The killing of two people working at the Israel Embassy—preceded by arson in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and followed by firebombs in Boulder, Colorado– has focused attention on a phrase—‘globalize the intifada—incorporated into common parlance without giving much thought to the somber origin story propelling it. These high voltage words have catalyzed emotions of self-proclaimed ‘progressives’ against an Israel stamped as an evil manifestation of colonialism. Linking Israel to colonialism imprints the country with the stigma of a vilified world-wide project and also, not insignificantly, with the conviction that its sovereignty cannot long endure as the last shreds of empire are swept away.

Few attacks against Israel have gripped the imagination of activists as powerfully as those conducted by Hamas on 7 October 2023. A barbaric massacre was almost instantly lionized as a moment of liberation for Palestinians and as a critical strike against a settler-colonialism that supposedly plundered its way, without much hindrance, to prosperity. With Hamas proxies, on and off university campuses donning keffiyehs and shouting scripted slogans, demonstrations have become akin to sacred rituals wrapped in an aura of virtue around the proclaimed rise of the dispossessed.

Notwithstanding the savagery of October 7—distorted by a national media narrative that gives substantial cover to eruptions of Palestinian violence–the wreckage and carnage across Gaza have directed outrage at Israel for supposedly killing innocent Palestinians and for posing dangers to an international infrastructure charged with peacekeeping and dispensing humanitarian aid. But what is the relationship of an infrastructure purportedly enabling cooperation and peace among nations to colonialism, a power routinely described as a moral monstrosity. Is Israel the last remnant of an American Empire that may also be dying? Is the international framework threatened by Israeli military operations a repudiation of the Western dominance still stitching together the world with trade and capital? Or perhaps, on closer inspection, can the colonialism that is condemned for its abuses be entirely distinguished from the international framework praised as an avatar of liberation. An examination of who runs this global framework and of how it operates makes it harder to take a rhetoric exclusively centered on the horrors of colonialism literally. That perspective is not only outdated by developments in the past several decades, it is also complicated by its own dark undercurrents. The tales told about colonialism now sound off key if only because, as Bob Dylan put it, “The times, they are a changing.”

First, it is a striking that many of the people holding senior positions in the institutional components of this infrastructure are citizens of post-colonial countries. Second, it is also known that some of these organizations have actually been colonized by terrorist movements and seamlessly assimilated into them. Third, the framework set up to maintain order has been increasingly unable to navigate through these unstable times. Liberation from foreign domination has not stopped post-colonial rulers from plundering the wealth of their countries. Nor has this international framework been able to halt the costly war raging on the European continent. Finally, its inability to provide security for global commerce against Houthi attacks is perhaps the clearest example of the failure of this infrastructure as well as a manifestation of the absurdity of seeing the world starkly divided by the furies summoned by colonialism. For it is Western military power and economic resources, the very objects of condemnation by colonialism’s opponents, which are vital to the operations of this global infrastructure.

The realization of what is involved in the maintenance of this international framework, thus, raises questions about the strategy of dropping intifada violence on American soil. Is such a strategy intended to bring an end to the American empire and to destroy what remains  of colonialism or is it to restore US funding to the international organizations now threatened by the Gaza war? How likely is a violence unleashed in America by those carrying the flag for Hamas, no matter its targets, to be granted respect by those in charge of a foreign policy determined to avoid the entanglements of armed conflict?

The only reasonable predicate for taking intifada violence to the Unted State’s capital is the assertion that Israel’s so-called iniquities are a presumed projection of the wrongs of America’s colonial empire-building. The attack is supposed to  work its alchemy to build support for Hamas’ goal, “From The River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free’ as a replacement for what has long been the global consensus of “Two States for Two Peoples” in order to bring on a glorious future for Palestinians and to show how to pave a path for liberation through revolutionary struggle. Only an Arab Palestine can restore full justice to the men, women, and children who have had to live in the shadow of the  nakba—the Arabic term for the “catastrophe” caused by the establishment of the Jewish state. For Hamas, it is important never to forget and never to move on from 1948, the fateful year when history took a wrong turn. Liberating Palestine redeems a people and a history. And it cannot be done without destroying the Jewish state.

But is that predicate nullified when the forces powering colonialism cannot be distinguished or totally separated from the powers opposing it? If colonialism, itself, cannot be isolated from other benign forces, is it possible to conclude that the horrors still engulfing Palestinians are not caused by the remnants of a colonialist order oppressing the world? For by its own account, Hamas’ October 7 butchery hatched the return of the nakba. The Israeli army has taken hold of more Palestinian land  and displaced ever more Palestinian men, women, and children from their homes and neighborhoods because the complexities of urban warfare have turned these places into battlefields. Trying to undo the past has evidently brought its shameful history roaring back to life. A more ironic outcome of the October 7 savagery could not be invented.

How much evidence is necessary, then, to wonder about actions that have consistently degenerated into chaos for the very forces launching them and for the people whose interests they are supposed to serve? Intoxicated with their chants, their sounds and rhythms instill in Hamas supporters the belief that the words, themselves, when spoken will become reality. It is natural to wonder about the kind of reality that will emerge if Hamas’ magical thinking is ever fully realized? Sometimes, the answers to important questions are not ‘blowing in the wind’ but are rather the outcome of the actions taken by the ‘neighborhood bully.’