Ep. 132: Domestic terror is the inevitable next step for Hamas sympathizers
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Hello, and welcome to Jonathan Tobin Daily. I'm JNS Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tobin. Now let's get started. For the last 19 months, mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of American cities. These demonstrations, 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 October 7th, 2023.

They have often also been indicative of the protesters' support for Hamas and embrace of the terrorist goals as well as their anti-Semitism, 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 have been cheered by many in the media and were 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 deserve 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

was doing 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 backing it up at home. After the tragic murder of two Israeli embassy staffers outside of an American Jewish committee event held at the Capitol Museum in Washington, D.C., it's obvious that this is now also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel's existence.

There is much that 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 say the assailant shouted, free, free Palestine, the same expression heard at countless pro-Hamas and anti-Israel rallies since October 7th, leads to an inevitable conclusion.

The leap from being willing to demonize Israelis, falsely accuse them of genocide or apartheid, and to rationalize and even support the barbarous murderers, rapists, and kidnappers of Hamas, and condoning or rationalizing violence against Jews on American soil, is not so long as some might have assumed. 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 in Washington. The groups who have organized these protests and engaged in anti-Semitic acts of intimidation and even violence will likely condemn the attack, and even as they continue to smear Israel and its supporters.

and has been the case often with those who oppose the Trump administration's efforts to combat anti-Semitism 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 anti-Semites.

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 protest 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 anti-Semitism that is never far from the surface whenever these activists speak or gather.

The chants of free, free Palestine are not about a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel that the Palestinians have made clear time and again they do not want. It is 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.

The chants of From the River to the Sea are, regardless of whether those shouting it can identify either body of water, a demand for the eradication of the Jewish state and the genocide and or expulsion of the 2.7.2 million Jews who live there. Those shouting Globalize the Intifada have not been speaking about some idealized protest movement spreading from Gaza to Europe and the United States.

It's a slogan rooted in a belief in the right of those who hate Israel to carry Hamas's campaign of anti-Jewish violence to wherever Jews live around the world.

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 October 7th. The atrocities carried out that day, 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 campaign to ensure that these crimes would never again happen, to condemn the Jewish state and its citizens as having gotten 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 the pro-Hammaz movement was enabled by the political cowardice as well as a willingness of many in the Democratic Party to buy into the toxic myths of ideologies like critical race theory, intersectionality, and settler colonialism that falsely claim that Israelis and Jews are white oppressors who must be resisted and defeated.

It has been abetted by corporate news media that acted 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.

Mainstreaming these lies about Israelis indiscriminately killing Palestinians when, in fact, the Israeli defense forces take more care to avoid civilian casualties than any other modern army 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 Palestinian 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, they say, 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 Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare Insurance Company, was assassinated by a young activist who was then 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 Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

in which 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, 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 Washington.

Israelis and Jews have been under siege since October 7th, both in the United States and elsewhere around the world, as sympathy for Hamas and belief in the illegitimacy of this old Jewish state on the planet has spread. It's not good enough for those who oppose insurance companies or Israel to merely 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 always 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 pro-Palestinians. It has long been apparent that in the current atmosphere, pro-Palestinian has become indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

But 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. 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 and the targeting of Jewish students on college campuses comes to an end.

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