This is what it means to ‘globalize the intifada’

“Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what that looks like. Two Israeli embassy staffers gunned down as they left the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram had been attending an event for young Jews working in foreign policy organized by the American Jewish Committee. One of the focuses of the evening was finding a way to alleviate the humanitarian suffering in Gaza.

Yaron and Sarah were not only colleagues but a couple. Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, says Yaron had bought an engagement ring and was planning to propose to Sarah next week in Jerusalem. There will be no next week in Jerusalem for Yaron and Sarah.

The suspect, now in custody, is said to have chanted “free, free Palestine” as he was apprehended. We don’t know as yet his broader worldview or how it led him to conclude that killing Jews was the answer. Killing Jews is the answer for so many worldviews.

We do know that Yaron and Sarah were murdered in a climate of lies and vilification and hatred. A roiling frenzy in which anti-Semitic incidents in the United States have increased by 893 percent over the past decade, in which the socially conscious tear down posters of kidnapped children, in which students are harassed by organized and well-funded intimidation campaigns on college campuses.

A demonic chaos in which the United Nations falsely claims that Israeli actions are on the brink of killing 14,000 Palestinian babies in 48 hours – a claim it eventually retracts, but not before the incendiary allegation is laundered through major news organizations, social media and the British Parliament. An orgy of Jew-hatred in which the anti-colonial left and nationalist right thrash wildly alongside Muslim supremacists and atheistic anarchists. Across the civilized, enlightened West, everywhere you turn they’re turning on the Jews.

The more institutions participate in this collective madness, the more madness there will be. The more elected officials and NGOs misrepresent the predictable consequences of asymmetric warfare in densely populated territories, where much of the infrastructure of everyday life has a dual civilian/terrorist purpose, the more the citizenries of North America and Europe will come to regard Israelis and Jews as a people who lust unquenchably after blood.

The more journalists obsessively pump newspapers, TV bulletins and social media feeds with accounts of one conflict, and one conflict alone, and profoundly dishonest and distorted accounts at that, the more readers and viewers will carry the impression that the heartbreaking suffering in Gaza is unique or even uncommon in contemporary conflict.

While governments across the West fixate on the threat of online radicalization, by which they invariably mean far-right radicalization, a more commonplace and ideologically promiscuous radicalization is taking place. The most intolerant anti-Zionism is becoming a mainstream view, indulged by liberal societies, more concerned with not conflating irrational hatred of Israel with irrational hatred of Jews – as though the distinction between the two is all that well defined anymore.

Yaron and Sarah were Jews who worked for the Israeli embassy. They were killed leaving an event on Israel for young Jews. Was this anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism? Was the act motivated by Palestinian solidarity or animosity towards Jews? Can anyone tell the difference? Does it really matter? A moral framework in which the ethics of shooting Jews can be determined by inspecting their passports is a framework for a world drowning in depravity.

For years now, and especially after the October 7 massacre, the call has gone up from the pro-Palestinian movement to put Palestine at the heart of western politics. To pursue the struggle against Zionism in every country, on every platform and in every setting. To wage worldwide resistance to Israel, not only in Wadi al-Far’a but in Washington DC. “Globalize the intifada,” they chanted. This is what it looks like.