The highly-planned origin of ‘spontaneous’ protests

In the days following the horrific events of October 7 I was surprised at how coordinated the various global anti-Israel protests appeared to be. So-called ‘spontaneous’ actions generally used the same slogans and the same professionally printed placards – and there also seemed to be a sudden and endless supply of khalifas and Palestinian flags available for these events.

It was as if these protests had been coordinated in conjunction with the 7 October terrorist attack and relied on the gullibility of young westerners to support a ’cause’ about which they had little understanding.

Of course, in hindsight it’s now obvious that that’s exactly what happened – and a recent report from NGO Monitor (https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/ngo-network-orchestrating-antisemitic-incitement-on-american-campuses) has revealed that “the exponential rise in antisemitic violence, incitement, intimidation, and harassment on and around campuses in the United States is not the product of spontaneous protests of individuals. Rather, they are tightly coordinated and well-funded by a network of radical and often antisemitic non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Within Our Lifetime, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Samidoun. Under the guise of human rights and justice, these NGOs work to undermine the economic, military and other ties between US and Israel, and to besiege and divide the US Jewish community”.

In other words, these protests (including the current spate of campus anarchy) are carefully coordinated and designed to give the impression of a groundswell of anti-Israel sentiment – when, in fact, they are the work of a handful of organisations which have been working in this space for decades.

So, given that we now know that they are not spontaneous, that they are part of a coordinated campaign to call for insurrection, and that they openly incite and encourage violence against Jews – is this not now an issue for Homeland Security in the US, and the equivalent agency in other nations?

These are not ‘peaceful’ protests and the constitutional exercising of free speech. The threshold for the limitation of the expression of free speech is the point at which that speech impacts the freedom of another – and that line has well and truly been crossed in respect of the open attacks on Jews in the US.

As such, is there a case here for classifying the ringleaders of these protests – and perhaps even some of the students – as Urban Terrorists, and dealing with them accordingly? At the very least, it would be worth seeing an advocacy group mounting a legal challenge to test the boundaries of current legal definitions.

As for the rest of us – we need to wake up. These campaigns are becoming more sophisticated. According to NGO Monitor they’re well-funded (by foreign powers), carefully coordinated, and they can rely on an endless supply of stupidity on the campuses and in the newsrooms of the west.

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