{"id":121378,"date":"2025-05-23T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T15:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=121378"},"modified":"2025-05-23T09:10:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T07:10:40","slug":"23-05-108","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=121378","title":{"rendered":"Domestic terror is the inevitable next step for Hamas sympathizers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Domestic terror is the inevitable next step for Hamas sympathizers<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The murders at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., are a warning that \u201cpro-Palestine\u201d activism is leading to antisemitic violence.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Anti-Israel demonstrators hold a rally and march to the national headquarters of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to protest the arrest of Palestinian activists, as well as Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip, April 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein\/Corbis via Getty Images.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For the past 19 months, angry mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of major American cities. These demonstrations, tent encampments and building takeovers have not just been expressions of opposition to Israel\u2019s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They have also often been indicative of the protesters\u2019 support for Hamas and the embrace of terrorist goals, as well as their antisemitism\u2014something that was made obvious by the way they have targeted Jews during the course of their \u201cactivism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet rather than being isolated and widely condemned, these pro-Hamas activists and demonstrators have been cheered by many in the media and even rationalized by former\u00a0President Joe Biden<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Vice President Kamala Harris<\/a>, as well as their party\u2019s left-wing leaders, who spoke of them as idealists who \u201cdeserved to be heard\u201d and validated, even if they disagreed with some of what they were saying.<\/span><\/p>\n

In doing so, they were ignoring the warning signs that the pro-Hamas movement was 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 committing it at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

After the tragic\u00a0murder<\/a>\u00a0on Wednesday night of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., it\u2019s obvious that this is also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel\u2019s existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is much we don\u2019t 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 have reported that the assailant shouted \u201cFree, free Palestine\u201d\u2014the same expression heard at countless pro-Hamas and anti-Israel rallies since Oct. 7\u2014leads to an inevitable conclusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

A short leap to violence<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for words to turn into action\u2014from being willing to demonize Israelis, falsely accuse them of \u201cgenocide\u201d or \u201capartheid,\u201d and rationalize or even support the barbarous murderers, rapists and kidnappers of Hamas, and then condoning or rationalizing violence against Jews and Israelis on American soil.<\/span><\/p>\n

We will be told in the coming days that the bloodshed in Washington has nothing to do with \u201ccriticism\u201d of Israel or its policies.<\/span><\/p>\n

There will be distinctions made between what will be described as \u201cmostly peaceful\u201d pro-Hamas demonstrations and the murder. The groups that have organized those protests and engaged in antisemitic acts of intimidation, and even violence, will likely condemn the murder as they continue to smear Israel and its supporters. And, as has been the case with those who oppose the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to combat antisemitism 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\u2019s priority should be to defend the free speech of Hamas supporters and antisemites. Concern for the rights and welfare of these Israel-haters will be voiced, especially by left-wing Jewish groups.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it should be remembered that while the right to peaceful and legal protests should be defended, the violent nature of much of what is now termed \u201cpro-Palestine\u201d activism is no accident. The same is true for the antisemitism that is never far from the surface whenever these supporters of terror speak or gather.<\/span><\/p>\n

What those provocative chants mean<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The chants of \u201cFree, free Palestine\u201d have nothing to do with the freedom of people in Gaza who were not \u201coccupied\u201d when they attacked Israeli communities and committed unspeakable atrocities on Oct. 7. They are not about a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel, which the Palestinians have made clear time and again they do not want. It\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chants of \u201cFrom the river to the sea\u201d are, regardless of whether those who are shouting it can identify either body of water, a demand for the eradication of Israel and the genocide or expulsion of the 7.2 million Jews who live there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those shouting \u201cGlobalize the intifada!\u201d have not been speaking about some idealized protest movement spreading from the Gaza Strip to Europe and the United States. It\u2019s a slogan rooted in a belief of the right for those who hate Israel to carry Hamas\u2019s campaign of anti-Jewish violence around the world. That means in every town, city, state or country where Jews reside.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proof that this \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d activism had nothing to do with support for human rights and peace was made abundantly clear in the aftermath of Oct. 7. The atrocities carried out during Black Shabbat\u2014during which 1,200 Israeli men, women and children were slaughtered, and 251 people were kidnapped and dragged back into Gaza to suffer further torments\u2014did not give Hamas\u2019s supporters pause. They didn\u2019t wait for Israel to begin its military campaign three weeks later to ensure that these crimes would never again happen to condemn the Jewish state and its citizens as having gotten exactly what they deserved.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s destruction and the genocidal goals of the Palestinians.<\/span><\/p>\n

The legitimization of this pro-Hamas movement was enabled by the political cowardice and willingness of many in the Democratic Party to buy into the toxic myths of ideologies like intersectionality, critical race theory and settler-colonialism, all of which falsely claim that Jews and Israelis are \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors who must be resisted and defeated.<\/span><\/p>\n

The media\u2019s responsibility<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It has been abetted by corporate news media that have been acting as Hamas\u2019s stenographers, accepting bogus, exaggerated figures of Palestinian casualties, as well as false claims of famine in Gaza, such as the recently\u00a0debunked<\/a>\u00a0claims of\u00a0CNN<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0NBC News<\/em>\u00a0that amount to blood libels. Mainstreaming these lies about Israeli indiscriminately killing Palestinians\u2014when, in fact, the Israel Defense Forces takes more care to avoid civilian casualties than any other army in modern history\u2014or carrying out a mythical \u201cgenocide\u201d has consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those who falsely label Jews as mass murderers intent on killing all Palestinians, when in fact it is Hamas and other Arab 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\u2014\u201cby any means necessary\u201d\u2014are justified in fighting and killing Israelis and Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a symptom common to the American political left. We witnessed this last year when Bryan Thompson, the CEO of the UnitedHealthcare insurance company,\u00a0was assassinated<\/a>\u00a0by a 26-year-old \u201cactivist\u201d who was 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 \u201cyes, but\u201d comments from politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), when they condemned the murder but still rationalized the political positions that led to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0at the time, this wasn\u2019t 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 \u201cGilded Age.\u201d 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 and murder, as well as bombings of sites like the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why no one should be surprised about what happened in our nation\u2019s capital. Israelis and Jews have been under siege since Oct. 7, both in the United States and elsewhere around the world, as sympathy for Hamas and belief in the illegitimacy of the sole Jewish state on the planet has spread.<\/span><\/p>\n

What \u2018pro-Palestinian\u2019 really means<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It\u2019s not good enough for those who oppose insurance companies or Israel to 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 often 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 those who claim to be \u201cpro-Palestinian.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It has long been apparent that in the current atmosphere that \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d has become indistinguishable from antisemitism. 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. Those who chant for Jewish genocide cannot disavow their role in legitimizing violence against Jews. 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, coupled with the targeting of Jewish students on college campuses, come to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong> – is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS \u201cThink Twice\u201d podcast, both the weekly video program and the \u201cJonathan Tobin Daily\u201d program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Domestic terror is the inevitable next step for Hamas sympathizers Jonathan S. Tobin The murders at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., are a warning that \u201cpro-Palestine\u201d activism is leading to antisemitic violence. Anti-Israel demonstrators hold a rally and march to the national headquarters of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to protest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121378"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121400,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121378\/revisions\/121400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}