By Bruce S. Ticker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Leqaa Kordia returned to a hero’s welcome in Paterson, New Jersey, on Sunday where she led her adoring crowd in chanting “globalize the intifada” – a message that could have well inspired terrorism across the Atlantic before the day ended.
Kordia was arrested at Columbia University in 2024 during protests over free speech and antisemitism, and she was freed from federal immigration detention amid a federal investigation.
Across the pond, hoodlums globalized the intifada when they set fire before 1:45 a.m. Monday to four ambulances operated by the nonprofit service Hatzola parked outside a synagogue in Golders Green, the largest Jewish community in London. It would have still been Sunday in Paterson.
The savagery in Golders Green was readily recognized in England for what it is. “It is a stain on Britain that Jewish citizens no longer feel protected,” headlined a letters-to-the-editor column in the London Telegraph.
“As a non-Jew, I am utterly appalled by the rising antisemitism in this country,” Caroline Grist wrote. “(Ministers) have allowed huge pro-Palestine, anti-Israel marches through central London, while Jewish people who have shown opposition to these marches have been told to move on. Such occurrences have emboldened antisemites.”
She could have been referring to a Chicago man charged with threatening to “shoot up a synagogue” or an Aussie at Crown Casino in Melbourne who yelled “gas the Jews.”
This recent series of antisemitic incidents once again point up the brutal intent and distortions of activists for the Palestinians. They say it is not necessarily antisemitic to criticize Israel, so why do they take on Jewish-owned ambulances, synagogues and casinos half a world away from Israel?
Kordia’s call to “globalize the intifada” was being applied by three suspected arsonists in Golders Green. As Kordia, 33, wore a pin that said “Palestine,” suspect Timothy Holmes, 31, of Chicago posted “From the river to the sea every Jew will die,” a new spin on the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That and other phrases were noted in a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Kordia, who is from the West Bank, adopted Paterson as her hometown while living with her mother there on a student visa, The New York Times reports. “I left behind many beautiful, courageous, innocent women and whose only crime was just dreaming – dreaming of a better life for themselves and their families,” she proclaimed on Sunday.
Dreaming of what? Celebrating another Oct. 7-style massacre?
In Golders Green, police were seeking three suspects who were seen in CCTV footage “pouring an accelerant onto the vehicles before igniting them and fleeing,” said Det. Chief Supt. Luke Williams of London’s Metropolitan Police during a news conference, according to the Times.
Police said no injuries were reported and the fires were extinguished. Oxygen cylinders on the vehicles exploded during the fire, which caused windows to break in an apartment building nearby, the London Fire Brigade reported.
The incident is being investigated as an antisemitic hate crime, according to police.
Holmes, the Chicagoan who was charged with posting antisemitic comments, was subsequently arrested in Florida. JTA reported that he traveled there after posting about an Israeli official’s relatives reported to live there, “What’s their address? Flying to Florida this week. Just out of curiosity.”
Across the Pacific, a Jewish man at a Melbourne casino, recalled, “We’re sitting there, minding our own business, when these idiots felt emboldened to say disgusting slurs to us,” according to The New York Post.
The Jewish man, who asked to remain anonymous, said he scared at least one of three offenders by filming his encounter with them. They allegedly performed a Nazi salute and shouted “heil Hitler” and “gas the Jews” at him and others.
One of them pleaded, “I apologize for that, I apologize for that action. I ask of you one thing…can you please delete the video that you have of me on your phone?”
What went wrong? Did the Jewish gentleman fail to film his good side?
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist.
One obvious omission in this piece-
. “I left behind many beautiful, courageous, innocent women and whose only crime was just dreaming – dreaming of a better life for themselves and their families,” she proclaimed on Sunday.“
The rights, Kordia, as a Liberated Palestinian Woman enjoys in the US, do not exist in the Hamas/Islamist world she dreams of anywhere.
They do exist in Israel. The country she wants irradiated.