There's a certain word that's been bandied about on college campuses of late.
It's uttered in speeches and shouted in chants, and has been emblazoned on banners and placards across the nation.
The use of the word at campus protests is ignorant, ill-informed and irresponsible. But, American students were not the first ones, since October 7, guilty of misusing it.
The word I'm talking about is "Intifada," and we can only hope that the imbeciles who've been chanting it for over six months are, in fact, truly ignorant of its meaning. If not, we've got more to worry about than crowded quads and canceled commencement ceremonies, because the number of people spewing this hateful shit has reached critical mass, and the grownups in the room seem unable to handle the whole mess.
The protest crowd has, for a long time, been inclined to be less than judicious in its choice of words or slogans — or even ideas. They're frequently all too hasty to join the crowd and take to the streets without knowing what all the hubbub's even about.
It happened in Ferguson, Mo in the aftermath of the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown. Somebody convinced a lot of people that Brown's last words were, "Hands up. Don't shoot!"
Those words quickly became a slogan that grew wings, even after a St. Louis grand jury and the US Justice Department found the story baseless. In any case, "Hands up. Don't shoot," wasn't a call to violence.
The same goes for "defund the police," and I won't deal too much with that one because it’s just dumb and doesn't deserve my attention.
Today’s popular chants and slogans are a little more worrisome and include mantras such as, Long Live the Intifada, Globalize the Intifada, and There is Only One Solution - Intifada Revolution.
Over the past few weeks, dimwitted scholars from coast to coast have been mindlessly peddling this language while clearly not having slightest idea what any of it means.
During a speech last Saturday at the Columbia encampment, Tai Lee, a member of Writers Against the War on Gaza —who previously referred to the October 7 atrocities as “righteous— said, “Let it be known that the Al-Aqsa Flood (the October 7 attack) has put the global Intifada back on the table again.”
Tuesday night, Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi called on the University to clear out the encampment in Harvard Yard in a statement posted to Chabad’s X account just before 11 p.m., referring to the protesters as “Jew haters and Hamas lovers.”
Zarchi relayed the concerns of frightened students and parents over chants of “globalize the Intifada,” and the fact that the encampment was continuing “in brazen defiance to the university’s explicit guidelines.”
Look, if you’re a Jew, “intifada” is not a word with a pleasant ring to it.
So, in an age when the President of the United States is forced to apologize profusely for using the term “illegal,” in referring to a murderer, the unrestrained use of “intifada” strikes me as a little incongruous.
Intifada is an Arabic word that literally translates to "shaking off." Nowadays, its accepted meaning among the uninformed is, "uprising."
The problem is that, when ignorant Gen Z protesters chant it in front of their North Face tents, they seem to be under the mistaken impression that they're engaged in an act that's enough of an uprising to be considered Intifada-worthy.
Hardly.
The First Intifada officially began on July 9, 1987, but was preceded by months of violence and unrest.
Throughout the year that marked the 20th anniversary of the Israelis' capturing the formerly Egyptian- and Jordanian-controlled Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the Six-Day War (which, just to remind you, was provoked by Arab nations in the region), Palestinians had been directing various forms of violence against Israelis for months.
On December 6, 1987, an Israeli man, shopping at a Gaza market, was stabbed to death.
The following day, an Israeli truck crashed into a station wagon full of Palestinian workers in Gaza's Jabalya district, killing four.
Despite objective evidence that the collision was an accident, many Palestinians instead concluded that it was a deliberate act of revenge for the previous day's stabbing death. They quickly took to the streets of Gaza in what began as a simple protest, but then devolved into burning tires and throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers and police.
On July 9, 1988, violent, large-scale riots broke out in Jabalya and a 17-year-old was shot and killed by police after he'd hurled a Molotov cocktail at their patrol car. This incident caused the unrest to spill over into the West Bank and Jerusalem.
On July 13, rioters launched a gasoline bomb at the US consulate in East Jerusalem but, fortunately, no one was injured.
Untrue rumors added fuel to the unrest. Gazans were led to believe that wounded Palestinians were being taken to a Tel Aviv hospital to be "finished off," and that Israeli troops had poisoned the water reservoir in Khan Yunis. The reality was that only the most critically injured Palestinians were taken out of Gaza for treatment and, in most cases, it likely saved their lives. Moreover, the UN tested the reservoir and found it uncontaminated.
The likely source of these rumors, as well as the certain organizing force behind the violence, was Yasir Arafat's PLO, which distributed leaflets instructing Palestinians on which days violence should be ramped up, and against whom. At about this time, Arafat's leadership of the Intifada was challenged by an upstart Islamist organization calling itself, Hamas.
Over the next five years, more than 3,600 Molotov cocktails, 100 grenades, and 600 gun and explosives assaults were reported, resulting in the deaths of 11 IDF soldiers and at least 100 Israeli civilians. Additionally, more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers were injured.
But Jews weren't the only victims, nor the most numerous. As the Intifada ebbed in late 1990, Arafat authorized Palestinian death squads to kill any Arab deemed to be "collaborating with Israel." This "collaboration" included such innocuous transgressions as simply being employed by Israel's Civil Administration. So, merely working for the wrong boss, or otherwise "collaborating," led to almost 1,000 Palestinians being shot, clubbed, stabbed, hacked to death with axes, and burned with acid…by fellow Palestinians.
Before I delve into the next chapter, let me point out a bit of trivia that might interest you. Since its very first meeting, in 1949, Israel's parliament, the Knesset, has had 100 Arab members. Currently, ten Arabs sit in the house of 120 members, including two Arab women.
As you read the next section, you may understand why I felt it important to tell you that.
In the summer of 2000, Israeli intelligence and law enforcement grew concerned over a number of developments.
Palestinian media and religious leaders were issuing incendiary calls for action. The Israelis were also becoming anxious about the establishment of military training camps, and the growth of the Palestinian armed forces beyond the number agreed to under the Oslo Accords.
Additionally, Palestinian officials began releasing a large number of terrorists from custody, even as the authorities refrained from confiscating illegal weapons from citizens of Gaza and the West Bank.
In July 2000, President Clinton hosted Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for a “Peace Summit” at Camp David. The effort turned out to be futile, with Barak and Arafat each blaming one another for its failure.
On September 24, 2000, Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon announced his desire to visit Jerusalem's Temple Mount. However, security officials were concerned that such a high-profile trip might offend the sensibilities of certain Palestinians.
These concerns ultimately led to a phone call between Israeli Foreign Minister Shalom Ben-Ami and Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Preventive Security Organization, who informed his counterpart, "If Mr. Sharon refrains from entering the Mosques on the Temple Mount, there won't be any problem."
Nonetheless, Israeli law enforcement officials insisted on providing Sharon with a modest 1,500-member police escort for his visit on the 28th, just to be safe.
Sharon made good on his promise, steering clear of the mosques during what turned out to be a pretty brief visit. However, as he was exiting the area, at about 8:30 am, he was confronted by a vocal crowd of Palestinian protestors, led by Arab members of the Knesset, who proceeded to hurl stones at him and his police escort.
Anyway, the unrest was short-lived, and, by mid-afternoon, Israeli security officials concluded that the matter was behind them.
Let's just say that they couldn't have been more wrong, in large part because Arafat had been planning this chapter for months if not years.
Later that afternoon, Voice of Palestine began airing broadcasts denouncing Sharon's visit as a "serious step against Muslim holy places."
Arafat directed the entire Muslim and Arab world to "move immediately to stop these aggressions and Israeli practices against holy Jerusalem." And, throughout the night, Palestinian radio stations painted the visit as an intentional defilement of a sacred Muslim site. By the following morning, the rage had spread through the entire Palestinian community.
In the West Bank, a Palestinian police officer operating in a joint security patrol shot and killed his Israeli partner. Following morning prayers on the Temple Mount, hundreds of Palestinians stormed past border guards toward the platform overlooking the Western Wall where Jewish worshippers were praying.
Arriving on the platform, they began throwing heavy rocks down at the worshippers, prompting Israeli guards to open fire with rubber bullets, killing four and wounding more than 100.
On October 10, two off-duty IDF reservists, wearing civilian attire, inadvertently drove their Ford Escort through a military checkpoint and found themselves in the Palestinian town of Ramallah. When they reached a Palestinian checkpoint, they were detained and taken to the local police station.
A crowd of rioters soon stormed the building and stabbed and beat the soldiers to death with an iron pipe.
The crowd outside erupted into cheers when Aziz Salha emerged from the window, displaying his hands, both of which were covered in the Israelis' blood.
Writer's note:
You may remember, back in March, when a bunch of Hollywood posers wore red lapel pins to the Oscars. It may have been hard to tell exactly what the design on the device was, but it was a red hand with a black heart in the middle.
Geniuses such as like Billie Eilish, Ramy Youssef and Mark Ruffalo wore the pins in support of Artists4Ceasfire, a group of celebrities that says it opposes the Israel-Hamas war. The reality, of course, is that they only oppose the Israeli half of the conflict.
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for being uninformed imbeciles rather than sadists.
One of the soldiers' bodies was thrown from a window into the jaws of the bloodthirsty crowd, who then proceeded to stomp him until his head was a bloody pulp. The body of the other soldier was shot and set on fire.
The crowd then dragged the two bodies to Al-Manara Square where they were displayed in a victory celebration.
The carnage of the 2nd Intifada would soon far overshadow that of the first, and would rage for the following 4 1/2 years, costing the lives of countless civilians on both sides.
It would also mark the emergence of Hamas, which would take sole or joint responsibility for 36 terrorist attacks between 2001 and 2005, claiming 358 lives.
On May 8, 2001, two Israeli boys, 13-year-old Koby Mandell and his 14-year-old friend Yosef Ishran were kidnapped near their village of Tekoa. The following morning, their bodies were discovered in a nearby cave. USA Today reported that the boys had been "been bound, stabbed and beaten to death with rocks," and that "The walls of the cave in the Judean Desert were covered with the boys' blood, reportedly smeared there by the killers."
On the evening of June 1, even as President Bush was attempting to broker a ceasefire, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant entered the Dolphinarium dance club in Tel Aviv and detonated his suicide vest, killing 21 Israeli civilians, most of them high school students. Another 132 were injured in the explosion.
The attack significantly impeded the American attempts to negotiate an armistice.
While there was never an official or even definitive end to the Intifada, many point to Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip —announced in June 2004 and completed in August 2005— as the beginning of the end.
The total body count for the two Intifadas was well north of 5,000.
All told, the uprisings took the lives of 1,248 Israelis, including 948 civilians (76%).
On the Palestinian side, if you count those who were executed for collaborating with the Jews, approximately 4,000 were killed, though it's difficult to accurately separate the civilians from the combatants.
So, while knuckleheads on college campuses might believe that "intifada" entails nothing more than protests, sit-ins, boycotts, annoying chants, and screaming stupid shit at the police, it is something much different —something insidious and evil.
And the schools need to do something about it.
Brian O'Leary is a retired Marine Corps colonel, who served for 30 years, including combat deployments to Somalia and Iraq, and command of an infantry battalion in Afghanistan. Additionally, he has spent 25 years in the financial services industry. Brian earned his BA in English from Penn State University and his MA in National Security Studies from the US Army War College.
IG - @brian_oleary34 X - @brianoleary34