What Did You Think ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Meant, Anyway?

For two years, the United States has mostly stood by and allowed terror-supporting radicals to metastasize on college campuses across the country. They have channeled terrorist propaganda, conducted intimidation campaigns against Jewish students and faculty, and at times have gone into the larger communities to attack Jewish-owned businesses. All the while, they have chanted slogans aimed at the annihilation of Israel and the Jews, including the slogan, “Globalize the Intifada!”

What does “Globalize the Intifada” mean? What did people think it means? The intifadas were violent outbursts of terrorism directed at Israelis and Jews in 1987 and again in 2000. The two campaigns resulted in over 6,300 fatalities, with the Palestinians getting the worst of it both times and resulting in far stricter controls on their movement and commerce. After the failure of the second intifada, Palestinians turned to Hamas for more direct terror campaigns against the Israelis and Jews in and out of the region.

 It also means this:

A man who shouted “Free Palestine!” fatally shot two Israeli Embassy staffers near a Jewish museum in downtown Washington in what law enforcement believe was an act of targeted violence.

The suspected gunman, 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez, was seen pacing outside the Capital Jewish Museum as attendees were leaving an event celebrating Jewish heritage on Wednesday evening. …

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said the attack appeared to be an act of targeted violence and that authorities believed Rodriguez operated alone.

Only in the legal sense. In the moral sense, a vast network of terror-sympathizing radicals created the conditions for this violence, and more violence to come. And an even larger network of progressive Academia leaders, political office-holders, and prosecutors allowed that toxic and already-violent movement to grow in strength and impunity … until people finally got murdered in the intifada the radicals wanted.

Since Donald Trump took office, the legal and financial environment for Academia has changed, but not enough to force them into shutting down the intifada-cheering terror-symps on their campuses. As Beege noted today, even Columbia hasn’t gotten the message, despite their mewling professions of regret over allowing their campuses to be used for a Judenrein campaign by radicals. Current president Claire Shipman used a graduation speech to extol Mahmoud Khalil, who used Columbia as a conduit for Hamas terror propaganda and violent intimidation campaigns.

Even on the rare occasions that police are allowed to do their jobs, local progressive prosecutors refuse to act. Alvin Bragg dropped cases against previous Columbia rioters. The NYPD just arrested 78 violent rioters at Columbia this month, but there’s very little confidence that Bragg will follow through on charges against them. In fact, there’s very little confidence that Shipman will expel these terror-cheering vandals, a step that Columbia has yet to take with any of its anti-Semitic radicals. 

And don’t even get us started on Harvard. They are still defying demands from the Trump administration to expel Ibrahim Bharmal, who physically assaulted two Jewish students in October 2023 during a pro-Hamas rally. Instead, Harvard Law Review granted Bharmal a $65,000 fellowship, a point that the Trump administration specifically raised in canceling grants that now total over $2.7 billion. While Harvard tries to get its alumni to cover the shortages, the Trump administration has continued to cancel even more funding, and the final price tag for Harvard’s complicity in the globalized intifada may go much higher:

The Department of Health and Human Services is terminating $60 million in federal grants to Harvard University, the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to force change at some of the nation’s most prominent universities. …

The Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, formed by the administration to address complaints of discrimination on college campuses amid protests over the Israel-Gaza war, said in March that it would be looking at more than $8.7 billion in multiyear grant commitments to Harvard and its affiliates to ensure the school is in compliance with federal rules. The task force includes representatives from HHS.

“Despite repeated warnings and opportunities for reform, Harvard has not demonstrated the necessary commitment to eliminate discrimination and ensure a safe, inclusive environment for all students,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email.

Harvard is part of the campaign to globalize the intifada. Columbia is part of the campaign to globalize the intifada. So are UCLA, MIT, Penn, and a number of other universities that coddle wanna-be terrorists and sacrifice the safety and education of their Jewish students and faculty to achieve that purpose. That expanding circle of impunity created by Academia and progressive politicians and DAs finally resulted in the assassinations of two young Israeli embassy workers by a flat-out terrorist that took all the signals of impunity and escalated his activism to murder.

Enough is enough. It is long past time to remove the impunity and start holding terrorists and their enablers accountable for their actions. Hopefully, Pam Bondi won’t limit her investigation to the “lone wolf” model and take a very hard look at RICO prosecutions for the groups in which Rodriguez operated. (Fani Willis would approve, no doubt!) The same model should be applied to the academic institutions that reward campus terrorism; cutting off the finances hasn’t taught these schools much, it seems. The Department of Justice should take a closer look at the Columbia library assault in particular to see whether federal prosecutions are warranted under civil-rights law, since Alvin Bragg is only interested in prosecuting NDA payments to porn stars.

It’s time to put an end to the intifada era in the US. In fact, it’s past time to do so, as the bodies of two young people attest. Their assassinations are a disgrace to those Americans who allowed the intifada globalization to fester and metastasize in the places where Americans seek education.