with the 2001 Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing in Jerusalem, during which 16 people, including seven children and a pregnant woman, were murdered — one of them an American citizen. The third intifada has been by far the most successful due to its globalization.
Intifada is when a pro-Palestinian Marxist murders evangelical Christian Yaron Lischinsky and his American girlfriend, Sarah Milgrim, in front of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, before chanting, “Free, free Palestine.” Their sin was working at the Israeli Embassy.
Intifada is when a terrorist rams his car into a Manchester, England, synagogue on Yom Kippur and begins stabbing worshippers. The mass rape and murder of Oct 7, 2023, incidentally, was perpetrated on Simchat Torah.
The intifada is when “protesters” march in Amsterdam, chanting “kill the Jews” as they stalk families celebrating Hanukkah. Or when a mob of “anti-Israel” protesters surrounds the entrance of the modern orthodox Park East Synagogue in New York and chants, “Globalize the intifada” while advocating people to “take another settler out.”
Most of the incidents above occurred quite recently. Jew-baiting demonstrations are quickly becoming the norm in front of synagogues or on college campuses — it barely even makes the news anymore.
Intifada, of course, is when two men slaughter 15 Jews who were celebrating the first night of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney. We have no official confirmation on the motivations of the 50-year-old Islamic immigrant and his 24-year-old son, who’d reportedly been under investigation for links to the Islamic State group. I’m willing to go out on a limb and point out that the choice of day and victims — among them a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor, and numerous children — is a big clue.
The heroism of a local man, Ahmed al Ahmed, who took two bullets, likely mitigated some of the carnage. But the Sydney police, like so many other law enforcement departments around the world, terrified of Islamists, probably did the bare minimum to protect their citizens.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says there’s no room for hate in his country, but facts say something entirely different. In the past year, Australians have seen over 1,650 verifiably “anti-Jewish incidents.” Among them are the arson of Melbourne’s largest synagogue and a kosher deli and rampages through Jewish neighborhoods. To put this trend in context, there are only 117,000 Jews in Australia, a country of 28 million.
In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the bogeyman of antisemites worldwide, wrote a prescient letter to Albanese, warning that something horrible was going to happen in the shadow of his moral cowardice. “Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on this antisemitic fire,” he warned. “It is not diplomacy, it is appeasement. It rewards Hamas terror, hardens Hamas’s refusal to free the hostages, emboldens those who menace Australian Jews, and encourages the Jew-hatred now stalking your streets.”
He was right. If you’re an Australian Jew, it’s probably time to contemplate moving to Israel, because your government isn’t on your side. Not anymore. Anti-Jewish sentiment is nothing new, of course, but rarely have Western governments actively taken sides with the barbarians who want you dead. Yet, in September, the Australian government, like the leaders of France, Britain, and Canada, rewarded Hamas by recognizing a post-Oct. 7 “Palestinian” state to appease their growing Muslim constituents.
Alas, this sort of malignant appeasement happens increasingly here in the United States, as well. Every time Jews are massacred by intifadists somewhere in the world, politicians and pundits immediately take to the airwaves to shill for a Palestinian state. The other day, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), after the attack in Bondi Beach, went on Fox News to bash Israeli leaders and call for an Islamic state in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. Netanyahu’s “actions,” the congressman argued, were not “making either Jews more secure” or “creating peace.”
AFTER AUSTRALIA, WILL JEWISH PEOPLE IN FRANCE, NORWAY, TURKEY, AND IRELAND BE NEXT?
Khanna’s concern trolling aside, the notion that there was no anti-Jewish violence before Gaza or before Israel is laughable. “O Muslims, wherever you find a Zionist Jew,” senior Hamas political official Fathi Hammad implored not long before the imaginary “genocide” in Gaza became a rallying call for violence, “you must kill him because that is an expression of your solidarity with the al Aqsa Mosque.” Yet, Khanna places more blame on Israelis who defend themselves for attacks on Jews than on the Islamists who perpetrate them. Is Khanna truly under the impression that Islamists will embrace their Jewish neighbors in Sydney or Brooklyn once Hamas is running a state in Ramallah? Surely, he can’t be that stupid.
No place has been immune to this outbreak of bigotry. Here, intifada has replaced Black Lives Matter as the cause of the morally vacuous and dangerously illiterate young activists on the Left and many on the “disaffected” Right. It is not an accident that the FBI reportedly thwarted a ”massive and horrific terror plot” in California by a “far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group.” You will never hear of a far-left “pro-Kurdish” or “pro-Druze” or “pro-Israeli” terrorist group operating within the U.S. Attacks on Jews are a story as old as history. “Palestine” is merely the newest convenient and cynical justification to peddle a slew of age-old conspiracies, blood libels, and death. Proponents of the movement care very little about the fortunes of the Palestinian people. The only difference is that, in many ways, the West is abetting terrorism. Which is why every one of these incidents dramatically reaffirms the need for Israel to exist and defend itself.
