Jonathan S. Tobin

(JNS) For the past 19 months, angry mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of major American cities. These demonstrations, tent encampments and building takeovers have not just been expressions of opposition to Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They have also often been indicative of the protesters’ support for Hamas and the embrace of terrorist goals, as well as their antisemitism—something that was made obvious by the way they have targeted Jews during the course of their “activism.”

Yet rather than being isolated and widely condemned, these pro-Hamas activists and demonstrators have been cheered by many in the media and even rationalized by former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as their party’s left-wing leaders, who spoke of them as idealists who “deserved to be heard” and validated, even if they disagreed with some of what they were saying.

In doing so, they were ignoring the warning signs that the pro-Hamas movement was more than just mainstreaming Jew-hatred in discourse. As has been the case throughout history, those who speak of their support for terrorism elsewhere often wind up committing it at home.

After the tragic murder on Wednesday night of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., it’s obvious that this is also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel’s existence.

There is much we don’t yet know about the accused murderer, who was apprehended at the scene. But the targeting of Israelis at a Jewish site, as well as the fact that police have reported that the assailant shouted “Free, free Palestine”—the same expression heard at countless pro-Hamas and anti-Israel rallies since Oct. 7—leads to an inevitable conclusion.

A short leap to violence

It didn’t take long for words to turn into action—from being willing to demonize Israelis, falsely accuse them of “genocide” or “apartheid,” and rationalize or even support the barbarous murderers, rapists and kidnappers of Hamas, and then condoning or rationalizing violence against Jews and Israelis on American soil.

We will be told in the coming days that the bloodshed in Washington has nothing to do with “criticism” of Israel or its policies.

There will be distinctions made between what will be described as “mostly peaceful” pro-Hamas demonstrations and the murder. The groups that have organized those protests and engaged in antisemitic acts of intimidation, and even violence, will likely condemn the murder as they continue to smear Israel and its supporters. And, as has been the case with those who oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism on college campuses and to deport those foreign students who have violated the terms of their visas and green cards by engaging in illegal activities, we will be told that the nation’s priority should be to defend the free speech of Hamas supporters and antisemites. Concern for the rights and welfare of these Israel-haters will be voiced, especially by left-wing Jewish groups.

But it should be remembered that while the right to peaceful and legal protests should be defended, the violent nature of much of what is now termed “pro-Palestine” activism is no accident. The same is true for the antisemitism that is never far from the surface whenever these supporters of terror speak or gather.

What those provocative chants mean

The chants of “Free, free Palestine” have nothing to do with the freedom of people in Gaza who were not “occupied” when they attacked Israeli communities and committed unspeakable atrocities on Oct. 7. They are not about a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel, which the Palestinians have made clear time and again they do not want. It’s a cry for the replacement of the State of Israel by a Palestinian Arab state in which Jews would no longer have the ability to defend themselves.

Chants of “From the river to the sea” are, regardless of whether those who are shouting it can identify either body of water, a demand for the eradication of Israel and the genocide or expulsion of the 7.2 million Jews who live there.

Those shouting “Globalize the intifada!” have not been speaking about some idealized protest movement spreading from the Gaza Strip to Europe and the United States. It’s a slogan rooted in a belief of the right for those who hate Israel to carry Hamas’s campaign of anti-Jewish violence around the world. That means in every town, city, state or country where Jews reside.

The proof that this “pro-Palestinian” activism had nothing to do with support for human rights and peace was made abundantly clear in the aftermath of Oct. 7. The atrocities carried out during Black Shabbat—during which 1,200 Israeli men, women and children were slaughtered, and 251 people were kidnapped and dragged back into Gaza to suffer further torments—did not give Hamas’s supporters pause. They didn’t wait for Israel to begin its military campaign three weeks later to ensure that these crimes would never again happen to condemn the Jewish state and its citizens as having gotten exactly what they deserved.

This has nothing to do with wanting a better life for Palestinian Arabs, since anyone who really wished them well would demand that they be freed from the control of Hamas. Instead, over the course of the following 19 months, this movement continued to support the cause of Israel’s destruction and the genocidal goals of the Palestinians.

The legitimization of this pro-Hamas movement was enabled by the political cowardice and willingness of many in the Democratic Party to buy into the toxic myths of ideologies like intersectionality, critical race theory and settler-colonialism, all of which falsely claim that Jews and Israelis are “white” oppressors who must be resisted and defeated.

The media’s responsibility

It has been abetted by corporate news media that have been acting as Hamas’s stenographers, accepting bogus, exaggerated figures of Palestinian casualties, as well as false claims of famine in Gaza, such as the recently debunked claims of CNN and NBC News that amount to blood libels. Mainstreaming these lies about Israeli indiscriminately killing Palestinians—when, in fact, the Israel Defense Forces takes more care to avoid civilian casualties than any other army in modern history—or carrying out a mythical “genocide” has consequences.

Those who falsely label Jews as mass murderers intent on killing all Palestinians, when in fact it is Hamas and other Arab groups that seek the genocide of the Jews, are not merely making journalistic errors or engaging in hyperbole. They are legitimizing those who believe that any and all tactics—“by any means necessary”—are justified in fighting and killing Israelis and Jews.

This is a symptom common to the American political left. We witnessed this last year when Bryan Thompson, the CEO of the UnitedHealthcare insurance company, was assassinated by a 26-year-old “activist” who was applauded and treated as a hero by many on the left. Such reactions were not limited to left-wing social media but were echoed by the “yes, but” comments from politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), when they condemned the murder but still rationalized the political positions that led to it.

As I noted at the time, this wasn’t the first time in American history that policy debates morphed into political violence. Anarchist bombings and assassinations of public figures, such as President William McKinley in 1901, were seen by some as a legitimate response to the excesses of capitalism during the “Gilded Age.” In the 1960s, an element of the movement protesting American involvement in the Vietnam War similarly became violent as the Weather Underground engaged in a campaign of domestic terrorism that involved larceny and murder, as well as bombings of sites like the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Those episodes, as well as the murder of Thompson, provided an ominous precedent for the latest iteration of left-wing activism that focuses its hate against Jews and Israel, rather than business leaders and their political allies.

That’s why no one should be surprised about what happened in our nation’s capital. Israelis and Jews have been under siege since Oct. 7, both in the United States and elsewhere around the world, as sympathy for Hamas and belief in the illegitimacy of the sole Jewish state on the planet has spread.

What ‘pro-Palestinian’ really means

It’s not good enough for those who oppose insurance companies or Israel to say that nothing justifies violence while also supporting the agendas of those who have already crossed the line from advocacy to murder. A desire to seek scapegoats or to apply toxic Marxist ideology to political disputes often leads to the same dismal conclusion. That is why decent people should disavow such causes rather than treating instances of violence as something that should impel us to do the bidding of those who claim to be “pro-Palestinian.”

It has long been apparent that in the current atmosphere that “pro-Palestinian” has become indistinguishable from antisemitism. Regardless of the mental state of the D.C. shooter or the denials of responsibility of anti-Israel groups, violence against Israelis and Jews was always the inevitable next step. Those who chant for Jewish genocide cannot disavow their role in legitimizing violence against Jews. The response from the U.S. government and decent people everywhere should be to isolate this movement and to take whatever measures are needed to ensure that such assassinations, coupled with the targeting of Jewish students on college campuses, come to an end.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.