Globalize the Intifada | First One Through

For centuries, antisemitic violence has been a grotesque feature of Jewish history—pogroms in Tsarist Russia, inquisitions in Catholic Europe, and, ultimately, the Holocaust engineered by Nazi Germany. These atrocities were largely confined to the Global North, where much of world Jewry lived and where the modern tools of mass murder were industrialized.

*Global North in blue, Global South in red*

But on October 7, 2023, the locus of mass antisemitic violence shifted decisively. The massacre orchestrated by Hamas, the ruling authority of Gaza, against Israeli civilians was not merely another terror attack—it was the first state-sponsored pogrom to originate from the Global South on the Global North in centuries. It marked a turning point in the nature of antisemitic violence: no longer the work of loosely organized mobs in the South or repressive imperial regimes of the North, but the deliberate, systematic assault by a democratically-elected government in the Muslim world, targeting Jews as Jews, and Jews and “colonizers.”

A Historic Shift

Historically, Jews living under Muslim rule experienced discrimination and periodic violence, but the scale of the bloodshed never approached that of Christian Europe. Pogroms in places like Fez (1912), Constantine (1934) and Baghdad (1941), were undeniably horrific, but they typically resulted in the deaths of dozens, not thousands. In most cases, these events were local eruptions of violence, not centrally planned exterminations.

That changed dramatically in the 1950s. The rise of Arab nationalism, fused with pan-Islamic identity and antisemitic European ideologies, led to the near-total ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Muslim world. From Iraq to Egypt, from Yemen to Libya, ancient Jewish communities were uprooted. Between the late 1940s and 1970s, over 850,000 Jews were forced to flee Muslim-majority countries. They resettled primarily in Israel, France, and North America. But while the Jews left, the hatred remained. For Jews, and for Western “imperialism.”

Hamas and the Theology of Erasure

Hamas is not just a terrorist organization; it is the elected governing body of Gaza, a polity not recognized by much of the Global North but very much embraced within the Global South. Its 1988 charter is steeped in genocidal antisemitism. It doesn’t distinguish between Israeli combatants and civilians. It doesn’t merely call for “resistance” against Israeli policy—it calls for the annihilation of Jews in the land, whom it labels foreign interlopers and infidels contaminating Muslim soil.

On October 7, 2023, this ideology became mass action. Roughly 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered—women, children, the elderly—tortured, raped, and mutilated in their homes and at a music festival, and 250 people were taken captive. The violence wasn’t spontaneous. It was premeditated, coordinated, and state-executed. It echoed the darkest moments of European Jewish history, but this time the origin was a Muslim-ruled territory in the developing world.

Hamas had launched many wars against Israel since it took over Gaza in 2007, most notably in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. But it never did a mass coordinated invasion of Israel. It never took hundreds of hostages. It never counted on regional allies of Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran to join the jihad.

*While Muslims are a minority in the Global North, they are the plurality on the Global South*

A Government Pogrom

What separates October 7 from prior attacks is its nature: it was not a riot nor mob action. It was not a fringe group operating in defiance of authorities. It was the government. Hamas planned the massacre for years. It diverted foreign aid and resources meant for schools and hospitals to build tunnels, train fighters, and manufacture weapons. And then it unleashed them— on civilians.

The western world has been slow to reckon with this fact. The idea of a pogrom—an antisemitic mass killing—carried out by a government of the Global South against the Global North challenges dominant narratives in international politics, which often frame power dynamics as North exploiting South, not the other way around. But facts do not bend to ideology.

The Silence and the Hypocrisy

Western voices that once said “Never Again” have hesitated to name October 7 for what it was. Some have even rationalized it as “resistance,” blurring the line between anti-Zionism and rank Jew hatred. But no cause justifies the butchery of innocents. No political grievance legitimizes the burning of children or the beheading of elderly Holocaust survivors.

October 7 was a pogrom. Not the first in Jewish history, but the first of its kind, launched from the Global South by a sitting government, acting with genocidal intent against a Jewish population it deems foreign and expendable.

It will not be the last. Members of the Global South have been moving to the Global North post de-colonization. The numbers have ramped considerably over the past decade, as the poorly named “Arab Spring” and civil wars launched tens of thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) into Europe and North America.

The First Pogrom from the Global South was greeted in western city streets with chants to “Globalize the Intifada,” because this war of annihilation is infused with radical Islamism and nationalism. The first battle is against the perceived island of the Global North inside the Muslim Global South: Israel. Europe and the United States are to follow.

Antisemitism is not bound by geography or ideology; it infects the right and left around the world. But the Muslim Crusade of colonizing the Global North is very much a function of region and philosophy. It is coming for a broad redistribution of power and wealth from North to South, and indoctrination of Islamic principles from South to North. It will achieve its aims through force of arms and diplomatic cover of an altered United Nations.

“the Jewish people suffering the worst and most murderous pogrom since the Holocaust.

–UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron

Thinking of October 7 in terms of the worst slaughter of Jews since the European Holocaust blinds people to the tectonic earthquake that is taking place. History is not simply repeating itself in killing Jews. A new chapter of crusades is upon us in which Jews are the first victims but will not be the last.

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

Globalize The Intifada With Socialists (May 2024)

Most Palestinians Are For Hamas. Most Israelis Are Not European Jews. (April 2022)

The New York Times Thinks that the Jews from Arab Countries Simply “Immigrated” (October 2016)

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.