[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

When Mohamed Sabry Soliman screamed “Free Palestine” and injured eight supporters of Israel with Molotov cocktails in Boulder, Colorado, he proved anew that this slogan is not one of an oppressed people crying out for freedom, or a noble cause that lovers of the unfettered human spirit should willingly, and even eagerly, take up and make their own. Instead, it is a scream of hatred, a declaration of menace and impending violence, a prelude to terror.

The proof is in what happens all too often when people scream it out. When Mohamed Soliman declared his support for a free Palestine, he found it necessary to punctuate his declaration by giving serious burns to elderly Jews, including a Holocaust survivor. And Soliman is just the latest.

Just over six weeks ago, on April 13, 2025, a man named Cody Balmer firebombed the Pennsylvania governor’s residence in Harrisburg while Governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, and his family were inside. After his attack, Balmer called 911, told the operator who he was, and said that he carried out his attack so that Shapiro would know that he would “not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” He said he carried out his arson attack on the governor’s home “in defense of Palestinians.”

What plans the governor of Pennsylvania had to oppress “Palestinians,” Balmer didn’t say, and of course no such plans exist. Josh Shapiro is not an official of the Israeli government, and has no part in its activities, or any responsibility for them. Balmer, however, like so many other pro-Hamas agitators around the world since Oct. 7, 2023, held Shapiro as a Jew responsible for the alleged crimes of the Israelis, and targeted him accordingly.

Then on May 21, 2025, another leftist, Elias Rodriguez, brutally murdered two Israeli Embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, on the street outside the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. When he was arrested, Rodriguez, immovable in his sense of his own righteousness, screamed “Free, free Palestine.” How the random murders of two low-level Israeli officials would bring freedom to “Palestine,” Rodriguez did not explain, but perhaps he will do so at his trial.

In any case, Mohamed Sabry Soliman’s Molotov cocktail spree makes three attacks on innocent Jews and supporters of Israel in less than two months by supporters of a “free Palestine.” How many more Jews will have to be injured or killed before the realization sets in among U.S. government and law enforcement officials, as well as the general public, that those who are intent on freeing Palestine will not hesitate to resort to violence against innocent people, and that they believe that this violence will bring them closer to their goal?

“Free Palestine” is, in other words, the cry of terrorist. A terrorist is someone who wants to frighten you into doing his will. That means that the actions of Cody Balmer, Elias Rodriguez and Mohamed Sabry Soliman are quintessential acts of terrorism, which is not surprising in light of the fact that the cause of the “Palestinians” is not now and never has been an instance of nobly oppressed people striving for freedom against a ruthless oppressor.

In fact, the “Palestinian” cause is an Islamic jihad, based ultimately upon the Qur’an’s command to Muslims to “drive them out from where they drove you out” (2:191). The command to drive the Jews out from where they drove the Muslims out does not depend upon the events of 1948, or the claims that Israeli forces compelled at least some of the Palestinian Arabs to leave their homes. The land of Israel was once ruled by the Ottoman Empire, the last Islamic caliphate, and before that by the Abbasid caliphate. As such, by the lights of Islamic theology, it belongs to Islam forever, and Muslims have a responsibility before Allah to drive out those infidels who rule this land now.

That is why every attempt at a negotiated settlement and lasting peace has failed, and why such attempts always will fail. That is why the foes of Israel are so fanatically intransigent and paradoxically so pious and yet so bloodthirsty: they think their god has commanded them to destroy Israel and kill massive numbers of Jews, and that doing so is a righteous act. And so they will continue to murder and attempt to murder, and scream “Free Palestine” as they do so. How long will American officials continue to treat this cry as if it were simply the harmless chant of a political faction?