Words earn their meaning in how they are used. When a slogan is repeatedly screamed as an incitement to burn, stab, gun down, and terrorize people because of who they are or whom they support, it ceases to be mere rhetoric. It becomes a battle cry — and its meaning is what the battle cry does.

We have painful, recent proof of the sickness. In several separate, well-documented attacks in the United States, suspects shouted “Free Palestine” while carrying out murderous attacks. Investigations and prosecutions have treated these shouts not as abstract political slogans but as part of a violent intent to harm people identified as Jewish, Zionist, or supporters of Israel.

When the slogan is used repeatedly for arson, firebombs, knives and bullets, its practical meaning is indisputable: it is a call for violence against Jews and Israel supporters. Institutions that track antisemitic violence warn that normalizing chants tied to violence contributes directly to more attacks. We see that “Free Palestine” is a call to murder.

That ugly truth cannot be dressed up in euphemisms or by pleading free-speech. “Free Palestine” is the current moment’s “Allahu Akbar,” the chant of radical jihadists intent on killing “infidels.” For the assailants, today’s infidels are Jews and Israel supporters.

It begs the question of what a “Free Palestine” means when used so frequently in murderous rampages. Are there zealots killing because they want a peaceful Palestine, or is it more likely that they seek a Palestine that is free to kill Jews the way thousands of Gazans did on October 7, 2023?

The one area that became a “Free Palestine” was Gaza when Israel left the region in 2005. Within a year, the political-terrorist group Hamas won 58% of the Palestinian parliament election and a year later took over Gaza. In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre in Israel, 72% of Palestinian Arabs supported the attack and the majority still want Hamas to rule according to Palestinian polls.

“Free Palestine” means death to Israel supporters outside of Israel, and death to Jews inside of Israel. Knowing this, are western countries recognizing a Palestinian State to both get a more proportionate death toll in the war and to kill more Jews in their own countries?

Palestinian terrorism has gone global. The question is whether the Palestinian Authority’s “Martyr’s Fund” start to pay killers of Israel supporters globally (as predicted on these pages in August 2023).