Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?

“There’s something happening here.”

Stephen Stills wrote those words sixty years ago for Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth. He did not tell listeners exactly what was happening. He told them to notice.

“Stop, hey, what’s that sound?”

For Jews today, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to hear it.

In Britain, years of anti-Israel demonstrations were followed by attacks on synagogues and Jewish institutions, the murder of two Jews at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and the stabbing of two visibly Jewish men in Golders Green.

Finally, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Britain to “open their eyes to Jewish pain, Jewish suffering and Jewish fear.”

He was even more explicit about a slogan common at anti-Israel demonstrations: “If you stand alongside people who say globalise the intifada, you are calling for terrorism against Jews.”

“Everybody look what’s going down.”

Australia had its warnings too. Antisemitism surged after October 7. Jewish institutions were targeted. Then came Bondi Beach.

On December 14, 2025, gunmen opened fire on Jews celebrating Chanukah by the Sea. Fifteen victims were murdered. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an “act of evil antisemitism.”

The warnings had become bodies.

The question is no longer whether every protester is an antisemite or every criticism of Israel antisemitic.

The question is whether something is happening here.

Britain’s leaders now say so. Australia’s leaders now say so.

American Jews should not need another massacre before believing their own eyes and ears.

America has already had Pittsburgh, where 11 Jews were murdered in synagogue; Poway, where a woman was murdered at Passover services; and Jersey City, where Jews were hunted inside a kosher market.

In 2025, two Israeli Embassy employees were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Days later, Jews demonstrating in Boulder, Colorado, for Israeli hostages were attacked with Molotov cocktails. Hostages were taken in a synagogue in Texas. An armed man rammed his truck into a Jewish school in Michigan.

The ADL recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in America in 2025—17 every day. Antisemitic assaults reached a record high.

Yet some institutions still debate the meaning of the sound.

In 2023, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT were asked before Congress whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ rules. Instead of an immediate yes came answers about context.

In New York, before becoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani repeatedly refused to condemn “Globalize the intifada.”

Jews understand.

The Second Intifada meant suicide bombers on buses and in cafés and restaurants. It meant the deliberate murder of Jewish civilians. Now the slogan is shouted in America while American Jews are assaulted and Jewish institutions require armed guards.

*Rally against antisemitism outside Central Synagogue after man punched a person inside during services.* *He had social media littered with posts about Israel and Judaism*.

Stephen Stills’s sixty-year-old warning suddenly sounds less like history. “There’s something happening here.” Now.

The university presidents wanted context. The mayor of the American city with the largest Jewish population wanted to explain intifada.

Jews have context. Pittsburgh is context. Poway is context. Jersey City is context. Boulder is context. Washington is context. Britain is context. Australia is context.

Stop. Hey. What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.