DO NOT “Globalize the Intifada”!
Because progressives are against globalism (and terrorism).
Here’s the thing, there’s a thing and here it is …
Saying “globalize the intifada” is essentially the same as saying “globalize the Holocaust”. Because “the intifada” was actually two intifadas, the First Intifada and the Second Intifada, and both were instances of terrorism against Jews.
To claim “globalize the intifada” means “free Palestine”, well that’s very similar to saying the Holocaust actually means, “free Germany from the oppression of the Treaty of Versailles”. See? Get it now??
It’s like this: saying “I’m not anti-Semetic, I’m anti-Zionist” is the same as saying “I’m not anti-Catholic, I’m anti-Vatican City”.
Look, if you mean to say “free Palestine”, then say just those words, say, “free Palestine”. Don’t bring “the intifada” into it.
Okay?
In fact, if you’re advocating for the Palestinians, you really don’t want people looking up the First Intifada and the Second Intifada in the encyclopedia, or in history books, and learning what they were all about. Both were nothing Palestinians to be proud about. The First Intifada and the Second Intifada were instances of terrorism. In fact, the Second Intifada is notable for Palestinians blowing up buses filled with Israelis. Which is not something anybody should want to globalize.
Terrorism is always illegal. There is no justification for terrorism, not even oppression.
Claiming that you are allowed to engage in terrorism because you’re being oppressed, that’s similar to saying you’re allowed to murder your spouse because they cheated on you. Saying that oppression caused you to engage in terrorism, that’s a motive, not a legal defense! And motives are not a get out of jail free card. In fact they tend to put you into jail more than anything else.
If you’re going to argue, “well the Jews have done countless acts of violence against the Palestinians”, that’s like saying “well O.J. Simpson got away with murdering his wife, so I should get away with murdering my wife too”. (Full disclosure, I’m not married, I don’t have a wife and I never have.)
The point is, you can’t point to one objectionable, horrific, terrible thing to justify a second objectionable, horrific, terrible thing. You can’t set your standard as something you despise. That’s not how setting standards works! Because it’s a race to the bottom, when you set a low standard and a low bar to clear. In fact, it’s not even a race to the bottom, because there is no bottom if you’re going to use violence to justify more violence. That dynamic continues in perpetuity to an immeasurable depth.
The idea is to break the cycle of violence, not perpetuate it. If you’re justifying a current or future act of violence with a past act of violence, you’re not being ethical or moral. You should have a higher moral standard than that.
At the end of the day, nations, societies, and cultures are trying to uphold high standards of ethics and morals, not low standards of ethics and morals. We are trying to be righteous, not evil, so you can’t point to a previous act of evil to use as cloud cover to justify a current or future act of evil. You can NOT engage in acts of evil and claim to be righteous at the same time. It also doesn’t work that way, not at all.
To those who say that oppression always leads to terrorism, I say it obviously does not. Oppression often leads to war, which is very different from terrorism.
When the Palestinians first thought they were being oppressed by the Israelis, they declared a war on Israel. They actually declared three wars (at least) before they decided to engage in terrorism. Those wars were, in order: the First Arab Israeli War, the Second Arab Israeli War, and the Third Arab Israeli War. Only after those three wars did Palestinians then resort to terrorism. Therefore, you cannot make, in good faith, the argument that oppression always results in terrorism.
The Palestinian initial reaction to their perception of oppression by the Israelis was to fight a proper war with a proper military against Israel and Israel’s military. The Palestinians ONLY adopted terrorism as a tactic AFTER they lost many wars with Israel. Therefore, the claim that oppression always, in an ipso facto manner, leads to terrorism is false.
It’s also not what happened in South Africa and in America: oppression did not lead to terrorism. Apartheid in South Africa was ended with statesmanship and diplomacy; with economic sanctions, not with terrorism. Similarly, The Jim Crow laws and their segregation in U.S. southern states did not end with another civil war, or with terrorism. Jim Crow was ended with legislation. The Civil Rights Act is what made oppression against African Americans illegal. Not terrorism. Therefore: oppression does not always beget terrorism.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not engage in terrorism.
Nelson Mandela did not engage in terrorism.
Lech Wałęsa did not engage in terrorism.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a pivotal American Baptist minister and civil rights leader who championed racial equality for African Americans. He advocated for, and used, nonviolent resistance. He led major peaceful protest campaigns like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. Dr. King’s advocacy led to major legislative reforms, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. He inspired global movements with his powerful oratory, which was rooted in his Christian faith and Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of nonviolence. Dr. King is universally known as a symbol of justice and peaceful protest.
Nelson Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, statesman, and philanthropist who became South Africa’s first Black president. He led the nation’s transition from racial segregation to multiracial democracy after spending 27 years in prison for his activism. Mandela negotiated the end of apartheid with President F.W. de Klerk, earning both the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. He championed reconciliation and human rights globally until his death in 2013.
Please note that Mandela was charged and imprisoned for sedition, not terrorim, and they were trumped up charges. He didn’t actually engage in sedition or terrorism, rather, he was railroaded through a kangaroo court. Nelson Mandel thought about terrorism and sedition, he wrote about terrorism and sedition, but Nelson Mandela didn’t actually engage in acts of either sedition or terrorism. He was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for thought crimes. This is a historical fact. So please study and understand this history before you say something crazy like, “Nelson Mandela was a terrorist”.
Lech Wałęsa was a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. An electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement, which advocated for the USSR to end its occupation and opression of Poland during the Cold War. Solidarity was also a pro-democratic anti-socialist movement that ultimately advocated for a market-based capitalist system. Wałęsa’s advocacy culminated in 1989, when Communist rule by the USSR ended in Poland. Nonviolently ending the USSR’s oppressive occupation of Poland was an inflection point that ultimately led to the dissolution of the USSR. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote.
King, Madela, and Wałęsa are absolute and incontrovertible proof positive that you can successfully end oppression with something other than terrorism.
But if you think it’s no big deal saying “globalize the intifada”, that it’s mere hyperbole to draw attention to a cause, well then look at what happened in Bondi Beach Australia. There’s a really good chance that the perpetrators of that terrorism were partly motivated by the phrase “globalize the intifada”. And even if they weren’t, even just one person saying “globalize the intifada”, well that’s one part per million in an atmosphere that condones violence against Jews. One part per million isn’t that much, but when you have many, many parts per million, it will create a toxic environment. So do you really want to be a part per million in a toxic environment? Probably not if you’re a true progressive.
Many progressives in America want America to be progressive like Europe. They point to the Nordic Model as a model to emulate. But saying “globalize the Holocaust” is illegal hate speech in many parts of Europe. Denmark, which has socialized medicine, which progressives love, also has laws that criminalize Holocaust denial as a form of hate speech. So does Sweden, The Netherlands, Norway, and Finland. In these oh so progressive countries it is a crime to deny that the Holocaust ever happened.
Again: if you really mean “free Palestine” then really say “free Palestine”. If you support the killing Jews, then say so directly — speak your ugly truth so we can all respond to it appropriately. Don’t be poetic about it, be prosaic instead.
But know this: you can lie to yourself all you want and get away with it, but you can’t lie to others and expect to get away with it. We won’t let you. We’ll call you out instead.
You see: saying “globalize the intifada” is a type of propaganda. It’s spin. It’s the rhetoric of terrorists. It is the rhetoric of anti-semites.
The world already has a very toxic atmosphere of anti-semitism, so you really don’t want to be an additional part per million (or even a part per 7 billion). Not if you consider yourself to be a normal and moral person. You really don’t want to be that guy or gal who’s advocating for terrorism, do you? No you don’t, not even obliquely! Not in the Western World where tolerance for terrorism is essentially non-existent.
“Globalize the intifada” doesn’t pass the Reasonable Person Standard.
The Reasonable Person Standard is a legal benchmark which asks how an objectively careful and prudent person would behave in any given situation. It sets a baseline for expected social conduct, considers foreseeable risks and alternatives, and is often determined by a jury and/or judge to establish liability when someone’s carelessness causes harm. The standard does not consider a person’s own intelligence or judgment (subjective) but rather whether their actions align with what society deems reasonable (objective).
A reasonable person does not say “globalize the intifada” because the intifadas were objectively terrorism — and reasonable people do not advocate for terrorism.
The West declared a war on terrorism after the terror attacks of 9/11, so it’s not going to give you much consideration, it’s not going to explore any alleged subtleties and nuanced meanings in expressions like, “globalize the intifada” and “globalize the Holocaust”. If you say those things, the common reaction in the West will be that you are an anti-semite, or, at bare minimum, that you’re adjacent to anti-semitism.
By the way: “globalize the intifada” is not a critique of Israeli foreign policy either. Nope. Not even close.
The Palestinians chose the word intifada very carefully. The word literally means “shaking off” in Arabic. But the First Intifada and the Second Intifada were acts of terrorism against Jews, not a shaking off. People were murdered in cold blood during the First Intifada and the Second Intifada simply because they were Jews. But to deny that that happened, and to say that intifada just means “shaking off oppression”, well that’s to deny fact and history. You’re leaving out A LOT of history and historical context when you give the word “intifada” such a narrow definition. And when you do that, reasonable people NOT going to take you seriously. People who know their history, people who have lived through this history, they aren’t going to take you seriously.
Again I beg of you: if you mean to advocate for a free Palestine then just say, “FREE PALESTINE!”. Okay? This is reasonable.
By the way: if you’re a progressive, then you’re against imperialism and colonialism and any form of globalism like that. No true progressive should want to globalize any culture, religion, nationality or ethnicity to the exclusion of any other. A true progressive wants everyone to live peacefully and harmoniously together; they DO NOT want any one group of people to globalize itself across all the other nations and cultures.
It’s so ridiculously ironic that progressives, who hate imperialism and colonialism, are calling for the globalization of “the intifada”, i.e. Palestine. I mean, are you seriously suggesting that Palestine should control the entire globe? I don’t think you are if you’re a progressive and you carefully examine what you believe in!
Word choice is important. You’re supposed to use words to make an argument, you’re not supposed to use an argument to make words. Which means you shouldn’t be redefining words and moving goal posts. You should be using the commonly accepted terms and definitions. The reasonable ones. If you’re not willing to do that, then don’t be surprised when people exclude you from the discussion.
“Globalize the intifada” is simply not just a pithy and revolutionary expression advocating for the human rights of Palestinians. It is fundamentally a lot more charged than that. If you want freedom for Palestinians, it is much better to chant “free Palestine” instead.
Okay?
Thank you.