I’ve seen enough -- the blood-soaked streets of Washington, D.C., and the charred victims in Boulder, Colorado, tell a horrifying story that much of America’s left-wing political class refuses to acknowledge: The “globalized intifada” that progressive activists have been openly calling for since the very first days of Israeli retaliation for the October 7th attacks has arrived on American soil.
On May 21st, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram -- two young Israeli embassy staffers who were set to be engaged in just a week -- were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum by Elias Rodriguez, who was recorded repeatedly shouting “Free Palestine” as he was arrested. Just ten days later, Mohamad Sabry Soliman used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to attack a peaceful demonstration of Americans showing their support for Israel. Eight people were burned in the attack, some badly.
These weren’t random acts of violence. They were the inevitable result of years of increasingly inflammatory rhetoric from the progressive Left that has systematically dehumanized Jews and legitimized violence against them under the banner of “resistance.”
Since Hamas’ barbaric massacre of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, including women and young children, FBI data shows that anti-Jewish hate crimes have shot up by 63%. This surge didn’t happen in a vacuum. It followed months of campus protests where crowds violently rioted, took over buildings, shut down classes -- sometimes for weeks on end -- and widely chanted “globalize the intifada,” a direct call to bring the violent tactics of the Second Palestinian Intifada to the rest of the world.
The Left’s complicity runs deeper than its silence in the face of rioting supporters. Progressive politicians have actively embraced and defended these movements. Rep. Pramila Jayapal explicitly said that “Israel is a racist state” while addressing a pro-Palestine conference, while “Squad” members including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and the other usual suspects joined protests outside the Democratic National Convention demanding Palestinian speakers on stage.
When university presidents were called to testify before Congress about their inaction in the face of rising campus antisemitism, they refused to acknowledge that calls for genocide against Jews violated campus conduct codes. Their blatant denial caused such a national scandal that both UPenn’s Liz Magill and, after much fanfare, Harvard’s Claudine Gay were forced to resign.
The contrast between the two sides couldn’t be clearer. In Boulder, peaceful demonstrators without face coverings or violent slogans gathered to call for the release of hostages that Hamas has held for over a year and a half now. Compare this to the masked mobs that have terrorized campuses and city streets alike for over a year now, openly calling for intifada.
Soliman, the attacker in Boulder, told investigators that he “specifically targeted” the Run for Their Lives group after learning about them online, and that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people.” Rodriguez -- the man behind the assassination in D.C. -- had written a manifesto titled “Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home.”
These men are not out to peacefully protest. They’re not there to make friends. They’re out for blood, and it has to come to an end.
The Left’s obsession with anti-colonial rhetoric has provided the intellectual framework for normalizing violence against Jews. By painting colonialism as the “great Satan” of our time and framing Israel as a “settler-colonial” entity that must be “decolonized,” they’re not calling for policy changes. They’re not calling for land swaps. They’re providing the moral justification for the elimination of the Jewish state -- and its people along with it.
And these are the very same people who have spent the better part of the last decade decrying “right-wing rhetoric” as inflammatory and chalking up any call for a reduction of immigration as justifying a return of neo-Nazism. For years, Democrats have insisted that even center-right speech is controversial, escalatory, and responsible for acts of political violence. Yet, they simply cannot -- or will not -- find it within themselves to condemn protests that are actually doing all of the above.
American universities have become the primary incubators for this new wave of anti-Semitism. Nearly half of U.S. Jewish college students said that they’ve felt unsafe at campus events because they are Jewish, while antisemitic incidents on campuses spiked 321% following the October 7th attack.
The time for plausible deniability is over. When you chant “globalize the intifada,” you’re calling for violence. When you demonize the world’s only Jewish state as uniquely evil for the crime of existing, you’re trafficking in anti-Semitism.
These are acts of domestic terrorism, and they cannot be tolerated. The assassinations in Washington and the burns suffered in Boulder are the direct result of months of inflammatory rhetoric that has dehumanized Jews and legitimized violence against them. This must stop, now.
Kyle Moran is a political commentator with Young Voices, specializing in international affairs and national security. He graduated from the University of Rhode Island, and his work has been published widely from RealClearPolitics to the Washington Examiner.
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