We Knew How This Would End

They chanted “Globalize the Intifada.” Some applauded. Others rationalized. Many remained silent. But we—those of us who know our history, who have read between the lines—knew exactly what was being summoned.

Today, two Israeli embassy officials are dead, reportedly gunned down by an assailant shouting “Free Palestine.” This isn’t an isolated act of violence. It’s the chilling realization of a slogan too many in the West defended as metaphor. But it was never metaphor. It was a promise.

We were told the chant was symbolic, aspirational, even poetic. “Intifada,” they claimed, means “shaking off”—an uprising against oppression. But that was never the meaning embraced by those who shouted it in streets and on campuses. Not in Jenin. Not in Ramallah. And not in New York or London or Los Angeles. The chant was not academic. It was not abstract. It was an invocation of a very real and bloody history. In practice, “intifada” has meant suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings, lynchings. It has meant buses turned into fireballs, cafes reduced to rubble, and playgrounds littered with shrapnel. And now, once again, it means Jews murdered for being Jews—this time in diplomatic service, thousands of miles from any battlefield.

To those who insisted “Globalize the Intifada” was a cry for justice: where are your voices now? Where is your condemnation? Your introspection? Your recognition that words lead to actions and chants become battle cries?

This is not a call for censorship. It is a call for moral clarity. Because what has become increasingly clear over the past seven months is that antisemitism has learned to dress itself in the clothing of anti-Zionism, and the world is all too eager to compliment its wardrobe. The murder of Israeli officials is not an aberration—it is the natural consequence of a global discourse that has normalized the dehumanization of Jews under the guise of human rights.

Jewish students have been harassed, their dorms barricaded, their safety mocked. Israeli flags have been torn down. Synagogues have been vandalized. Jews have been told to hide their stars, their names, their voices if they want to stay safe. And through it all, the world has equivocated. It has offered false equivalencies. It has demanded that Jews prove their commitment to justice by abandoning their sense of peoplehood.

Let’s be clear: calling for the death of Jews is not resistance. It is not justice. It is not solidarity with Palestinians, whose lives and aspirations are themselves desecrated when their name is weaponized in acts of terror. It is hatred—pure, old, and deadly.

We who warned of this were not hysterical. We were not overreacting. We were not stifling debate. We were reading the signs. And the signs said: this will not end with slogans. It will end, as it always has, in blood.

So no, we do not accept your silence. Not anymore. If you marched beneath those words, if you applauded them from your classroom or your pulpit, then you must answer for what they have become. And if you are still wondering why Jews feel afraid, why we refuse to remain quiet—this is why.

We knew how this would end. And now, we mourn not only the dead, but the world’s refusal to hear us until it was too late.