Antisemitic Rhetoric Begets Global Violence

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — It took six days over 10,500 miles for a crude new anti-Israel chant – “Death, death to the IDF” – to become associated with violence against Jews.

In Glastonbury, England, a British punk band called Bob Vylan led thousands of fans in chanting “Death, death to the IDF” on Saturday, June 28, the first time this hostile slogan was publicly uttered.

In Melbourne, Australia, 20 anti-Israel demonstrators on Friday night chanted “Death to the IDF” as they swarmed an Israeli restaurant called Miznon, The Times of Israel reports. These lowlifes allegedly flipped over tables and smashed a window.

They resumed chanting “Death to the IDF” during a rally in Melbourne on Sunday, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Rabid speech has often inspired antisemitic violence, as Jewish leaders and others have warned in the midst of the Israel/Hamas war. Carlo J.V. Caro, a political and military analyst, outlined a range of traumatic antisemitic episodes rooted in hostile speech in an op-ed published by The New York Daily News.

“Rhetoric does not pull the trigger – but it loads the gun, primes the hand and sanctions the shot,” Caro writes. “This is the overwhelming record: more hate rhetoric against Jews and Israel leads to more threats against Jews and Israel leads to more violence against Jews and Israel.”

The invasion of the restaurant was part of an antisemitic spree which spread through Melbourne that night, the most serious of which was the attempted arson of a synagogue that was hosting a Shabbat dinner. Nobody was hurt and a suspect was apprehended.

At least one of those involved in the Miznon incident is known to counter-terrorism police as being associated with violent left-wing protests, an anonymous police source told The Sydney Morning Herald, according to the Times of Israel.

A week before, the band Bob Vylan’s lead singer, named Bob Vylan, led audience members in Glastonbury, west of London, in chanting “Free Palestine” and asked, “Have you heard this one, though?” He then initiated the “Death to the IDF” slogan which attendees repeated in unison, the JTA reported. IDF stands for Israel Defense Forces.

Vylan added, “We’re not pacifist punks. We are the violent punks because sometimes you gotta get your message across with violence because that is the only language that some people speak, unfortunately.”

Some people? Like Hamas?

Once the following weekend began, the mob in Melbourne adopted Vylan’s chant as they terrorized patrons at the Miznon restaurant. It was hard evidence that frightening language is the first step toward violence. After all, Vylan urged “violence.”

“Dehumanizing Israelis or Zionists or Jews – leads to inhuman acts,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said on the Haaretz podcast following Hamas’ massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Zack Beauchamp’s wedding in rural Virginia was marred by reports of the Pittsburgh shooting the same morning when a gunman shot 11 worshippers dead at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, he wrote in Vox.

Prior to a later trip to Pittsburgh, Beauchamp stated, “Our synagogue informed the congregation by email that it had been vandalized, that ‘hateful’ graffiti had been scrawled on our holy building. The police have a suspect in custody; as of right now, there’s no reason to believe that we’re facing a specific threat of violence. Regardless, the general sense of threat lingers.”

Words do not kill, but they contribute to tragedies. Lawbreakers are stimulated by these words. Many who yearn to “free Palestine” will commit low- or mid-level offenses such as seizing a building or blocking traffic. Lunatic assailants will go so far as seriously injuring or even killing Jews and their allies.

Caro says it best: “The rhetoric-violence connection is real and dangerous, putting vulnerable communities at risk.”

The latest hostile slogan took only six days to become fashionable, from one end of the world to another. The victims were not soldiers but average citizens of Australia who were either dining or observing the Sabbath. Not a g’day Down Under – for Jews or anyone else.