Free Palestine! They said
I slept in on the morning of October 7th, 2023. I groggily woke up to a text from a dear friend with whom I had spent a year in Israel after college. “I’m so glad I decided not to make Aliyah,” he had written me.
I chuckled. “Hahahahaha,” I replied, still wiping the sleep from my eyes. The Israelis did something silly again, I figured. There was probably an all-out brawl on Hof Bugrashov over a contentious matkot game that made the news. Or maybe they debuted a new egregiously cringe portmanteau. They love portmanteaus.
But then I opened social media, and the first thing I saw was a post that read: “Wake up babe, Palestine’s getting free.”
That certainly didn’t sound like a portmanteau.
Since then, I have seen and heard the phrase “Free Palestine!” just about everywhere.
Free Palestine!, they cheered as they celebrated “resistance” (which I learned is justified when people are occupied) in the streets on October 8th. Rape and butchery, it turns out, are just innovative – exhilarating, even – ways of getting free.
Free Palestine!, the mob at Cooper Union yelled while banging on the library door where Jews were hiding terrified in lockdown in October 2023.
Free Palestine!, Daniel Garcia shouted as he attempted to break into a Jewish family’s home in California to murder them in their sleep in October 2023. He also shouted “Kill Jews,” which is a classic form of political speech that would be an insult to real incidences of antisemitism and antizionism everywhere if we said it were hate speech.
Free Palestine!, they scrawled in Arabic after desecrating a public Chanukiah in California in December 2023.
Free Palestine!, they thundered outside the Goldie restaurant of Tahini shake fame – a major supporter of coexistence initiatives – in Philadelphia in December 2023 and dozens of times since then, their faces covered with keffiyehs.
Free Palestine!, the chorus rang at a protest in California in November 2023 when Loay Alnaji murdered 69-year-old Paul Kessler with his megaphone. But don’t worry, the New York Times and others were dutifully on the scene to “investigate” this mysterious “episode”.
Free Palestine!, they declared on UCLA (and more) campuses while forming human walls preventing Jews-I-mean-Zionists (after all, they made sure to ask all passersby “are you a Zionist”; it would of course be unfair to the non-genocidal students otherwise) from accessing libraries amid their 2024 campus encampments.
Free Palestine!, Vincent Sumpter screamed while he stabbed a random Jew on the streets of Brooklyn in August 2024. He also screamed “Do you want to die?” which is how we know he yelled “Free Palestine!” to show his solidarity with Gazan children.
Free Palestine!, Elias Rodriguez spat at Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky in May 2025 as he murdered them at gunpoint while they were leaving the Israeli embassy, firing 21 gunshots mostly into Sarah’s back as she desperately crawled away, already bleeding out. Comfortingly, he did not shoot them out of any animus towards Jews or Israel – he only did it “for Gaza.” Thank god we dodged that bullet.
Free Palestine!, Mohamed Sabry Soliman called out when he burned Karen Diamond alive and injured 11 others with a Molotov cocktail attack – which he traveled 100 miles from home to do, a sure sign of his motivation to stand in solidarity with Gazan children – in Colorado in June 2025.
Free Palestine!, a gunman snarled while unloading 20 gunshots into a Jewish family’s home (and yes, they were in the home while this happened) during Chanukah in December 2025.
Free Palestine!, a group of Neo-Nazis in NYC called out amid gleeful “Heil Hitler”s and “Sieg Heil”s on the 25th anniversary of September 11th.
Free Palestine!, an attacker yelled after ambushing and nearly choking to death a Jewish man leaving synagogue in May 2026 in LA.
Free Palestine!, they graffitied on walls of countless Hillels and Chabads and synagogues and Jewish community centers. An extremely abbreviated list of sources will have to do for this one: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Free Palestine!, they trolled tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of social media posts from Jews about, well, anything at all.
Baking a challah? Free Palestine!
Celebrating your child’s Bat Mitzvah? Free Palestine!
Posting your art? Free Palestine!
Doing one of those “getting ready with me” videos like the kids do these days? Free Palestine!
Reminding the world that you simply exist while being a Jew? Free Palestine!
Writing a long, emotional post about how your heart aches for the deaths of all children caught in the conflict and how much you wish for peace and harmony among all peoples? I ain’t reading all that, free Palestine!
Truly, it’s a wonder anyone would confuse “Free Palestine” with a racist dog whistle. Those uppity Jews being touchy about this phrase must just love genocide.
