19 December 2025

Stephen Gowans

The December 14 killing of 15 Jews by two ISIS-inspired gunmen at Sydney’s Bondi Beach has given rise to calls for a ban on the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” on the grounds that it is a call for the killing of Jews around the world.

The New York Times reported that “Two of Britain’s largest police forces announced that they would arrest protesters for using the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ saying in a joint statement that a ‘more assertive’ approach was needed after the terrorist attack in Australia and a previous assault on a synagogue in England.”

In Canada, the editorial board of the country’s largest newspaper, The Globe and Mail, argued—with not a shred of evidence—that the Bondi Beach killers were driven to their murderous spree by a desire to globalize the intifada. The board harrumphed, “And if anyone was still unclear as to what the chants heard in countless rallies in Canada and elsewhere to ‘globalize the intifada’ mean, the answer is to be found in the carnage at Bondi Beach. The two gunmen heard and heeded the call to intifada.”

British authorities, court journalists, Zionists, and defenders of Israel misrepresent “globalize the intifada” as a call to kill Jews everywhere, falsely citing the slogan as the inspiration for the Bondi Beach killings.

There are two problems with their argument.

• Globalize the intifada is a call to bring global pressure to bear on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories, not a call to kill Jews.
• The Bondi Beach killings were not inspired by either the true meaning of the slogan or the false meaning that has been attributed to it by Israel’s supporters.

Globalize the intifada is a call to bring global pressure to bear on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories

Intifada is an Arabic word meaning “to shake off.” It was used by Palestinians to describe two of their efforts to bring an end to, or shake off, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. One of those efforts lasted from 1987-1993; another from 2000-2005.

At the heart of the word “intifada”, as Palestinians have used this term, is a political goal: an end to the occupation. However, Zionists and their supports misinterpret the word to mean violence against Jews. To be sure, violence is one way that Palestinians might try, and have tried, to achieve this goal. But calling for intifada—shaking off Israeli oppression—is a call for a campaign to achieve a political aim, not a specification of how the aim is to be achieved.

Still, political violence was part of the intifadas, but it was aimed, not at Jews qua Jews, but at Israelis.  So even if the call for intifada was specifically a call for political violence—and it isn’t—it wouldn’t be a call for violence against Jews as such, but against Jewish supremacist settlers in the Palestinians’ homeland.

To say, then, that “globalize the intifada” is a call to kill Jews everywhere is false. First, there is no inherent reference to violence in the word intifada. Second, even if there was, the violence would be directed not at Jews everywhere, but at Israelis specifically, and not for reasons of blind hatred of Jews but in pursuit of a legitimate Palestinian political objective.

I say the Palestinian political objective is legitimate for two reasons.

• The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal under international law. This statement isn’t even remotely controversial.
• A people’s redressing its dispossession and oppression is, on moral grounds, axiomatically legitimate.

The Palestinians’ pursuit of the goal embodied in the word intifada is, thus, a legitimate political project. To globalize the intifada is to internationalize the pursuit of this legitimate political objective; it is a call for people around the world to enter the fight, in whatever way they can, to help an oppressed people achieve their legitimate political aim.

In sum, the slogan:

• Is not based in the psychopathology of Judeophobia, but in a legitimate political objective.
• Is not a call for violence (nor at the same time a call for non-violence; it is a call for the achievement of a political objective, not a specification of how the objective is to be achieved).
• Makes no allusion to Jews as such but only to Israelis who support and enforce the denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate aims.

The slogan is not, therefore, necessarily a call for violence against Israelis, and it is most especially not a call for violence against Jews outside Israel.

The Bondi Beach killings were not inspired by either the false or true meanings of the slogan

The killers, according to Australian officials, appear to have been motivated by Islamic State ideology. Islamic State thinking is pretty simple: kill the infidel—Yazidis, Christians, Shia Muslims, Alawi Muslims, Jews, and even non-fundamentalist Sunni Muslims. ISIS militants are not choosy. If you don’t believe what they believe, you’re fair game.

In June “a suicide bomber who was a member of the Islamic State opened fire before blowing himself up during the Sunday service at the Greek Orthodox church of Prophet Elias in Damascus, killing at least 30 and wounding more than 60 Greek Orthodox Christians.” 

For every Jew killed at Bondi Beach two Christians were killed at Damascus, by killers inspired by the same Islamic State ideology. Significantly, the killing of 30 Christians was a non-story, barely noticed anywhere, but the massacre of half as many Jews has widely reported and is now known by much of the world.

No one has cited the Damascus slaughter of Christians as evidence of a spike in anti-Christian hatred, or called for Christians to have their own ethno-state where they can feel safe, or demanded measures to combat a growing scourge of anti-Christian animus.

It would appear that the Bondi Beach killers did not target Jews to show solidarity with Palestinians. It is more likely that they slaughtered Jews for the reason ISIS militants slaughter anyone, including Christians and Shia Muslims: because, in ISIS’s view, they’re infidels.

But even if the killers’ actions were intended as a show of solidarity with Palestinians, their decision to slaughter Jews on an Australian beach has no meaningful connection to any legitimate interpretation of “globalize the intifada.” The slogan is not a call to kill Jews as Jews, much less Jews living almost nine thousand miles away from Palestine, but to support Palestinians in their quest to overcome the opposition of Israelis to the achievement of a legitimate Palestinian political aim.

The politics of misinterpretation

Not surprisingly, the misinterpretation of the slogan comports with the political aims of Zionists, Israeli officials, and Israel’s supporters. They want to discredit the global movement which seeks to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories by identifying its motivations as rooted in the psychopathology of Judeophobia. Zionists want to do this in order to draw attention away from the political questions at the heart of the Palestinian project: settler colonialism, apartheid, genocide, and international law. Zionists cannot win in this arena, and so they attempt to shift the debate to another question.  

Israeli officials are always quick to present any violence against Jews, whether directed against Jews qua Jews or otherwise, as evidence of an ineradicable worldwide Judeophobia. Zionism is predicated on the idea that non-Jews can’t help but hate Jews; that anti-Jewish violence is always simmering below the surface, ready to boil over; and that for these reasons, the existence of a Jewish state as a bulwark against the Judeophobic psychopathology of non-Jews is a moral and existential necessity. The slaughter of Jews by Islamic State killers at Bondi Beach has been dishonestly exploited by pro-Israel forces to strengthen this discourse. Violence against Jews is eternal, Zionists argue, and, what’s more, they say, it is inspired by the slogans of those who march in solidarity with the Palestinians. The argument seeks to achieve two objectives at one stroke: 1) To fear-monger in order to induce diaspora Jews to immigrate to Israel; 2) To depoliticize the Palestinians’ political project and situate it in anti-Semitism in order to discredit it.

“Globalize the intifada” is, unquestionably, anti-Zionist and expresses a view that is strenuously opposed to the continued Israeli denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate political aims. But it is not anti-Semitic. It is a political slogan based in opposition to the denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate political project. It is for this reason that the purveyors of Israeli hasbara invoke anti-Semitism as a smokescreen to conceal the political questions at the heart of the pro-Palestinian solidarity movement and its slogans. Having no argument to support settler colonialism, apartheid, genocide, and the continued Israeli violation of international law (condoned in deeds by the United States and its G7 allies), they conjure the red-herring of anti-Semitism. Western governments, such as the United Kingdom, and court journalists, such as the editorial board of The Globe and Mail, participate in this deception because they are as supportive of Israel and its denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate political aims as are the Israeli oppressors themselves. Support for Israel within the Western establishment is based on the reality that the Zionist state has, from its birth, been child, extension, and outpost, of the West in the East; the West’s, and especially the United States’, instrument for controlling the region’s petroleum resources and strategic position.

We can expect no honesty from Western governments and mainstream news media, anymore than we can from the Israeli government itself, on questions related to the Palestinians’ legitimate political project. The Western establishment and Israel maintain a symbiotic relationship, with Israel doing, as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said not too long ago, the West’s dirty work, in exchange for the United States and its G7 subalterns, providing Israel with the political, economic, military, and diplomatic support it needs to keep the Palestinians down.