Of Course It’s A Call For Mass Murder
I rarely write an article condemning another article. My usual goal is to inform, persuade and be critical of flawed or dangerous ideas.
However, I saw something so vile, so wrong-headed, so insane recently that I had to contribute my two cents. I am hoping that I can undo any damage the irresponsible previous garbage article may have done. There are gullible people out there, so who knows how many well-meaning people believed the idiocy that I subjected myself to in reading it.
While I am definitely not a regular reader, I get emails from The Forward, For those who don’t know, it is a very old far-left Yiddish newspaper (now in English) founded for socialists in 1897.
They appear to not have learned much during their 126 years.
It genuinely pains me to write an article criticizing the work of other Jews. Right now, unity is critical and only an extreme circumstance would cause me to write anything that doesn’t further that goal. But I also can’t let people, no matter who they are, actively aid our enemies (even if unintentional) or threaten our current unity forged at the cost of the lives lost in the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7.
Worse, I believe articles like this one allow bigots to justify their hatred, and encourage acts of violence, against us.
So what is this heinous diatribe?
I’m sure we all remember Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) excellent questioning—and takedown—of the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was a masterpiece of prosecutorial acuity, and Rep. Stefanik performed masterfully.
You have to be blind to not have been following, at least at a basic level, the antisemitism mushrooming at America’s universities. While it has been nationwide, some of the most egregious incidents happened at those three schools.
Until Stefanik’s performance at the recent Congressional hearing, the schools in question had suffered, as usual, no real consequences; there was no serious public outcry, and all three of the presidents slept smugly in their beds at night, self-assured in the knowledge that Jews never count as part of the “woke” obsession with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), confident anything said by opponents of DEI will be ridiculed and mocked as “racism.”
I myself have been called a “racist” for pointing out the massive hypocrisy of not counting Jews as any calculation of “diversity.”
Stefanik did such a good job that’s she was unfunnily mocked by “Saturday Night Live” in the most antisemitic display I’ve ever seen in mainstream American culture. She was also mocked by the other usual characters on the antisemitic left. The Hamas supporters in the media were, predictably, outraged.
However, I didn’t expect a throttle-wide-open, heinous, dishonest attack on what Stefanik said from a Jewish source.
The article1, written by Mira Fox, is titled “So what does ‘intifada’ actually mean?”, and appeared on Dec. 15.
One of Hamas supporters’ favorite anti-Israel chants, common on college campuses, is “globalize the intifada.” Clear-thinking people understand that this is a call for violence against us, as is “from the river to the sea.” Our enemies have tried to explain away both as “open to interpretation.” And, of course, their interpretation always happens to be that they are anodyne, or even positive, phrases that couldn’t possibly mean what they both very obviously mean, which is, of course, the genocide of Jews.
It reminds me of the days when pro-terrorist apologists kept telling us that “jihad” isn’t a “holy” war; it just means “struggle.” Yeah. Great. “Kamf,” as in “mein,” also means “struggle.”
So that argument never impressed me.
The article in The Forward begins similarly absurdly:
“On college campuses and city streets, the word ‘intifada’ has become central to pro-Palestinian protests. Signs proclaim ‘globalize the intifada’ and demonstrators often chant ‘one solution: intifada, revolution’ or ‘long live the intifada’ as they march. … Some see this as an open call for violence against Jews—recently in Congress, Rep. Elise Stefanik framed it as a call for Jewish genocide. But others say it is a peaceful term, calling for a nonviolent uprising against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade on the Gaza Strip.”
“Some see”? It’s all open to interpretation, you see. EVERYTHING for these people is ALWAYS open to “interpretation.” So, if you’re one of the “some” who “see” it this way, you are merely one opinion of many. You aren’t seeing the obvious and living in reality; it’s just a subjective opinion.
That goes for “one solution: intifada, revolution” as well. “One solution” and “revolution” couldn’t POSSIBLY be calls for genocide immediately after the worst attack on Jews, and the biggest loss of Jewish life, since the Holocaust. Nah, it’s just a call for a “nonviolent uprising.” We all know the connotations of “solution,” as in “the final.”
Maybe the Germans were just trying to solve a math problem when they used the phrase “final solution.” It’s open to interpretation.
Furthermore, Stefanik wasn’t stating the obvious. Fox says she just “framed” the use of “intifada” as a call for genocide against the Jews. (Side note: why do they always say “Jewish genocide”? We are, obviously, not carrying out the genocide. The genocide is against us.)
The use of the word “framing,” a 21st century leftist Orwellian favorite, is meant to imply that it was Stefanik, and all of us who agree with her, who are subjectively interpreting “Globalize the intifada” as a call for genocide.
Conversely, those who disagree aren’t “framing”; they are the sole purveyors of objective truth.
The key to understanding the antisemitic left is to understand that everything they say is an inversion of truth. They are peaceful, we are violent; they are diverse, we are racists; they are objective and honest, we are overly emotional and lie.
Fox then goes on to write that “The dispute comes from the difference between the word’s literal meaning in Arabic and its usage historically, and outside of its Arabic roots.”
So, the “dispute” rests on the literal meaning of “intifada,” and not how it is used in the real world? What kind of lame nonsense is that?
It reminds me of the meaningless distinction between the historic use of the swastika and the way we view it now. WHO CARES what it meant in the past? The people who wield it now are doing it to invoke Nazis. Period.
A description of all of the ways that you can say “revolt” in Arabic follows, because if “intifada” doesn’t mean “revolt” literally, then it must not be being used that way when Hamas members are murdering Jewish civilians in Judea and Samaria, or when members of the Islamic Jihad are firing rockets into Israel, as part of what they both label “intifada.”
She then quotes Mohammed Sawai as an authority. Unsurprisingly, he is a professor of Arabic at the University of Virginia. To assume that it’s not possible that he has an agenda is foolish in the extreme.
He explains (of course) that “jihad” merely means “struggle.” As in, I had a serious jihad with my desire to drink too much scotch last night. My car wouldn’t start this morning, it was a real jihad to get to work. I really want that doughnut, it’s going to be jihad time when I have to stop myself from eating it.
Right.
Then Fox, after letting professor Goebbles, I mean Sawai, explain away “jihad,” goes on to interpret Sawai’s version of the word by saying that what intifada really means is to “to shake off” or “dust off.”
As if you come off the trail after a hard day of rounding up your cattle, and then you intifada yourself to get rid of the dirt from a hard day in the saddle. Yippie-kay-yay!
He even sleazily tried to evade the obvious by saying that the connotation of the word as an “uprising” is new, as if that matters.
“It only acquired its revolutionary implications during the Iraqi Intifada in 1952, a series of strikes and riots protesting the monarchy at the time,” he said. “It is also used to talk about the Arab Spring, and other revolts against oppressive regimes.”
So when Arabs talk about “intifada” they are “only” talking about revolts against “oppressive regimes.”
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Does that sound familiar? It’s not genocide if the violence is against an oppressive regime. So, when they shriek “from the river to the sea” and then call for “intifada” to make that happen, it is a revolt, and potentially a very violent one. In other words, definitionally, it can’t be genocide, no matter how violent.
Wow.
For the record, according to the United Nations, genocide is defined as “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” Hamas has promised not just one 10/7, but as many as they can carry out. In their OWN WORDS their intent is the annihilation of the Jewish people. You can NOT support Hamas and not be advocating genocide.
They call what they do “intifada.” Their intent is genocide. Therefore, “intifada” is a de-facto call for genocide.
Fox also spoke with a guy named Daniel Lefkowitz, a professor of language and culture in the Middle East, also at the University of Virginia.
She laughably points out that he “lived in Israel for a number of years.” So, he MUST know his stuff, right? I mean, it was a “number of years.”
Lefkowitz “hypothesized that for most Palestinians, the word brings up memories of the First Intifada (1987-1993), a largely nonviolent Palestinian protest largely involving work stoppages, boycotts and demonstrations. Some Palestinians also attacked Israelis, mostly with small weapons such as rocks or Molotov cocktails, and on some occasions with firearms or grenades.”
Is anyone stupid enough to believe that if the Palestinians at that time had automatic weapons, grenades and other more effective explosives, that they wouldn’t have used them? And clearly, nothing can be “nonviolent” that involves Molotov cocktails and lethal projectiles anyway. This is the Arab-apologist version of the “mostly peaceful protests” nonsense during the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots.
But it gets even more absurd, and much worse.
“’The intifada, the shaking off, was a metaphor of effective claiming of a voice, presenting a situation to the world’s audience, but not engaging in the spectacular violence of the PLO, like plane hijacking,’” he said. “‘So that was seen as a very progressive movement.’”
Yes, the poor Palestinians were merely “claiming their voice” (another cartoonishly meaningless leftist cliché). They weren’t hijacking planes; they were just trying to shut down Israel’s entire economy, while using “small weapons,” so it was all totally OK.
Why not say that the PLO used hijacking and not thousands of missiles targeting innocent Israeli civilians, so they’re OK, too? Why not say that the missiles aren’t as bad as the sadistic activities of Oct. 7, so THAT is also “OK”?
How can any sane person think this way?
But Lekowitz really gives up the game when he says that the First Intifada was a “very progressive movement.” Violence against Jews isn’t just acceptable, it is “very” progressive. So apparently, there is a level of violence that is OK–if it is seen as “progressive.”
I was in college during the beginning of the First Intifada. The most common excuse, by far, for the violence against Israelis was that the “poor Palestinians” only had rocks while the big, bad, evil Israeli Defense Forces had automatic weapons.
It was absurd then, and it’s even more absurd now, because we know what happened during the following decades. Lethal force isn’t more or less righteous because it is more or less lethal. Rocks and Molotov cocktails were wielded in an attempt to murder Jews, and the good guys were, and always will be, the ones putting a stop to it.
But Lefkowitz invoked that old stereotype anyway (of course he did):
“‘It was the David-Goliath representation—stones against machine guns,” he added.”
It’s 1987 all over again!
Regardless, if someone were trying to murder me, with a rock or anything else lethal, I would expect a soldier or a cop to stop him. With lethal force if necessary.
That used to be common sense.
Then we get to apex foolishness:
“But for Israelis, and many Jews, the word brings up memories, instead, of the Second Intifada, a far bloodier Palestinian uprising characterized by suicide bombings on buses and at cafés that killed about 1,000 Israeli civilians. … So I think the same word quite reasonably calls up different meanings.”
Did you understand that? For the oh so peaceful Palestinians, exclusively, the word “intifada” evokes the “mostly peaceful” intifada. But for those bad, aggressive, mean Israelis exclusively, the word evokes the violent Second Intifada.
Peaceful Palestinians. Violent Israelis. Inversion of the truth.
Never mind that it was the same exact people, Palestinians Arabs, who carried out Intifada I, and its sequel–“We have better weapons, so now we can murder more Jews,” Intifada II.
Fox then concludes:
“That means it’s impossible to say, definitively, if the word ‘intifada’ is a call for violence or not—different people understand and use it differently, as is the case with so many words and symbols and, well, the entire narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israelis’ celebration of independence, Yom Haatzmaut, is a day of national grief for Palestinians mourning the Nakba.”
So it is “impossible to say” because some professor at the University of Virginia “hypothesizes” (his word) that the Arabs think of the “good” intifada, but the scary Israelis think of the “bad” intifada. And Yom Haatzmaut is “just like” the “Nakba.”
Never mind that Arab countries forcibly ejected roughly the same number of Jews as the number of Arabs displaced in 1948, or that Israel absorbed its Jewish refugees, while the Arabs have been using their “refugees” as a political cudgel against the Jews for 75 years.
Never mind that Israel was attacked in a war of aggression, and that war, not “ethnic cleansing,” was the cause of the “Nakba.”
Never mind that the Arabs were offered their own “Palestinian” state, but instead chose to attempt to, in their own words, “Drive the Jews into the sea.”
Because it’s all “interpretation,” and “impossible” to conclude that “intifada” means genocide and violence against Jews.
In reality, it is only “impossible” if your sole motivation is to excuse any type of Arab violence against Israel.
Then Lefkowitz gives us a taste of pure, unadulterated, undiluted academic nonsense:
“Languages change, words change. And the changes are often by community, and often political community,” said Lefkowitz in Fox’s story. “Words or phrases or labels or names change in their meaning, and often diverge in their meaning, often along the lines of communities that diverge.”
Words changing doesn’t make YOUR propagandistic re-defining of those words correct. You can redefine a dog as a cat, and thousands of very stupid people can believe that to be so, but it will never be true. Ever.
For their coup de grâce of idiocy, Fox defends Lefkowitz, who is himself defending the people who have made it their lives’ work to murder as many Jews as possible:
“Some online have alleged that anyone suggesting that ‘intifada’ is a violent term is attempting to obscure acts of Israeli violence against Palestinians. But that’s unlikely; many Jews and Israelis have real reasons to hear ‘globalize the intifada’ as a threatening chant. … but it’s just as genuine to argue that calling for a global intifada is a peaceful slogan.
“‘It certainly strikes me as meaning, to Arabs or Arab-sympathetic people, a globalization of a non-violent or minimally violent resistance movement,’ said Lefkowitz.” …
As for Stefanik’s charge in Congress, however, that calling for an intifada is equivalent with calling for genocide of Jews, not just violence, Lefkowitz sees less interpretational wiggle room. … “‘Intifada and genocide—to me that’s an unreasonable stretch,’ he said. “I don’t think there’s any reasonable interpretation of ‘intifada’ where it means genocide.”
It strikes him that way. Like a rock to the head during a peaceful intifada.
Millions of people, who we know want to destroy Israel BECAUSE THEY SAY SO, use the term “intifada” as a call to carry out that goal, and yet there are people among us who still believe, seemingly sincerely, that believing our enemies’ own words is not a reasonable “interpretation,” but “an unreasonable stretch.”
As we used to say during my younger days in Southern California: “Whatever, man.”
These people are, at best, total fools. We saw this in 1930s Germany, and we are seeing it now. Their side will (apparently) do/say anything to obscure any fact or idea that defies the DEI, leftist doctrine. Right now, they care more about their ideology than about their own people.
The rest of us MUST circle the wagons, and if they want us to provide safety for them, as Jews we should welcome them enthusiastically.
That requires that they realize how deeply in denial of reality they really are.
For that to happen, a massive awakening among those who still can’t grasp the seriousness of the situation needs to occur. We must do everything we can to encourage them to shake off (or should I say “intifada”?) their dangerous, foolish and short-sighted views. They need to accept that the evil is real, targeted against us, and that their nonsensical, childish, ignorant, foolish, delusional, self-deceptive, reality-denying worldview is lethal.
If Hamas’ attack was history repeating itself, so is the feckless and nearly incomprehensibly stubborn refusal to accept reality from some of the people who would be dead if they had been at Kibbutz Be’eri, Nahal Oz, Nir Oz, or any of the other targets of the sadistic attacks of Oct. 7.
So what will that take?
We need to do everything we can to persuade our fellow Jews that now is the time to remember that never again IS now. Teach them our history, why being a Jew is a GREAT thing, and remind them that we have been down this road before. This is an “all hands on deck” moment. We must do everything possible to convince people that whether you call it “jihad,” “intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” or “Holocaust,” it is all the same thing: a call to destroy each one of us (G-d forbid).
We have to wake them up.
Never give in. Never give up.
Am Yisrael Chai.
References
1. (https://forward.com/culture/573654/intifada-arabic-israeli-hamas-war-meaning-linguistics/)
Joshua Namm is a longtime Jewish community pro, passionate Israel advocate, and co-founder/co-CEO of Moptu, a unique social platform designed specifically for article sharing and dedicated to the principle of free speech.
