by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Restoration
There is no nuance in the chant “Free Palestine” when it’s paired with bullets
The man shouted “Free Palestine” as he pulled the trigger. Two Israeli embassy staff members were gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House. They were unarmed. They were targeted. They are now dead.
Let’s call this what it is: an antisemitic act of terror, not a political protest. And if we’re going to have any moral clarity left in this disintegrating culture – disintegrating because it has decided to throw out its foundational ethos – we need to say it out loud.
There’s a sickness spreading, not just in Gaza or Tel Aviv or through some obscure university campus, but right here, in the West: in our cities, on our streets, pulsing through comment sections, hashtags, and now, gun barrels. It’s the reawakening of an ancient hatred, dressed up in modern slogans. It is provoking us to choose between good and evil, and we seem to be indulging it. It’s antisemitism with a keffiyeh filter: its demanding that we disown our history, the “never again” promises that we made.
Conspiracy theories targeting Jewish people are older than America itself. But recently, they’ve ramped up in velocity and ferocity. From flyers blaming Jews for COVID, to QAnon screeds about global cabals, to TikTok teens parroting Rothschild tropes without knowing who Mayer Amschel Rothschild even was — this cocktail of ignorance and hate is bubbling over.
If you cannot see why the Israeli government is defending her citizens, you are not an activist, you are an antisemite. If you cannot see why Jewish citizens in the West support Israel, you are an antisemite. If you cannot see Hamas offering up children to the retaliatory bombs that they provoke, you are an antisemite. What we saw in D.C. on Wednesday is part of a broader decay. A permission structure. A rising tide of moral shortcuts that begin with “free the oppressed” and end with “kill the scapegoats”. It’s the same mindset that led to Jewish delicatessens being firebombed in Paris, synagogues being attacked in Berlin, and families in Brooklyn being physically assaulted.