Globalising the Intifada on Sixth Avenue

Outside the News Corp building on Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan — home to Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post — hundreds of protesters gathered for a “Flood New York City for Gaza” rally. The demonstration was organised by the group Within Our Lifetime and was convened to resist “the Zionist project carried forward with US support”.

On display were massive banners reading “Globalise the Intifada”. Another declared “Glory to our martyrs,” emblazoned with the red inverted triangle, a symbol taken directly from Hamas propaganda videos to mark enemy targets.

“Victory to the resistance,” read a third. Chants echoed of “Globalise the intifada” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free”.

One Palestinian flag bore the image of Abu Obeida, the masked spokesman for Hamas’s military wing who was killed in an Israeli strike in August. The green Hamas flag itself was waved proudly, even displayed behind worshippers as they prayed before the rally began.

British journalist Ben Leo, covering the rally for GB News, approached a masked protester waving a Hamas flag.

“Aren’t Hamas a proscribed terrorist organization?” he asked. “It is [proscribed],” the protester conceded.
Leo then asked: “Why aren’t the police picking you up for that? In the UK you’d be arrested.”
“Well, it’s freedom of speech, freedom of expression… people can support whoever they want,” the protester retorted.
Next to him, another demonstrator, wearing a Hamas al-Qassam Brigades headband, chimed in, raising his index finger: “First Amendment, first Amendment.”

To anyone watching, this was not a rally for peace or a desperate call for more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

It was a celebration of terror, in the heart of America’s largest city, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel, on the anniversary of the darkest day in modern Jewish history.

The chant “Globalise the Intifada” has become more than a benign slogan. Recent events have shown how that phrase has metamorphosed into a call to action for a movement that romanticises violence against Jews under the guise of “resistance.”
Its echoes can already be heard across the globe: in the Yom Kippur terror attack outside a synagogue in Manchester; in the killing of two Israeli diplomats, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, in May of this year outside a Jewish young professionals’ event in Washington, DC; and in the fatal firebombing in Colorado aimed at a gathering in support of Israeli hostages.

These are not isolated incidents. They are the logical, inevitable extension of a culture that normalises the rhetoric of annihilation.

And yet, as these scenes unfold, many shrug. Some will argue that these demonstrators waving terror flags and chanting for intifada are merely exercising their inalienable right to free speech. They will insist that this, in fact, is what makes America great.

But if we’re honest with ourselves, this is a civilisational battle we’re losing, one in which we grant boundless freedoms to those who despise the very society that protects them. There is something profoundly self-destructive about a culture that tolerates, even celebrates, those who openly glorify murder in the name of liberty.

Free speech is a cornerstone of any viable democracy, but it is not a suicide pact.

A civilisation cannot survive if it cannot tell the difference between dissent and destruction, between moral protest and moral rot. When mobs chant for intifada in Manhattan and the public stay silent, or worse, equivocates, it reveals something deeply broken in the soul of this city.

New York was once a symbol of resilience, a place that rose from the ashes of 9/11, proclaiming “Never again”. But 24 years later, that same city allows the symbols of Hamas — the internationally designated terrorist organisation behind suicide bombings, sexualised violence and massacres of children — to fly freely on its streets.

We can and must mourn every innocent life lost in Gaza, where civilians have endured unimaginable suffering squarely as a result of the war Hamas triggered two years ago on October 7. But compassion for one people does not require blindness to the hatred consuming another. There is no moral equivalence between grieving for the dead and glorifying their killers.

The images from Sixth Avenue on October 7 are not just disturbing. They are prophetic. They remind us that civilisations do not fall because of external enemies alone, but because of internal decay when moral clarity gives way to moral confusion, when cowardice replaces conviction, when leaders like Mamdani can look at the horrors of October 7 and find a way to blame the victims.

The wake-up calls are all around us. The only question left is whether we’ll answer before it’s too late.

Jonathan Harounoff, Israel’s international spokesperson at the UN, is the award-winning author of Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt.