Terrorist-supporting students and their off-campus allies took over yet another building at Barnard College in New York on Wednesday. The protesters blocked students from attending class, disrupted students studying in the library, and lynched Barnard’s president in effigy. As midterm exams approach and protest season comes into full swing, it’s an opportune time to explain what the supposedly “pro-Palestinian” protesters mean with their slogans and symbols, like the red-hand pin. They are a lot more sinister than the legacy media or sympathetic politicians would have you believe.
Sometimes protesters’ support for terrorism is clear and open, such as the flyers they distributed at Barnard glorifying Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of the terrorist group Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization infamous for bombing the U.S. embassy and Army barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Or when they distributed pamphlets praising the so-called “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” which was the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where terrorists slaughtered 1,200 Israelis, gang-raped women, and took hundreds of hostages, including babies and elderly Holocaust survivors.
But in other cases, their support for terrorism is more obscure. Demonstrations at college campuses nationwide frequently feature a variety of slogans that, on the surface, may seem to simply advocate for Palestinian rights and self-determination. However, even a cursory look just below the surface into the origins and meanings of these chants reveals more insidious, violent, and even terroristic intent.
Here are some of the most common slogans and symbols and what they signify:
‘Globalize the Intifada’
The term “intifada” refers to Palestinian terror campaigns against Israel, particularly the First and Second Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005), as well as the more recent Knife Intifada (2015-2016). These terror campaigns included widespread acts of violence targeting civilians, including bombings of buses, pizza parlors, and nightclubs, as well as stabbings, shootings, and car-ramming attacks. The Palestinian terrorists murdered hundreds of civilians and injured thousands more.
Calling to “globalize the intifada” is a call for similar acts of terrorism against Jewish communities outside of Israel, such as the recent jihadist “Jew hunt” of Jewish and Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam; the mob of jihadists in Dagestan looking to lynch Jews aboard an Israeli flight that landed at the Makhachkala Uytash Airport; nurses publicly declaring that they have murdered Jewish patients and would do so again; the stabbing of an Orthodox Jew in Brooklyn by a man shouting “Free Palestine;” assaults of Jewish students on college campuses; and the arson of synagogues and other Jewish institutions in Australia, Canada, France, Spain, Florida, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere—all since Oct. 7, 2023.
This slogan normalizes terrorism and encourages attacks against Jewish individuals and institutions worldwide—but it won’t stop with the Jews. Europe is already experiencing a low-grade intifada, including:
- A mass-stabbing attack against preschoolers in a park in Aschaffenburg, Germany, by an Afghan migrant. He murdered a 2-year-old toddler and a 41-year-old man who had tried to intervene.
- A mass-stabbing attack in Austria by a Syrian man with ties to ISIS, resulting in the murder of a 14-year-old boy and injuries to five others.
- A mass-stabbing attack in France by an Algerian shouting “Allahu akbar” who murdered a 69-year-old man and injured five police officers.
- A stabbing where a 19-year-old Syrian man nearly killed a Spanish tourist with a knife at the Holocaust Museum in Berlin.
- A car-ramming attack in Munich by an Afghan with “an Islamist orientation” that injured at least 36 civilians.
It’s worth noting that all the terrorist attacks listed above occurred just since Jan. 1 and do not necessarily represent a comprehensive list.
‘There Is Only One Solution: Intifada Revolution’
If it appears that this common protest slogan bears a chilling resemblance to the Nazi’s genocidal “Final Solution,” it’s because that is its inspiration. Here is what I wrote about this back in 2023:
The phrase “there is only one solution” is adapted from Article 13 of the Hamas Covenant of 1988: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”
The same covenant explains that “it is possible for the followers of the three religions—Islam, Christianity and Judaism—to coexist in peace and quiet with each other,” but that this state of peace “would not be possible except under the wing of Islam.”
In other words, Hamas believes that there can only be peace with Jews and Christians if they are under the thumb of the caliphate.
Hamas inherited this phrase from Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, who worked closely with the Muslim Brotherhood from which Hamas developed. Husseini lived in Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945, where he aided the Nazi war effort by, among other things, broadcasting Nazi propaganda to the Arab world. …
Husseini’s admiration for Hitler’s “Final Solution” to eliminate the Jewish people became the “no solution … except jihad” of Hamas, which seeks to eliminate the Jewish state and all the Jews living in it.
The historical connotation and the emphasis on “one solution” is not only an endorsement of mass violence against Jews in Israel, but also a rejection of any peaceful means of achieving Hamas’ political goals. Given that previous intifadas resulted in the deaths of thousands, this slogan signals a willingness to embrace similar or even escalated levels of bloodshed.
‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’
At first glance, this phrase appears to be merely a call for Palestinian freedom. However, the geographic reference is clear: The “river” is the Jordan River, and the “sea” is the Mediterranean Sea—the eastern and western borders of the state of Israel.
The slogan is, therefore, a call for the complete elimination of the world’s only Jewish state and its replacement with a second Palestinian state (Jordan being the first, as its population is majority Palestinian and its territory encompasses a majority of the land that once comprised the British Mandate for Palestine).
Tellingly, the rhyming chant in Arabic is “Min al maya la-al’maya, Filisteen Arabiya” or “From water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”
Inverted Red Triangles
Several common symbols at anti-Israel rallies center around the Palestinian flag, including the watermelon, which shares its colors. But one such symbol—the inverted red triangle—can have a more sinister implication.
As the Middle East Media Research Institute observed, “The inverted red triangle … first appeared in videos of the fighting in Gaza published by Hamas’ military wing, where it is used to mark Israeli military targets, such as soldiers, tanks, and bulldozers, about to be attacked.”
The symbol is used by anti-Israel activists to identify individuals or institutions to target for harassment or even violence.
The Red-Hand Pin
Worn at last year’s Oscars ceremony by birdbrained celebrities such as Billie Eilish and Mark Ruffalo, the red-hand pin recalls the infamous lynching of two Israelis by a bloodthirsty mob of Palestinians in 2000 in Ramallah, a city north of Jerusalem controlled by the Palestinian Authority. After the two Israeli army reservists made a wrong turn and ended up in Ramallah, they were taken into custody by Palestinian Authority police officers. Soon thereafter, rumors spread that there were Israelis at the police station, and about 1,000 Palestinians broke in and murdered them then waved their bloody hands before a cheering crowd outside the station. As Fox News reported:
One of the soldiers’ wives listened by cellphone after a Palestinian butcher answered the victim’s phone and told her, “We are now slaughtering your husband.”
One particular image from the carnage became infamous when one of the killers, Aziz Salha, waved his bloodied hands to the crowd from the police station’s window after dozens broke in.
Salha later explained that the Palestinians present were “in a craze to see blood.” As he waved his hands, the Palestinian mob cheered: “Allahu akbar,” which means “God is great” in Arabic.
“I came closer to him and saw a knife lodged in his back, near his right shoulder. I removed the knife and stabbed him in the back two or three times … while others in the room continued to kick him. I put my hand over his mouth and the other on his shoulder, in order to strangle him.”
“I saw that my hands were drenched with blood, and so was my shirt,” Salha continued. “So, I went over to the window and I waved my hands at the people who were in the courtyard.”
The mob then threw the bodies out of the station and desecrated them.
Salha’s bloody hands instantly became one of the most recognizable symbols of the Second Intifada. The best that can be said for the useful idiots who wear the symbol on the red carpet or on college campuses is that they might not be aware of its awful history.
While many self-declared “pro-Palestine” activists claim to be advocating for human rights and justice, the slogans they chant and symbols they use reveal a much darker ideology. As Cornell University student leader Momodou Taal said last year before a cheering crowd of student protesters, “We take our cue from the armed resistance in Palestine.”
In other words: Hamas.
These phrases are not just calls for Palestinian self-determination—they endorse violence, terrorism, and the eradication of Israel. Were they directed at any other group on college campuses—or anywhere else—university officials would instantly recognize that they constitute harassment and incitement to violence. Their failure to recognize it and act accordingly is an invitation for the Trump administration to investigate and sanction those universities and to deport the foreign supporters of terrorism who are here on student visas.
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