The protesters who have spent the last year and a half calling for Jewish blood got their wish when an antisemite fed on a diet of lies and blood libels shot and murdered two Israeli embassy employees at the Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, last night, while shouting “Free Palestine.” This was a terrorist attack targeting Jews in the capital of the most powerful nation in the world.
This is exactly what the so-called protesters who took to the streets of major cities, harassed Jewish students on college campuses, and terrorised synagogues have been calling for the entire time.
“Globalize the Intifada,” they chanted. At Columbia University, demonstrators held signs calling for Hamas to murder Jewish students while calling for a new October 7 “every day.” Protest leaders openly talked about their desire to “murder Zionists” and “kill Jews.”
There is no reason to be surprised when explicit calls for murder result in murder. The meaning of their words has never been in doubt except to those in complete denial of the existence of antisemitism and hatred.
The mainstream media, from the New York Times to the BBC, are complicit in the atrocity committed at the Jewish Museum. They have refused to report the truth and rushed to report lie after lie, blood libel after blood libel. They never learn, no matter how many times their reporting is proven wrong, not after they repeated the lie in the early days of the war that an Islamic Jihad rocket that accidentally struck a hospital was an Israeli bomb, and not after the BBC was caught producing propaganda documentaries for Hamas.
To make matters worse, they have spent that same time defending the worst people, treating calls for genocide and actual violence as free speech, downplaying the hatred and danger posed by those who rushed to celebrate the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and called every day for a new Holocaust.
Just this week, the New York Times published a report by Michelle Goldberg accusing the Heritage Foundation of antisemitism for seeking to investigate who is funding those calling for another Holocaust. They treat antisemitism as a joke and those who seek to defend the right of Jews to live in peace as the real problem. Yair Golan, head of Israel's radical left Democrats party, who said this week that "IDF soldiers kill babies as a hobby" is no better.
Two people are dead, a couple who were to be engaged soon. And this is exactly what the “pro-Palestine” protesters have wanted and called for since day 1. This is the goal of Students for Justice in Palestine, CUAD, Within Our Lifetime, and all of their ilk. This is what the media has vigorously defended since October 7, 2023.
The university administrations that tolerated genocidal hatred of Jews also share culpability. The only result of tolerating such hatred is that it will grow and spread like a fungus, destroying everything it touches. The leadership of Harvard, Columbia, and so many other institutions of higher learning did nothing as their campuses became breeding grounds for new generations of Nazis, with protests calling for violence often becoming violent themselves.
By allowing Jewish students to be harassed, to be barricaded in rooms, to be blocked from moving freely about campus, to be threatened, and yes, to be attacked, universities invited more and more violence, guaranteeing an escalation.
Politicians, especially on the political left, have sought the antisemitic vote. Former President Joe Biden said that the antisemites “have a point” and his Vice President, Kamala Harris, claimed that the most hateful people in America showed “exactly what the human emotion should be.”
One politician deserves special notoriety for his failures in the face of the worst antisemitism crisis in the US in at least 80 years: New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Schumer, who in a play on his name likes to call himself a “shomer,” or guardian, of Israel and the Jewish people, emerged after October 7 as a guardian of those who seek to murder Jews. Announcing his cowardice to the world, he told the Columbia University administration not to worry about the investigations by Congressional Republicans who were doing his job and acting to defend the rights of Jewish students in his state.
No, instead of defending his people, Schumer defended their attackers. He provided wind for their sails with his speech demanding the removal of Israel’s democratically elected leaders. Instead of joining forces with the likes of Elise Stefanik to stop the rise of violent antisemitism, he proved that the bonds of partisanship are far more important than the bonds of blood to him. As antisemitic incidents and hate crimes rose by hundreds of percentage points to record levels, the “Shomer” was nowhere to be found.
The violence against Jews will continue as long as the calls for violence against them are tolerated and defended by college administrations, by the media, and by cowards like Chuck Schumer.
Gary Willlig - is a veteran member of the Arutz Sheva news staff.