The metropolitan New York City area is home to the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world. For clarity, as most religions do not have a “diaspora”, it means that outside of the Jewish homeland of Israel, more Jews live in the greater NYC area than any location in the world.
Despite the size of the community, the last several years have seen the area’s Jews come under fire, both literally and figuratively.
In 2018, radical left-wing extremists started to win seats in Congress in response to the 2016 presidential election of Republican Donald Trump. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) was the first to win a seat in New York’s 14th Congressional District, followed two years later by Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th CD. The two woke New Yorkers pushed the outer limits of the Democratic Party, voting against measures like the Infrastructure Bill, and supplying security aid to Israel.
Rank-and-file antisemites followed their leaders. They shot up a synagogue in Pennsylvania in October 2018. Then another synagogue in California in April 2019, and a kosher supermarket in Jersey City (part of the NYC metropolitan area) in December 2019. By 2022 they were taking hostages in synagogues in Texas to free jihadi murderers in jail.
New York’s Woke members of Congress appreciated the cesspool of Jew hatred and coddled up to jihadists at New York City’s Columbia University who continue to celebrate the 2023 massacre of Jews in Israel, and raised money for the election campaign from Hamas supporters. Their incessant calls of “white supremacy”, “patriarchy”, “colonialism” and “imperialism” echoed the Columbia lies to distract from the toxic woke antisemitism embedded in the radical left and as a rallying cry for the socialist-jihadi campaign.
New York’s political class of radical leftists paraded reasons why Jews in school should not be given any police protection, including Rosie Mendez who claimed Jews discriminate against the gay community; Daniel Dromm who said Jews are robbing from public schools; Teamsters Local 237 which said taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay to protect Jewish students; and the American Federation of School Administrators which was appalled that taxpayer money should be spent in any manner on private schools (should the fire department not respond to a fire in a yeshiva?), amongst others.
On October 7, 2023, as the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was unfolding in Israel, New York’s Jews lay vulnerable and unprepared for the assault from the socialist-jihadi alliance.
New Yorkers are fed up with being targeted because of who they are. Angry with not being given time nor space to grieve for 1,200 people brutally massacred. Incensed that rioters show up at synagogues and Jewish Day Schools to scream that Jews have no history, heritage or rights in Israel.
The tide may be turning.
On October 15, 2024, the United States and Canada labeled Samidoun a sham charity funneling money to Palestinian Arab terrorist groups. White Plains-based WESPAC, which also funds terrorist groups, has not yet been banned or lost its tax-exempt status, but that may hopefully change soon.
Bowman lost in the Democratic primary in the summer of 2024 to a moderate pro-Israel candidate. AOC’s popularity is seemingly fading, as she was not able to secure 70% of the general vote in November 2024, her lowest tally since entering Congress, and among the lowest for any Democrat in New York City.
Trump’s victory and the Republican takeover of the Senate (and maybe retaining control of the House) may portend a defunding of schools that either take money from state sponsors of terrorism like Qatar, or give antisemitism a free hand to harass, intimidate, discriminate and attack Jewish students, faculty and buildings.
Individuals are scoring victories too. In October 2024, Columbia University’s paper announced that alumni are shunning their alma mater. It is likely due to the school’s disgusting treatment of Jews.
Still, the Democratic Socialists of America – endorsers of Bowman, AOC and others in the socialist-jihadi alliance like Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) – are still operating openly in New York, even as they call for violent attacks against Israeli civilians. Perhaps they will also come under prosecution as decent people and the government start to push back against the anti-Jewish vitriol.
Democratic Socialists of America label all Israelis as fair targets for violent attacks
The Battle of Vienna in 1683 turned back the Muslim Ottoman Empire’s quest for expansion and conquest in Christian Europe. The world we live in today is a byproduct of that battle.
History may one day consider what happened when the ‘Globalize the Intifada’ pogroms came for the world’s largest Jewish diaspora community. All of us have an opportunity to play a part in that battle.
A prevailing discordant theme among pro-Palestinian protestors is that they are mourning the loss of life and destruction of Gaza, while simultaneously calling “Intifada, Intifada.” The two statements are incompatible.
Mourning the loss of life is something that all people can understand. It is a sign of basic empathy to be upset by death, especially young civilians who are inherently innocent.
The current strategy of pro-Palestinians is to use those feelings as an on-ramp to the Diaspora Intifada, to taunt, threaten, intimidate and discriminate against Jews, even though mass death is a core part of the strategy of those same people calling for an Intifada.
The Diaspora Intifada is attempting to enlist those who prioritize empathy (typically liberals and progressives) onto their jihadi platform. It bypasses facts and reason and pulls at heartstrings, drowning the new recruits in an empathy swamp of toxic antisemitism.
By all means, hold a vigil and be sad for ALL people who have died if you like. But chanting “Intifada” and “by any means necessary” are genocidal calls for mass murder, the exact opposite of the empathy you claim to champion.
In the Middle East, the Iranian Proxy Intifada is being fought militarily, and Israel is correct in using aggressive force to repel those attempting a genocide of the Jews in the region. Outside of the region, one needs to politically and legally prosecute those advocating to the slaughter of Jews, and extract friends drowning in the empathy swamp of dead Palestinians.
ACTION ITEMS
Write the White House and your senator and representative to keep arms flowing to Israel in its multi-front defensive war. Tell them to push to rescind the antisemitic UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which makes it illegal for Jews to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Intifada the Intifada.
Write your alma mater to kick Students For Justice in Palestine off of campus as a hate group no different than the KKK. Get them to expel professors who lie that Israel is a ‘European colonial settlement,’ denying thousands of years of Jewish history and centrality of the land in Judaism.
Write to your favorite media and social media about a ‘Draw Mohammed Intifada‘ to explore whether calling for the massacre of Jews and drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet are simple matters of free speech to be done everywhere. Diaspora Intifada the Diaspora Intifada.
It is quite a bit of vile hypocrisy to watch the same “progressives” who denounced the alt-right marching “peacefully” in Virginia shouting “Jews will not replace us!”, defend woke and jihadi antisemites on college campuses.
The New York group Decolonize This Place, called to “globalize the intifada,” to come for all diaspora Jews.
They shouted in Times Square, “There is only one solution: intifada revolution!” while Palestinian Arab terrorists were still in Israel killing civilians. To cheers.
Anti-Zionists in New York City calling for the destruction of Israel as news of the massacre emerged
Not to be outdone, the Democratic Socialists of America’s “Anti-Zionist Resolution” was greeted with tremendous support by jihadi groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement which penned a letter “Do not allow Zionism to be normalized within your organization. We urge the DSA to truly demonstrate its commitments to revolutionary internationalism by upholding anti-Zionism.”
Extending the theme, people from the American Muslims for Palestine call for the destruction of both the “Zionist entity” and the United States as evil “imperial projects.”
Since the shouts to kill Jews were only using megaphones, the far-left argue that the chants were “peaceful” even though the rallying call is for the annihilation of a beleaguered minority-minority.
Hitler’s modern disciples are echoing his vile remarks from one hundred years ago when he took the stage at the Hofbrauhaus beer hall in Munich in a call to strip Jews of power, privilege and rights and distribute them to the working class. It laid the very foundation of the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe. Today’s “peaceful protesters” are calling for an encore.
The “peaceful protesters” crave a revolution to dismantle capitalism, and destroy Israel and the United States, coincidentally home to 95% of global Jewry between the two countries.
Shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is a criminal offense for causing imminent harm, while cross-burnings on Black property is illegal for causing intimidation and creating “a pervasive fear in victims that they are a target of violence.” How is shouting “kill the Jews” not condemned clearly and instead marketed as “peaceful protests” by far-left politicians like Rep. Jamaal Bowman?
Gaslighting is the action of repeatedly lying to someone to make them question their sanity and truth in order to control them. It is typically used in a relationship between two people where the liar continues to fabricate reality to make the other party docile to blindly follow the wishes of the deceiver.
The Palestinians and anti-Zionists use the disinformation technique in the media and schools to fictionalize Jewish history, in order to dismantle the Jewish State.
Holocaust Denial
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial. It remains a foundation of his worldview.
On September 6, 2023, Abbas claimed that Adolf Hitler wasn’t really an anti-Semite but hated Jews because of their “social role” and actions in society. The goal of the statement was clear: Jews brought their own destruction upon themselves through bad behavior. Palestinians are similarly not the antisemites portrayed in polls (93% according to the ADL), but hate Jews because of their actions in Israel/Palestinian territories.
Holocaust denial is part of the fabric of Palestinian society at this point. In August 2022, Abbas said that the Israelis had perpetuated “50 Holocausts” upon the Palestinians. Hamas, which controls 58% of the Palestinian parliament, wrote in its 1988 foundational charter that Jews are behind all of wars in the world and behave like Nazis themselves.
The world is picking up the vile Holocaust denial and inserting it into the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Roger Cohen wrote an editorial in The New York Times that equated the Holocaust and the Nakba. Nikolas Kristof wrote that today’s Anne Frank is a Syrian Girl trying to flee a civil war. Somehow the methodical targeting of defenseless Jews by their own government for torture and annihilation has become a metaphor for a migraine.
The steady toxic drip is intended to make Jews forget and distort the horrors of the Holocaust to advance pro-Palestinian goals. Perhaps some Israeli Jews will move to their grandparents’ countries in Europe. Maybe Israel will lay down its defensive weapons and let Iran build a nuclear weapon and not react to Palestinian terrorism with such force. Surely if the Europeans and United States who fought and defeated the evil Nazis echo Holocaust denial, Jews may join the chorus and revise their understanding of the slaughter of the last generation.
Israel is NOT the Homeland of Jews
Abbas’s September 6 speech led off with a history lesson that European Jews are not really Jews but converts from Khazar.
All of them.
Every European Jew that was forced to convert to Christianity or Islam, or was killed in pogroms, the Inquisition or the Holocaust over the past 1,100 years weren’t even real Jews.
Abbas is trying to miseducate the world that he cannot be an antisemite for hating Israeli Jews because their not even Semites. Further, they cannot claim any roots in the holy land laid out in the Bible because they are only newer converts in the case of Ashkenazi Jews, and Mizrachi Jews are actually from the Arabian peninsula (3:10 in speech).
The Palestinian leader called the United Kingdom and the United States “enemies” of the Palestinian people (4:30 in speech) for advancing the Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate which recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” when those Ashkenazi Jews had no historical connection to the land.
Abbas also absolved the Arab world for expunging its Jews after World War II. He accused Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion of making life unbearable for the Jews in the Muslim world so they would be forced to flee to Israel (5:50 in the speech).
Abbas gaslighted Jews that the Muslim world is not antisemitic and did not chase one million Jews out of their homes. Jews did it to themselves, much as Abbas’ doctoral thesis claimed that Zionists convinced Hitler to make life impossible for Jews in Europe to force them to immigrate to a land that was not even their homeland.
Repeated often enough, gaslighting works. People adopt the new narrative and blindly follow the parties with the power to mark history. Jews did it to themselves, as seen in millions of Jews who believe that the Kotel, the Western wall in Jerusalem, is Judaism’s holiest space and not the Temple Mount itself.
There is a new group called The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism which is trying to decouple the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies program in universities, and place it in “settler colonial studies” and put it in the context of “repressive work and solidarities” since “Zionism’s project extends beyond the borders of Palestine.” These efforts are now being pushed in the University of California school systems and at New York University. While there is pushback, over time, the antisemitic radicals will likely prevail.
The insidious inanity that Zionism is racism AND colonialism will eventually be taught to your children.
The binding of Palestinian antisemitism with Critical Race Theory is part of the global intifada to divorce Jews from the holy land and paint them as evil interlopers. The disinformation campaign is being waged to isolate Jews and make them doubt their own history and moral standing, to ultimately cave to the jihadist demands of the Palestinian wolves next door.
Martyrs are a core part of the Palestinian Arab psyche which goes to the heart of the ceaseless violence in the region. It may soon go global.
Martyrs as Palestinian “compass”
The Palestinian “martyrs” are held as the morale direction and highest aspiration of Palestinian “resistance” movement for “liberation” of all of the land of Israel.
The Palestinian Youth Movement says that “Our martyrs and prisoners remain our compass,” as it urged the Democratic Socialists of America to join them on their crusade for the destruction of the Jewish State.
Palestinian Media Watch translated the text of a Fatah run summer camp for children saying “They [the Martyrs] are moons, they are stars, they are the elite, and they are the ones who sacrificed their lives. They were and will remain in our memories and in the memory of their children and their grandchildren.”
Martyrs are Palestinian “heroes”
Dalal Mughrabi was a woman who killed 37 people including 12 children. The Palestinian Authority (PA) named public squares and elementary schools after her. She is a featured celebrity in Palestinian society. School children call her the “bride of Jaffa” to this day. Fatah, the political party of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, posted on its Facebook page about Dalal’s terrorist operation and referred to her as a “martyr” four times.
In 2020, the Student Union Council at Palestine Polytechnic University gifted the school with a gate named after Salah Khalaf, the leader of the Black September terror organization who planned the Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered in 1972. According to the Israeli watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch, there are four Palestinian schools named after Salah Khalaf. The PA said he “will always be [our] compass” … “whose death as Martyrs the Fatah Movement and the revolution presented the most spectacular aspects of pride, glory, and loyalty.”
New York City, April 2022
Martyrs are compensated
The Palestinian Authority pays “martyrs,” prisoners and their families according to a schedule of how long they sit in Israeli jails. The more severe the crime, the longer the sentence and larger payments to the martyr’s family. The PA pays these funds to “anyone incarcerated in the occupation’s prisons for his participation in the struggle against the occupation,” which could include Palestinians or Israelis, as long as they do not belong to Hamas. In this way, the PA tries to foment terrorism inside of Israel and take a more commanding role in the terror than its political rival Hamas.
Martyrs are absolved of any crime as “resisting occupation”
The Palestinian Arabs view all of the land “from the River to the Sea” as Arab land, and the State of Israel as a “painful settlement.” They believe that all Arabs in the region are under “occupation” and that they have a right to “resist” by any and all means, including violence. Such are the opinions in Al Jazeera, TRT World and Middle East Eye to name a few.
In summary, Palestinian propaganda states that all of Israel is illegal and violent reaction to that occupation – against civilians and military – is legal and legitimate. It celebrates those who have died fighting against the presence of Jews and encourages its youth to participate in the jihad to rid the land of Jews.
Going global
The BDS movement parrots this Palestinian propaganda. In response to the Democratic Socialists of America calling all Jewish Israelis fair target for attack on June 28, 2023, Rep. Ritchie Torres tweeted “Denying Israelis the status of civilians means declaring them fair game for violence and terror. If a naked justification of terror against Israel is not a sign of a demonic double standard against the Jewish State, I am not sure what would be.”
On July 30, 2023, Abbas spoke in Egypt about taking his war globally. As translated by PMW: “We also will submit lawsuits against the US and Britain for their responsibility for the Balfour Promise and its implementation through the British Mandate for Palestine… One of our most important weapons today is disseminating our Palestinian narrative, which confirms the Palestinian people’s existence on its historical homeland and its consecutive presence on this land for thousands of years. The authentic Palestinian narrative is currently gaining acceptance and sympathy worldwide.Our success in imposing our national narrative on human consciousness is in itself debunking the false Zionist and Israeli claims and narratives, which have strived and still strive to harm the image of our people and its legitimate struggle to restore its national rights.”
The Palestinian Authority is pushing its antisemitic deadly narrative beyond the Middle East that all Zionists are fair game for violent attack. The calls to “Globalize the Intifada,” the BDS’s “Mapping Project” which identifies Jewish institutions, and CAIR’s labeling of Jews as “enemies” are dead canaries in the coal mine. The PA is looking for money – perhaps from the $6 billion that the United States just handed the Islamic Republic of Iran – to expand its Martyrs Fund for anyone who attacks Zionists around the world. Civilized people everywhere must shut down the fictional narrative and the organizations which promote the terror.
There have been constants as well as changes in the century-long assaults by Palestinian Arabs against Jews in the holy land, yet the number of terrorist attacks goes up and down. It begs the question as to the reasons.
Latest Wave 2021 To Present
After years of relative calm between 2016 and 2020, Arab terrorism slaughtering Jews began to rise in 2021 and has not slowed down. The number of murdered Jews is on pace to surpass the number of murdered in the Gaza War of 2014.
There are a few reasons for the higher total: more multi-person deaths and a greater number of deaths by guns.
The years 2016 and 2017 saw two and four multi-person fatality incidents from terrorism, respectively. The totals then dropped for several years, with a single multiple person killing in 2018, when a Palestinian terrorist ran over two soldiers with a car. In 2019 and 2020 there weren’t any multi-person deaths. In 2021 there were two, each from rocket attacks from Gaza. That changed dramatically in 2022 when there seven, with five in the first half of 2023.
As the chart above shows, Palestinians have used guns, knives and cars for many years, while rockets and bombs have been used more recently in multi-victim attacks. Many more Arabs own guns than historically, both in Israel and in the West Bank. It has led to a huge spike in Arab-Arab violence in Israel, as well as capabilities for Palestinian Arabs to kill many people. Hundreds of guns were smuggled into the region by a Jordanian diplomat.
While guns contributed to the higher death toll, it doesn’t address the motivation behind Palestinians committing more attacks.
Palestinian Sentiments
Palestinians have polled themselves every quarter since 2000. Many sentiments have remained constant about Jews and Palestinian leadership, especially for Gazans. However, the attitudes of West Bank Palestinians have changed since 2020.
Poll findings saw two significant shifts of West Bank Palestinian Arabs’ attitudes in the June 2021 poll and the polls of December 2022 and March 2023; break-out changes which did not appear during the relatively quiet prior years.
While the majority of Palestinian have consistently wanted PA President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, the June 2021 poll showed a 10% jump of those in favor. It coincided with a ten percentage jump in West Bank Arabs who believe that the Palestinian Authority has become a burden on Palestinians.
In December 2022 the number of West Bank Arabs who said they feel safe dropped below 50% for the first time. In the March 2023 poll, the West Bankers who felt that the PA was a burden jumped another 10%, as did the number of people saying they wanted to dissolve the PA, reaching 49% for the first time.
These inflection points are also seen regarding West Bank Arabs’ attitudes about Israel.
From the March 2021 poll to the June 2021 poll, West Bank Palestinians desire to murder Israeli civilians inside of Israel jumped from 18% to 33%, while those favoring another multi-year pogrom called an “intifada” jumped from 29% to 51%. Those attitudes held constant or slightly declined until jumping again in December 2022 and March 2023. In March 2023, 57% of West Bank Arabs said they were in favor of terrorism inside of Israel and 51% support a new intifada.
A similar shift in attitude happened regarding West Bank Arabs support of a two-state solution, with those opposed jumping to 61% in June 2021 from 51% three months earlier. In March 2023, those opposed to two-states crossed 70% for the first time.
Palestinians in the West Bank have moved away from supporting the Palestinian Authority and a peaceful resolution to the conflict to seeking a war with Israel, with inflection points happening in May 2021 and the fall of 2022.
The Rapture of Violent Jihad, May 2021
The various charts show how Palestinians used few rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza during the “lull” between 2016 and 2020. It is not as though they didn’t have much to complain about under the pro-Israel policies of U.S. President Donald Trump. Those initiatives included:
First sitting US president to visit Jerusalem’s Western Wall (5/17)
Recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (12/17)
Signed Taylor Force Law banning funds to Palestinians if paid for terror (3/18)
Moved US embassy to Jerusalem (5/18)
Pulled US out of United Nations’ Human Rights Council due to obsession with Israel (6/18)
Pushed for major reforms at UNRWA (8/18)
Recognized Israeli sovereignty on Golan Heights (3/19)
Launched Israel-Palestinian Peace Initiatives (6/19 and 1/20)
Rejected notion that Israelis living in “West Bank” did so illegally (11/19)
Backed Israel in face of International Criminal Court allegations (6/20)
Despite all of the pro-Israel efforts, terrorist attacks against Israel were at all-time lows.
The world changed in several ways in early 2021. Joe Biden became president of the United States in January and in early May, after another round of elections in Israel, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid announced that they would form a coalition government to oust the long-time Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While the news that Netanyahu was on his way out was breaking on May 9th, Arabs were rioting between May 6 and 10 about the pending eviction of long-term Arab squatters living in apartments in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem who had refused to pay rent to the Jewish owners. Between May 10 and 25, riots spread into mixed communities in Israel and in the West Bank. Over that same time, Hamas rained rockets upon Israel.
The June 2021 PCPSR poll captured the change in mood on the Arab street well: “a semi-consensus that Hamas has won the May 2021 confrontation with Israel triggers a paradigm shift in public attitudes against the PA and its leadership and in favor of Hamas and armed struggle;… and the majority says Hamas, not Fatah under Abbas, deserve to represent and lead the Palestinian people.”
But Hamas did not follow-through to the liking of West Bank Arabs. While the political-terrorist group used language of incitement daily, it refrained from continuing to attack Israel. Even in May 2023, while Israel took out leaders and militants of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas remained on the sidelines.
New popular terrorist groups emerged to fill the thirst for violent jihad.
In September 2021, the Jenin Brigades was formed, the Nablus Brigades in May 2022, and then the Lions’ Den in August 2022. These West Bank terrorist groups led the spike in attacks against Jews in 2022 and 2023.
The December 2022 PCPSR poll captured the tide of events in the fall of 2022 which further increased West Bank Arabs’ quest to murder Israeli Jews: “The World Cup in Qatar helps to restore Palestinian public trust in the Arab World after years of disappointment; and in light of the escalating armed clashes in the West Bank and the near formation of a right wing and extreme government in Israel, the Palestinian public becomes more hardline while indicating a greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle.” The same poll showed almost every Palestinian thought that the PA had no right to interfere or arrest any member of the new terrorist groups.
Even as Hamas, Fatah and twelve other parties met in Algeria in October 2022 to reconcile and hold elections within the year, the Palestinian street chose to shun politics in favor of war. As one Palestinian said “This dialogue [Algerian Accords] will be recorded in the files within the long list of dialogues that the Palestinians have engaged in to achieve reconciliation, and it will not have any impact on the ground, whether in Gaza or the West Bank.”
Palestinians witnessed how violence stopped the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and believe that terrorism will yield greater rewards than negotiations. The right-wing Israeli government that formed in the wake of those attitudes is intent on proving them wrong.
Yet, despite readily available information, the press publishes its typical inanity about the conflict.
After two Palestinian terrorist slaughtered Jews at a restaurant and gas station in June 2023, The New York Times offered that “The vanishing likelihood of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, the entrenchment of Israel’s control and a weakening of the mainstream Palestinian leadership have all contributed to a rise in Palestinian militancy.” That NYT opinion-stated-as-fact is complete stupidity. If those things were true, there would have been more acts of terrorism during the Trump years, not the fewest on record.
Palestinians know that they will not be able to achieve their goal of a Jew-free region without a global jihad, as the Jewish state will not negotiate away its existence. Palestinian terrorism spikes when local Arabs believe that the world supports its “armed struggle” and Israel backs down to its demands.
That’s the plain truth as shown by statistics and the sentiments aired in Palestinian polls. And Palestinians are backing these new leaders, nascent terrorist groups armed with thousands of guns committed to the violent jihad.
First One Through 