Charles Fain Lehman This Is What an Intifada Looks Like The American anti-Israel movement has radicalized.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/terror-attack-boulder-colorado-mohamed-soliman
Since November 2023—“fairly regularly, sometimes weekly”—a group of Boulder, Colorado, residents have held marches advocating for the release of Hamas’s hostages in Gaza. The regularity of these marches likely contributed to Sunday’s targeted attack, in which a man named Mohamed Soliman allegedly threw Molotov cocktails at the marchers while yelling “end Zionists” and “Palestine is free.” The FBI is investigating the incident as an “act of terror;” the Department of Homeland Security has claimed Soliman was an illegally resident Egyptian national.
Soliman’s assault is the third high-profile anti-Israel and anti-Semitic terror attack in the U.S. in recent months. It follows the double murder outside of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Museum less than ten days ago and the attempted firebombing of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home in April. The increasing tempo of violence makes the pattern hard to ignore: the American anti-Israel movement has radicalized.
It is also hard not to draw a connection between the rhetoric used by radical protesters over the past two years and the recent wave of violence. “There is only one solution,” students and marchers have chanted, “Intifada! Revolution!” This—lighting humans on fire to advance your political goals—is what an Intifada looks like. And until we treat it as such, and respond with the full force of the law, it will continue to endanger lives.
The Intifada, after all, was never a peaceful movement. Literally meaning “uprising,” the first Intifada (1987–1990) and second (2000–2005) were marked by frequent violence, with the second resulting in nearly 1,000 Israels killed or injured. Any Israeli who lived through the second Intifada will tell you that they still think twice about where to sit on a bus, remembering the ever-present risk of suicide bombings.
That’s what made it so galling when those of us who objected to such chants were dismissed as overreacting to harmless student rabblerousing. Consider the revisionism offered by the University of Virginia’s Daniel Lefkowitz to the progressive Jewish outlet The Forward. Intifada, he claimed, “certainly strikes me as meaning, to Arabs or Arab-sympathetic people, a globalization of a non-violent or minimally violent resistance movement.”
It certainly didn’t mean “non-violent or minimally violent” to Soliman, or to D.C. shooter Elias Rodriguez, or to Pennsylvania arsonist Cody Balmer. And it certainly didn’t mean that to their victims—the casualties of what is beginning to look like the first American Intifada.
The issue isn’t just calls for Intifada. Claims that Israel is committing “genocide,” demands for a Palestine “from the River to the Sea,” and the routine vilification of “Zionists”—a label invariably applied to Jews—all function to legitimize terrorism.
This is not to suggest that protesters’ speech should be silenced, no matter how offensive. Nor does it mean that anyone who criticizes Israel’s conduct in Gaza is tacitly condoning terror.
The point, rather, is that the American radical anti-Israel movement has built the intellectual scaffolding for—and in many cases all but invited—the violence now playing out in places like Boulder. When you call for “Intifada,” you cannot feign surprise when someone takes that call literally. Whatever your legal right to speak, that is the outcome you invoked.
Of course, the radical movement hasn’t limited itself to protest. It has employed vandalism, rioting, and the disruption of critical infrastructure. As Christopher Rufo and Dave Reaboi have explained in City Journal, radical activists see these actions as part of a continuum—different tactics serving the same strategic goal. While many draw a clear line between peaceful protest and throwing Molotov cocktails, the radical Left does not. To them, it’s all one and the same.
Once we acknowledge that the Intifada is here, the question becomes: what should be done about it? As Tal Fortgang wrote in City Journal following the Jewish Museum shooting, the answer is to recognize the escalatory nature of “civil terrorism” and crush it before it turns into murder.
This doesn’t mean targeting speech. It means prosecuting the associated crimes with full force. Charge vandals, arsonists, and those who block roads “for Palestine.” Dismantle radical groups that openly embrace revolutionary violence. Where the law permits—as in the D.C. shooting, or potentially the Boulder firebombing—pursue the death penalty and make an example of the offenders.
If the past two months are any indication, this won’t be the last attempt to use terror in service of nihilistic goals. The original aim of Intifada violence was to break the will of the Israeli public. The goal now is no different: to bend American policy through mayhem and fear.
There is no credible response other than to reject these tactics outright. Political violence happens because we let it happen. America’s leaders must not let it continue.
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