The Intifada Is Here

Last week, on the streets of Washington D.C., just blocks from the White House, two innocent Israeli embassy employees were hunted down and murdered in cold blood. Their only "crime"? Being proudly pro-Israel.

Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, a young Jewish and Christian couple, both sharing a love for Israel and a passion for Zionism, were only days away from being engaged when they were murdered.

Their assassin — a pro-Palestinian thug — shouted "Free Palestine!" as he was dragged away from the scene.

This was not a random act of violence. It was not an "isolated incident." This was an execution. An act of jihad. A declaration of war by those who have imported the intifada into the heart of America.

It is the result of years of willful blindness, cowardice, and ideological appeasement. The very people who insist we "listen to both sides" and seek "nuance" in the face of genocidal chants have cultivated a climate where slaughtering Jews is not just excused — it’s rationalized.

They’ve cloaked modern-day Nazism in academic robes, slathered it in buzzwords like "decolonization," and given it a safe home in our universities, media outlets and halls of government.

This murder was born and fertilized by the same diseased ideology that fuels Hamas and Hezbollah. The same twisted doctrine that praises "resistance" when it means blowing up buses in Tel Aviv or butchering children in Israeli kibbutzim.

The same demonic hatred that burned through Europe in the 1930s under Hitler and through Eastern Europe under Stalin. Now it walks among us again — rebranded, reworded, but no less vile. And it spilled blood in our capital.

The truth is simple and sickening: the enemy is inside the gate. And he got there because we let him in.

For too long, American politicians, pundits, and "progressive" activists have embraced a moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies, pretending that terrorists with knives and bombs are somehow freedom fighters. They cry crocodile tears over "Palestinian suffering" while ignoring that the suffering is caused by the very leadership they excuse — Hamas, a death cult that uses its own children as shields and calls for the extermination of Jews.

These apologists act shocked when words lead to violence, yet they are the ones handing out the ideological ammunition.

Make no mistake: The butcher on 3rd St NW in Washington, D.C., did not act alone. He acted with the spiritual blessing of every professor who normalized anti-Israel hate in their classrooms. He acted with the moral cover of every politician who refused to condemn antisemitic mobs on American campuses. He acted with the cultural oxygen provided by every influencer who posted "From the River to the Sea" without acknowledging that it is a call for genocide.

His bullets were real, but his ideology is shared by tens of thousands now openly marching on American streets — masked, radicalized, emboldened, and unafraid. The murders were not the beginning. They were the next chapter in a pattern we have refused to name for what it is: a domestic insurrection of antisemitic revolutionaries who seek nothing less than the destruction of Western values, Judeo-Christian civilization, and democratic order.

What happened in D.C. wasn’t just an attack on a Jew and a Christian Zionist. It was an attack on America itself — on its laws, its decency, its values. And if we don’t treat it as such, it will not be the last.

Where is the leadership? Where is the crackdown on hate-preaching mosques, foreign-funded academic chairs, and radical student groups that have become breeding grounds for this poison?

Where is the decisive action to root out this cancer before more blood is spilled?

You can’t win a war you refuse to admit you’re in. And right now, America is at war — culturally, ideologically, and now physically — with a movement that draws its roots from the worst genocidal ideologies of the 20th century.

Communism justified the murder of millions for a utopia that never came. Nazism did the same in the name of racial purity. Today’s pro-Hamas radicalism marries both — the totalitarianism of the former with the bloodlust of the latter.

This is not about policy. This is about evil.

And evil must be met — not with handwringing or hashtags — but with righteous fury. With action. With a zero-tolerance posture toward anyone, anywhere in America who raises a hand — or a voice — in support of terrorism, antisemitism, or ideological violence.

We need to shut down the funding, shut down the rhetoric, and shut down the cowardly institutions that have enabled this.

The two young souls, Sarah Milgrim, a Jew, and Yaron Lischinsky, a Christian, who were gunned down yesterday will never go home again. They will never see their families again. They were the victims not just of a lone killer, but of a system that made him feel justified.

Their blood is on far more hands than just his.

This is a wake-up call for the West. The gates have been breached. The enemy is not coming. He’s already here—and he is chanting "Free Palestine" while standing over the corpses of Jews and their allies.

America must decide now: Do we stand with civilization or surrender to the savages?

Because there is no middle ground anymore.

Robert Chernin is a business leader, political adviser, and podcast host. He has been a consultant on presidential, senatorial, congressional, and gubernatorial races, including roles in the campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain. Robert serves as chairman of Israel Appreciation Day, American Center for Education and Knowledge, and The American Coalition. Read Robert Chernin's Reports — More Here.