Before and After D.C. Killings, NY Times Worked to ‘Normalize the Intifada’

By: Gilead Ini May 28, 2025

On October 2, 2015, Palestinian student Muhannad Halabi posted an ominous message to his Facebook page. “As I see it, the third intifada has begun.” 

A Facebook post by Muhannad Halabi begins: “As I see it, the third intifada has begun.”

His post was, in part, a reference to the previous day’s terror attack. In an act of violence characteristic of past intifadas, Hamas-affiliated gunmen murdered two Israelis in their car as their four children watched helplessly from the back seat. But it was also a declaration of intent. A day after he posted about a new intifada, Halabi encountered a Jewish couple with a stroller, pulled out a knife, and assaulted the family. The attack killed the father and another Jewish man who came to his aid, left the young mother in serious condition with 17 stab wounds, and injured their 2-year-old son.

Halabi’s example spurred a wave of similar terror attacks that Palestinians — clearly aligned with Halabi’s understanding of the Arabic word he posted — dubbed the “Stabbing Intifada.” 

The same word was used a year earlier, in October 2014, when a Palestinian attacker rammed his car into pedestrians at a light rail stop, killing a three-month-old baby in a stroller and a 22-year-old girl. This was one of several vehicular attacks that Palestinians called the “Car–Ramming Intifada.” 

A 2014 cartoon speaks of the “car intifada”

Those two deadly intifadas, though, paled in comparison with the prior one. It was during the multi-year wave of terrorism that began in 2000 that a Hamas operative entered the dining room of the Park Hotel in Netanya, intermingled among elderly Jews celebrating the first night of Passover, and detonated his suitcase full of explosives. Most of the thirty people he killed were over the age of 70. The Passover massacre, along with roughly 150 other suicide bombings that overwhelmingly targeted Israeli civilians, epitomized the “Second Intifada.”

A well-informed news consumer would have no trouble understanding why calls to “globalize the intifada” are viewed — especially by potential victims, and even more troublingly by potential perpetrators — as incitement to violence. These were campaigns of terror.

But things may look different to readers of the New York Times. In its recent coverage of anti-Israel activism on campuses after (and often in solidarity with) Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, the paper whitewashed the historical significance of the word by concealing the indiscriminate terror attacks that were the hallmark of the Palestinian intifadas.

Consider this passage, from April 2025, about concerns raised by a Yale Jewish leader:

Uri Cohen, the executive director of the Slifka Center, which is affiliated with the university’s Hillel chapter, criticized the tent encampment, … condemning the calls for “intifada” — an Arabic word generally translated as “uprising” — that were part of online discussions of the event.

Was Cohen’s condemnation reasonable? Was it frivolous? Readers aren’t given the tools to decide. We can’t understand the objection without understanding the word being objected to. And we can’t understand the word from its “general translation” alone.

That’s the nature of semantics. “Flood” is an overflow of water. But when anti-Israel activists use the word to describe their post-Oct 7 demonstrations, it signifies something much more sinister — an affinity with Hamas’s violent invasion, which the terror group dubbed the “Al Aqsa Flood.” (Times coverage has often failed to share the connotations of that word, too.) Or consider a more recognizable example. “Kampf” is German for struggle. Should we be unconcerned if anti-Israel protesters were to shout about their Kampf?

The pattern is clear. A day before its article on Yale’s tent encampment, another story likewise mentioned concerns over the word intifada. And while this time the piece noted that some view the word as a call to violence, it failed to explain why that’s the case:

Cornell University dropped a popular R&B singer from its annual campus concert over what the school’s president said were antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments she had espoused.

The singer, Kehlani, has been an outspoken opponent of Israel’s war in Gaza, speaking out at concerts and on social media. In a 2024 music video for the song “Next 2 U,” Kehlani danced in a jacket adorned with kaffiyehs as dancers waved Palestinian flags in the background. During the video’s introduction, the phrase “Long Live the Intifada” appeared against a dark background.

[…]

The protests over the war in Gaza have exposed broad disagreement about when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitic behavior. To some, the word “intifada,” which translates into rebellion or uprising, implies a call for violence against Israelis and Jews. But some pro-Palestinian demonstrators who use the term in chants regard it as a cry for liberation and freedom from oppression.

Readers left to ponder whether there’s a meaningful difference between intifada and kumbaya would have benefited from a few words explaining what intifadas were in practice. It would have also helped to learn of the singer’s other extremist social media posts, like the one that celebrated “resistance in all of its forms” — another endorsement of suicide bombings and other violence — or the one characterizing Zionists, meaning the majority and mainstream of the Jewish community, as “scum of the earth.” Instead, the paper steered its audience in the opposite direction with a headline suggesting Kehlani was cancelled merely for opposing war and supporting Palestinians: “Cornell Cancels Kehlani Performance Over Her Stance on the War in Gaza. The R&B singer’s outspoken support for Palestinians had drawn criticism…”

The headline was improved after outreach from CAMERA. But in a subsequent piece, about the cancellation of another Kehlani concert, journalists again characterized her incitement to violence as pro-Palestinianism: “It was the second scheduled Kehlani performance to be canceled in recent weeks amid a furor over the singer’s pro-Palestinian stance.”

For the past half year, the paper’s coverage of campus unrest has failed to mention the acts of terror carried out under the banner of intifada. You’d have to go back to October 2024 to find a story that linked “globalize the intifada” to any sort of violence — in this piece, “the violent Palestinian struggle against Israel’s occupation.”

Yet here too, the paper profoundly failed to convey the character of the violence — and even tied it to what readers might view as a noble, higher purpose. (In reality, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have long made clear that their “struggle” — if that’s the right word for killing children in strollers and octogenarians in walkers — isn’t so much aimed at ending the occupation but rather Israel’s very existence.)

Intifada Confessions

If you were to look back even further, to the early days of campus demonstrations, you’d find the reporting that equivocated less when relaying that “many Jews,” as the Times put it, were concerned about the chant’s violent implications. Warmer — but still not quite there. Because to understand why many Jews feel that way, it’s important to understand that it’s not just Jews who feel that way.

Recall Muhannad Halabi, whose Facebook post used the word in reference to past and future terror attacks.

Then there’s the Hamas member who, speaking to Reuters about a botched terror attack, made the linkage clear:

“All the signs are that the intifada is coming,” said the Hamas cadre, who declined to be named for fear of Israeli reprisals. “There is a new generation of people who believe the only solution is armed struggle.”

Or the Islamic Jihad spokesman who clearly understands “intifada” as “war”:

Speaking after large-scale military drills were held in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, Abu Hamza threatened that “the Islamic Jihad will cause the stupid enemy to be worn down by launching rockets in its direction, since the organization has many other means of warfare that will hurt the enemy.”

“We call on all the fighters among our people and the free people in the West Bank and in Israel to mobilize for this war, so that there will be an overall intifada that will create the basis for the end of our enemy and its expulsion from all of Palestine,” he said.

“We will turn the so-called Gaza envelope, including cities and the occupied colonies, into a place that cannot be lived in, and we will launch rockets to ever further ranges,” Hamza claimed.

Or Iran’s supreme leader, who indicated that to support the intifada is to support terror organizations:

There are parties that outwardly claim to support the Palestinian Intifada, but we see them attacking the resistance.

Or Yasir Arafat, who before unleashing the terror campaign of 2000-2005 warned his wife: “You have to leave Palestine, because I want to start an intifada.”

A rifle-covered poster from 1997 commemorates the terror group PFLP-GC

If, despite this mainstream understanding, some have pondered an intifada that wouldn’t mean “killing each other” but instead would be “non-violent,” that modifier has been missing from campus chants.

To the contrary, violence is widely celebrated. Within Our Lifetime, a leading group in New York City’s anti-Israel protest movement, describes the phrase globalize the intifada as a call to “resist” “by any means necessary” — the same language it used to describe and praise the Oct. 7 massacre.

CUAD, an umbrella organization of anti-Israel student groups at the center of Columbia University’s unrest, also praises the Oct. 7 attacks using the phrase “resistance by any means necessary,” and has insisted that “violence is the only path forward.” The founding members of CUAD, Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapters, laud the massacre and describe it as legitimate “resistance.” National SJP, leaders of the anti-Israel movement on campuses across the U.S., released a “toolkit” the day after the Oct. 7 massacre that praised Hamas’s violence, called the slaughter “resistance,” and referred to the “large-scale battle” waged by the terror groups that infiltrated Israel as an “Intifada.”

Groups leading the calls to “globalize the intifada” clearly support violent attacks targeting civilians, and  it would be evident to anyone following these organizations what CUAD meant when, along with the allied Unity of Fields, it urged “resistance” against “legitimate targets” including all “Zionist” infrastructure in the U.S.

May 21

At this point in the essay, I had intended to look at the excuses used to discredit Jewish concerns about incendiary language; to note the paper’s extreme makeover for an extremist activist; to contrast Times’ coverage of intifada chants (which reflexively turned to apologists for the term) with its coverage of Confederate symbolism (which ignored comparable apologia); and to explore a recent Times article that disingenuously cast concerns about SJP and JVP extremism as little more than a right-wing Christian plan to “crush the pro-Palestinian movement.” That last article was published online on May 18, and in the print edition on May 20. Then came May 21 — the day Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were murdered.

The young couple were gunned down outside of the Capital Jewish Museum, where they had attended an event held by the American Jewish Committee. In its promotional materials, the AJC described the gathering as one that “brings together Jewish young professionals … and the D.C. diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity and celebrating Jewish heritage.” The victims worked at the Israeli embassy.

According to an FBI affidavit, Elias Rodriguez approached the museum just as Sarah and Yaron were leaving. After walking past them, he “turned to face their backs and brandished firearm from the area of his waistband” before opening fire. Sarah Milgrim tried to crawl away, but Rodriguez “followed behind her and fired again.” In a widely circulated of his arrest, the handcuffed assailant could have easily been mistaken for a campus protester as he sings, “Free, Free Palestine!”

 

Rodriguez had previously been involved with radical activist groups. In 2017, he took part in a protest against Amazon organized by the Answer Coalition, a virulently anti-Israel group whose past events have featured calls for violence and support for terror groups. On Oct. 7, as Hamas was slaughtering Israelis, Answer organized and promoted demonstrations urging people to “stand with the Palestinian people’s struggle,” and has continued to post solidarity with the “resistance” and calls to “globalize the intifada.”

He attended the protest as a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has also endorsed “Palestinian fighters’ resistance” in the form of an “intifada.” On and after Oct. 7, PSL defended and cheered the Hamas attack, calling it “morally and legally legitimate.”

At a demonstration following the Oct. 7 massacre, someone holds a Party for Socialism and Liberation banner justifying “resistance.”

Their acolyte clearly felt the same way. The banner photo atop one of Rodriguez’s social media accounts was of Hamas gunmen who killed seven Israeli civilians in an Oct. 1, 2024 attack — the same terror attacks CUAD specifically lauded as a bold and significant act of resistance.

“Some Hint of Acceptance”

The New York Times covered the attack extensively, including with a story that humanized the victims and another that placed the attack in the context of rising global antisemitism since the Oct. 7 massacre. In the latter story, which acknowledged there have been “abusive or hateful incidents” at campus protests, the reporter gave a Jewish leader space to note that “campuses normalized hate and anathematized Jews,” and even to point out what so many were thinking: “After all, ‘globalize the intifada’ looks a lot like this.”

But the old patterns remained. The American Jewish Committee, which held the event where Yaron and Sarah were murdered, expressed disgust about a Times video that “juxtaposes the brutal murder of Sarah and Yaron with images of Gaza.”

A Times report on the killing called into question those frightened by pro-violence rhetoric on campus, describing their concerns as an allegation by “some” — represented in the passage only by Trump and Israel — countered by “many demonstrators and their supporters” who dismiss critics as trying to “suppress political speech and their support for the Palestinian cause.” Even putting aside the slogan-like asymmetry of many vs. some, the passage effectively erases Jewish students, Jewish campus organizations, and supportive professors, along with any concrete examples of incitement and support for terrorism. The framing was repeated in other Times stories.

The optics of the attack were too glaring to dismiss so easily, though, and one New York Times story at least didn’t bury the lede. It opened:

The suspect in the killings of two Israeli Embassy workers in Washington on Wednesday shouted “Free, free Palestine” as he was arrested, chanting the same slogan, in the same cadence, that has rung out in pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses and on American streets for years.

Noteworthy, indeed. The author, Sharon Otterman, was also correct in noting that the killings “cast a harsh spotlight on the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States.” She even quoted an ADL official early in the piece, who made the point that anti-Israel groups “created an environment” that made the killing more likely.

It was an encouraging start. But it was procatalepsis — an argument presented so it could be rebutted. The rest of the piece, the bulk of it, was a platform for anti-Israel groups:

CAIR pleaded innocent — though readers were kept in the dark about the organization’s “happiness” on Oct 7 and its incitement against Jews along with mainstream synagogues, campus Hillels, and Zionist groups, which are depicted as backstabbing “enemies” to be “opposed.”

JVP pleaded moderation — without a word about the Columbia chapter’s support for the Oct. 7 attack.

We were told that SJP opposed violence in the United States but backed “the right of resistance, including through armed struggle” — though Otterman didn’t share that this is a euphemism for indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians, which the group celebrates.

Rather, she insisted that the above groups do not “openly glorif[y] armed resistance by organizations that the United States considers terrorist organizations,” though they demonstrably do. Again, the Times came to the defense of those who defend terrorism.

Finally, Otterman turned to two groups, Unity of Fields and Samidoun, which have been involved in campus and which, in the reporter’s words, showed “some hint of acceptance about the killing” of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.

A day before the publication of her article, Unity of Fields announced: “We commend Hamas, we commend Hezbollah, we commend Ansar Allah, we commend Elias Rodriguez.” Some hint of acceptance. [IMAGE]

That same day, Samidoun’s co-founder posted about the murders and, after suggesting they were legitimate, concluded that, “yes,” activists should “globalize the intifada.”

The New York Times didn’t share the Unity of Fields quote, and didn’t tell readers of the connection Samidoun made between murdering people at a Jewish event and “globalizing the intifada.” And why would it, after having worked so hard for so long to normalize the intifada?

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