Our friends on college campuses and Tiktok accounts around the country are big on hardliner social justice. True believers in Ta-Nehisi Coates, they. But they’re also big on chants to accompany this worldview, and one of their favorites is “Globalize the Intifada!”. And regardless of whether they know what “The Intifada” is, it’s being globalized as we speak. These past several months have seen multiple separate terrorist attacks on Jews across the western world. But this glorious uprising university students speak so fondly of has been gradually gaining strength for a quarter of a century now, and we may have all realized too late.
The recent deal struck in Sharm El-Sheikh is an encouraging development, and god-willing results in a permanent end to the war. But the very thesis of the article is that Jews are in danger of terrorism outside of the Middle East, and that antisemitic terrorism is a pandora’s box unable to be shut with a Gaza ceasefire. So, though we pray for an end to terror alongside an end to the war in Gaza, we need confront the sad reality that the cat is out of the bag, never to return. There will be a more upbeat article on the subject soon– I promise. But for now, let’s examine the problem of terrorism in the West.
A Pre-War Problem
Two Intifadas have happened since the late 80s. Both were bloody affairs featuring extensive Palestinian terror attacks, extensive Israeli crackdowns, and extensive human suffering for those involved. These years-long campaigns against any and all Israeli targets, be they IDF convoys or pregnant women, resulted in the deaths of thousands of (mostly civilian) Israelis and multiple times more Palestinians. That is what an intifada is. Sustained, brutal, targeted violence against anyone you consider an enemy, and the human tragedy associated with the inevitable retaliation.
But the two official intifadas aren’t the focal point of the article. This isn’t another Israel article. For our purposes, the Intifadas were horrific terrorist campaigns launched by the Palestinians because of the Israeli presence in Gaza and the West Bank. That’s all you need to know. No, I’m talking mainly about the other intifada, the one brewing against the West as a whole. So let me illustrate what I’m talking about with a personal anecdote.
I went to a tiny Jewish day school in my pre-Jesuit years. At most, there were 25 kids in a graduating class. Mine was more like 20. But if you were to drive past my old school, something would strike you immediately: the extensive security. There’s a wall surrounding the whole plot of land, with plastic sheets attached to it so that a prospective shooter couldn’t see through it. The number of private security contractors on site is remarkable, given the school’s size. Every year I was there, security ate up an increasing amount of the budget. At another Jewish school, even tinier than mine, a multiple-inch-thick concrete wall has been put up with a metal gate controlled from the inside. The private sector is growing to compensate, with firms like Shomer Texas forming security contracting businesses specifically to protect Jews at events.
I can tell you with great confidence that those things aren’t happening just because we’re nervous. The walls exist for a reason. The security exists for a reason. It’s because radical antisemitic violence, linked to a hatred of Israel, has been growing for multiple decades now. It’s because bomb threats are not some abstract concept, and neither are shootings. Both schools has received threats of both attacks. In this very metroplex, a Pakistani man took four Jews hostage before an FBI rescue team killed him. There was a time when that concrete wall didn’t need to exist, a time I remember well.
No, it’s not because we’re nervous. It’s because of the globalized intifada.
A Wartime Problem
Of course, I speak of these security measures as responding to things in the past. Bombings, shootings, threats, and the like. But they are a response to current events, too.
I’ll cover three terrorist attacks in the Western world against Jews here. Keep in mind, there have been thousands upon thousands of less-reported incidents of Jews being beat on the streets of Europe or of attempted fire bombings of synagogues. But in the interest of brevity, I cannot cover every incident. So here are three:
Shooting of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim
On May 21st, at a reception for members of the D.C. diplomatic community aimed at “fostering unity and celebrating Jewish heritage,” 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez opened fire on two staffers for the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C.
Both fell to the ground, Lischinsky already dead. Sarah Milgrim began to crawl away, when Elias shot her multiple more times, before finally executing her when she tried to sit up.
Lischinsky was 30 years old, and Milgrim just 26. Yaron was planning to propose to Sarah just a week after their murder. Elias Rodriguez, a far-left-winger from Chicago, flew from his home city to D.C., purely with the attack in mind. This was a planned act of terrorism on American soil. This is what Intifada looks like, America.
2025 Boulder Fire Attack
On June 1st, a group of Jewish residents of Boulder, Colorado held a “Run for Their Lives” event, where participants jog in honor of the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. When the participants began to arrive at the meeting point, Egyptian national Mohammed Sabry Soliman, disguised as a gardener, utilized a makeshift flamethrower to set alight 15 people, as well as a dog. After an agonizing, month-long fight against 3rd degree burns, 82-year-old Karen Diamond succumbed to her wounds in the hospital.
And the worst part about the attack, apart from murdering an 82-year-old woman, injuring 15 (including a Holocaust survivor), and setting a dog on fire, is the fact that the terrorist won. the Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives made their events much more private affairs after the attack and after continued verbal harassment from those who cared little about what Soliman did. They were forced to retreat into the shadows, just as the terrorist wanted.
2025 Manchester Yom Kippur Attack
Just a few days ago, as Jews around the world crowded into synagogues for their holiest day of the year, an Islamic extremist in Manchester, England, had different plans. As often happens, the shul was overflowing with worshippers on the best-attended service of the year, with several people outside the building.
Syrian migrant Jihad al-Shamie proceeded to ram his car into the Jews outside, exit the vehicle, and began stabbing anyone he could find. Private synagogue security rushed to the doors and held them shut, heroically stopping al-Shamie from entering the building. Manchester Police arrived on scene minutes later, and shot dead Jihad, who was wearing a fake bomb vest, though they tragically killed an innocent in the crossfire. Ultimately, two Jews were killed. Police have thus far arrested six people in connection with the case, likely indicating a coordinated terror cell operating within Britain.
Prime Minister Kier Starmer called the attack “shocking”. But it wasn’t remotely shocking. Every Jew in the UK and around the world knew what was going to happen sooner or later. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. It was precisely Starmer’s refusal (and that of every Prime Minister since Tony Blair) to scrutinize the people coming into Britain that caused this. And to top it all off, it seems our friend Jihad was out on bail for an alleged rape charge when he did this.
Apart from being a perfect microcosm of the current situation in the United Kingdom, the attack proves one thing: that people like me cannot walk the streets of Europe while being sure of our own safety anymore. My family just cancelled its planned European vacation because a yarmulke in Europe is a big red bullseye for any radical looking to score terrorism points. A majority of observant European Jews (~75%) are considering leaving, and a significant minority of European Jews overall (~38%) are saying that they’ve kept the option on the table, according to the Fundamental Rights Agency, an EU organization aimed at collecting data related to the UN’s definition of ‘fundamental rights’. Europe ought to hang its head in shame, instead of the insufferable, arrogant pride it carried with it for decades. They globalized the Intifada on behalf of the terrorists.
Not Purely Preventative
Hopefully you can see by now that the walls mentioned at the beginning of the article aren’t the result of overly-anxious school administrators and parents. They aren’t overreactions, nor are they “just precautions”. They are, in some cases literally, concrete measures taken to combat concrete threats. The Intifada is indeed being globalized, as these terrorist attacks indicate. It’s not Israelis that will be footing the bill, but diaspora Jews. Your neighbors and friends. Your countrymen.
The problem is that walls are a stopgap solution. They can’t keep the rising tide of antisemitic terrorism out forever. That is something American society as a whole must do. Jews cannot stop this alone. Until America reckons with the fact that the War on Terror isn’t over just because we want it to be, and that the threat of Islamic extremism is greater than many realize, the roots of these attacks will go unaddressed. We will never prevent them with walls alone. We will prevent them with an American society that brings Jews and Christians together in actual solidarity and unanimous condemnation of terrorism.
