WINNIPEG — There is a dangerous lie being sold in Western cities, on university campuses, and in public squares across the democratic world. It is the claim that chanting “Globalize the Intifada” is merely political speech. A metaphor. A cry of solidarity. An abstract demand for justice.
Bondi Beach stripped that lie bare.
A Chanukkah gathering of Jews, publicly celebrating their identity, was met with gunfire. The location was not a military base. Not a government office. Not an Israeli institution. It was an outdoor Jewish religious celebration. Families. Children. Light against darkness.
And darkness answered.
This was not an aberration. This was not a misunderstanding. This was not a tragedy disconnected from the slogans echoing through Western streets for months.
This was the slogan, operationalized.
The Intifada has a definition. It always has.
The word intifada does not mean “peaceful uprising.” It does not mean “resistance” in the romanticized language of activist pamphlets. Historically, concretely, and brutally, it means campaigns of violence directed at Jews.
The First Intifada included lynchings, stabbings, and firebombings.
The Second Intifada brought suicide bombings of buses, cafés, weddings, and Passover seders.
Children were blown apart. Elderly Jews were burned alive. Families were slaughtered for existing.
This is not disputed history. It is a documented fact.
When someone calls to “globalize” that model, they are not asking for dialogue. They are demanding export. They are calling for the same tactics, the same targets, and the same terror to be brought wherever Jews live.
Bondi Beach was not Israel. That is the point.
“Globalize” means Jews everywhere
For years, Jewish leaders warned that separating “antizionism” from antisemitism was a semantic trick, not a moral distinction. They were ignored. Dismissed. Mocked as hysterical.
But slogans tell you intent.
“Death to Israel” becomes “Death to Zionists.”
“Zionists” become Jews.
“Globalize the Intifada” becomes permission.
The Bondi Beach massacre did not happen despite the chant. It happened because the chant has been normalized.
When protesters scream it in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Sydney, London, and New York without consequence, they are not engaging in protest. They are rehearsing justification.
They are telling the next attacker that he is not alone.
That he is not extreme.
That he is part of a movement.
And movements produce actors.
The West has decided this chant is acceptable. Jews pay the price.
Governments, universities, unions, and media outlets have all played a role in laundering this language.
Police forces have allowed marches where the chant is shouted inches from Jewish neighborhoods.
University administrators have insisted it falls under free expression.
Journalists have sanitized it as “controversial rhetoric.”
Politicians have refused to condemn it clearly, lest they anger a base.
This is not neutrality. It is complicity through cowardice.
No Western society would tolerate chants calling to globalize ISIS tactics.
No one would excuse “Globalize the KKK.”
No one would parse the “context” of a slogan calling for violence against any other minority.
Only Jews are told to absorb it.
Only Jews are told to understand the “anger.”
Only Jews are expected to wait until the chant becomes a body count.
Bondi Beach is what happens when the waiting ends.
This is not about Israel. It never was.
The victims at Bondi Beach were not Israeli soldiers.
They were not settlers.
They were not policymakers.
They were Jews lighting a menorah.
That is why the claim that this violence is “about Israel” collapses on contact with reality. Israel is the excuse. Jews are the target.
The intifada does not stop at borders. It never has. Jewish history teaches this lesson mercilessly. Those who refuse to learn it sentence others to relearn it in blood.
Canada is already standing in the blast radius
Canadian Jews should not comfort themselves with distance or denial.
The chant is heard weekly in Canadian cities.
Jewish schools operate behind barriers.
Synagogues rely on police patrols.
Jewish students are harassed, threatened, and isolated.
And political leaders still refuse to name the problem plainly.
If “Globalize the Intifada” is not shut down now, Canada will eventually experience its own Bondi Beach. Not because Jews failed to warn. But because those with power refused to listen.
Words matter because they shape permission
Violence does not emerge from nowhere. It emerges from climates. From repeated signals about who is fair game and who is protected.
“Globalize the Intifada” is not edgy activism.
It is not radical chic.
It is not harmless rage.
It is a call to action.
Bondi Beach answered it.
The only question left for Western democracies, including Canada, is whether they will act before the next chant becomes the next massacre, or whether they will once again issue statements after the sirens fade.
History will not be confused about what this moment required.
And Jews will not forget who stood idle while the intifada went global.
