KINSELLA: Words being used to radicalize angry people against Jews

Article content

Words.

In Washington, D.C., two Israeli Embassy staff were gunned down in the street on May 21. They were assassinated as they were leaving the Capital Jewish Museum by a man who fired 21 bullets into the bodies of the young couple, whose names were Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.

The man waited for the police to arrive. When they did, he pulled out a red keffiyeh and started shouting, “Free free Palestine.” Some time later, when speaking to investigators, the man said: “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

Words.

A couple days later, in the obligatory reports about the dark origins of the alleged killer’s hate, it was revealed that he had written a manifesto titled “Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home.” The manifesto railed against “atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestine” and called for “armed action.” Violence is “the only sane thing to do,” the manifesto said.

Previously, the alleged killer had many years of involvement with something called the Party for Liberation and Socialism. Among other things, that group has celebrated Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 Jews in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and published a statement on that date declaring: “Resistance to apartheid and fascist-type oppression is not a crime! …The actions of the resistance over the course of the last day is a morally and legally legitimate response to occupation.”

Words.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

Eleven days after the killings in Washington, another attack on Jews: This time, in Boulder, Colorado. As a small group of elderly Jews gathered to call for Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages, a man threw firebombs at them, injuring eight, some critically. Police said the accused had a “makeshift flamethrower,” as well, and — like the shooter in Washington — had been yelling, “Free Palestine. “End Zionists,” too.

The man, an Egyptian national, had reportedly been in the United States illegally. Less is known about how he was radicalized. It’s noteworthy, however, that he and the Washington shooter allegedly used the same words: “Free Palestine.”

Words.

Those words — like “genocide,” “Intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” and others — have been heard many, many times in the 600-odd days since the atrocities of October 7. They are ubiquitous now, tossed around like confetti at “anti-Zionist” university encampments, and at antisemitic mob scenes outside synagogues and gatherings of Jews, across North America and Europe.

The words are important, because hateful words always, always precede hateful deeds. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot fashion a Jew-hating terrorist out of thin air. You need to radicalize him, first, using words that denude Jews and their allies of their humanity, and which obliterate all truth.

For almost two years, I have been researching and writing a book — and helping to lead a documentary — that examines the critical importance words have played in the explosion in antisemitism around the world since October 7. The book and the documentary take the position that a coordinated, well-funded propaganda campaign has targeted Jews and Western democracy, and it is winning the information war.

In its Charter, Hamas is pretty open about this. “Words and deeds,” the 1988 Hamas Charter declares, are equally important, and are both required to defeat what it calls “the Zionist Nazis” and “the infidels in the land of the Muslims.”

Words.

The word terror is defined as violence committed to advance some ideological cause. So, what happened in Washington, D.C. and Boulder, Colo. in the past few days are inarguably terror: Using violence to achieve a political goal. It is not difficult to ascertain what that goal is, either: The shooter in Washington and the bomber in Boulder both used the same words: “Free Palestine.” When they tell you want they want, believe them.

If you’ve been paying any attention at all, then, you will already know that those words — and the other recurring refrains, noted above — have echoed through the streets of Toronto and Montreal and Ottawa and many other Canadian cities in recent months.

And the words are not mere slogans. They are not harmless, like advertising jingles. They are words which have a very specific meaning, and a very specific purpose. They are words designed to radicalize angry young people, and propel them — like bullets — towards their targets: “Jews” and “infidels.” Us.

If someone is killed in Canada in the coming days — and it feels inevitable, now — there will be the usual media reports on the accused, and what motivated them, and what they wanted us to remember.

Which is, now and always, their words.