October 7, 2023 was a horrific day for Israel. Hamas militants crossed into Israel to carry out the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. They carried out unspeakable acts against humanity: rape, kidnapping 251 civilians, murdering over 1,200 civilians, torture, decapitation. In terms of per capita death rates, October 7 was the equivalent of September 11 about 15 times over. The bodies of the murdered were not even buried and yet the pro-Palestine "activists" were already out protesting against Israel. This first wave of post-October 7 Jew-hatred broke out before the Israeli Defense Forces even entered Gaza, which tells you how much the motives are about hating Israel and Jews. Since October 8, 2023, these protestors have been out in full force across the planet.
Fast-forward to May/June 2025. In a two-week timespan, there were two violent and unfortunate anti-Semitic attacks that made international news. The first was the murder of two Israeli embassy staff members outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington D.C. The murderer was screaming "Free Palestine" as he was being arrested for this heinous act.
The second attack took place in Boulder, Colorado. There was a rally for the hostages who have been held captive in Gaza for over 600 days. The assailant threw Molotov cocktails at the participants. The savage seriously injured eight participants, including an 88-year Holocaust survivor. As he threw the Molotov cocktails, he was screaming "We need to end Zionists." These attacks got me thinking a lot about the rhetoric used by pro-Palestine protestors and how it influences anti-Semitism and violence against Jews in the Diaspora. Let us examine the most commonly used rhetoric.
"Globalize the Intifada". The word intifada comes from the Arabic انتفاضة, which is derived from the Arabic verb that means "to shake off" or "to get rid of." Within the political context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there have been two intifadas. The First Intifada was in the late 1980s to early 1990s, whereas the Second Intifada took place in the early 2000s. In both intifadas, there was political violence against Jews that resulted in over 1,000 Jewish deaths. Suicide bombing was commonly used during the Second Intifada. Since intifada against Israel has historically meant indiscriminate violence against Jews, does it surprise anyone that globalizing the intifada would translate into violence against Jews, Israelis, and pro-Israel institutions across the world?
"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". It would behoove us to ask which river and which sea. Answer: the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. What country is between those two bodies of water? Israel. This is not a call for a two-state solution, but to extend the clout of this proto-state (if you can call it that) by eliminating the state of Israel. At a bare minimum, this translates into the ethnic cleansing of Jews. More likely, it is a call for the genocide of the Jewish people, especially after the pogrom of October 7 and the uptick of anti-Semitism afterwards. This phrase ends up being problematic in practice because it is ultimately not about a call for justice or equality; it crosses the line into bona fide anti-Semitism and the political extremism of eliminating the world's only Jewish nation-state.
"Resistance by any means necessary." This little beaut is commonly used by anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime - United for Palestine (WOL). Hopefully, this one should not require that much explanation. Any means necessary means the ends justify the means. This includes multiple acts of violence, whether that is slaughtering children and the elderly, suicide bombings, shootings, and setting synagogues on fire. If you have any doubts about that, October 7 and the subsequent rise in anti-Semitism across the global should have settled that "any means necessary" literally means "any means."
False accusations of genocide and settler colonialism. Genocide and settler colonialism are evils in the world. The problem in this instance is that Israel is guilty of neither. When you are under the delusion that Israel is committing genocide (see my three-part refutation of the false genocide accusation here, here, and here), this sort of accusation fuels the flames of Jew hate. Why?
It does not matter that the Jews are indigenous to Israel (also known as Judea) or that Israel has legal rights to the land under international law, thereby refuting the "settler colonialism" argument. If your take is mistakenly that the "evil Jews" are the most heinous human rights violators out there (especially when you are ignoring actual violations of human rights), then you might be inspired to do something drastic about stopping these misperceived injustices, as was the case in the Washington DC and Boulder attacks.
Postscript
As I pointed out last October, anti-Semitism has been on the rise and at significantly higher rates than anti-Muslim crimes. Anti-Semitism has only gotten worse since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023. Let there be no mistake. Words have power. When pro-Palestinian protestors chant "From the river to the sea" or "Globalize the intifada," what they are doing is endorse, glorify, and encourage the bloodshed of Jews and Israelis. It is the public celebration of mass murder.
What is jarring is that this rhetoric has become normalized and covered up with the excuse of "We're not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist," a phenomenon I explored in 2016. It does not matter what your views about Israeli policy are. It is possible to criticize the Israeli government without calling for its eradication. Israeli citizens do so frequently. Far too many on the pro-Palestine side has gone beyond mere political disagreement about Israel's foreign policy and venturing into bona fide anti-Semitic territory. If we are to live in a free, democratic society, support for violence against Jews needs to be deemed as abhorrent and unacceptable. Anything less is letting the terrorists win.
Anti-Semitism across the world has become loud, brazen, unapologetic, and violent in a way that is giving me a taste of how Jews felt in 1930s Europe as the Nazi Party ascended to power. It is even worse when the "mainstream media" sanitizes the anti-Semitism in its reporting and parrots Hamas propaganda without doing a basic fact-check, which begs the question of how much the likes of BBC, Washington Post, and New York Times can be held accountable for spreading libel. It is even worse still because the pro-Palestine attempts to normalize violence against Jews as a form of being a freedom fighter or social justice warrior. What is scary about this framework is that it is working. The silent majority across the world has kept quiet as jihadism and anti-Semitism become palatable and trendy.
Yes, I am for the First Amendment right of peaceful protest, even that of pro-Palestinian protestors who I have come to view as the modern-day equivalent of Nazis. Where the present situation gets murky in practice is when the anti-Semitism of these chants are normalized and become weaponized as a justification to attack Jews. The line between acceptable free speech and incitement of violence has become blurred, which begs the question of what does a Jew who advocates for freedom of speech such as myself believe should be done.
I both value freedom of speech and believe that Jews should be able to live without having to constantly worry about violence being carried out against them simply for being Jewish. Granted, Jews have adapted to anti-Semitism over the centuries and are continuing to do so. At the same time, I have no easy answers in this muddled grey area. At the same time, I am inclined to believe that charging those who commit illegal acts not covered under the First Amendment, such as violence, incitement of violence, threats, intimidation would be a good start, as would be dismantling radical groups calling for revolutionary violence. That way, violence can be targeted without degrading freedom of speech.
You might be reading this and think this only affects the Jews, so you should probably be fine. Why does this affect everyone? The Jews have historically been the canary in the coal mine. What is befalling the Jewish people will eventually reach other groups of people, especially those who have been oppressed or disenfranchised. Plus, this global intifada will not stop with the Jewish people. As I pointed out in my critique of "Islamophobia" earlier this year, Islam is the one religion on the planet whose mainstream followers seek to impose their religious taboos on everyone else. As we already see in Europe, this political violence will get worse if not confronted. Until this rhetoric is addressed and we can make political discourse civil once more, this sort of domestic violence will continue to be normalized and the pro-Palestine side will continue to wreak havoc on civil society.
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