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OAN Commentary by: Richard Pollock
Monday, September 15, 2025
Are Jews the canary in the coal mine?
We all know that since October 7th, Jewish American citizens have faced threats, violence and even outright murder. Are the experiences of American Jews a warning sign – the canary in the coal mine – of a broader acceptance of political violence from dark corners in America?
And did this sickening, new atmosphere contribute to the assassination of Charlie Kirk?
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Since October 7, 2023, we know that terrible political violence has been directed against American Jews and elsewhere around the globe. While specific politicians, government officials and people of conscience have deplored this violence; overall, the outcry has been muted.
For the most part, these acts of extreme violence and intimidation have originated from a so-called Red-Green alliance of radical, hardened, antisemitic Islamists and self-described revolutionary, anti-imperialist, socialist Leftwing activists.
It’s not a secret that on October 7, the Democratic Socialists of America issued a statement saying, “Today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime—a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States. End the violence. End the Occupation. Free Palestine.”
Interestingly, that same DSA statement applauded NY Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who, they wrote, “provides an effective model for pressuring elected officials to stop providing financial support to the Israeli state.” That’s the same guy now running for New York City mayor.
Let me be clear: this extreme violence has nothing to do with loving and caring Democrats, Republicans or independents.
But since October 7th, loud, hateful anti-Israel activists have repeated chants in the streets to intimidate, terrorize and instill fear in Jews, whether they are at a place of worship, on a college campus, at a Jewish restaurant or on the doorstep of Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Kahn, the national executive editor of the liberal New York Times.
On August 29th, the front of Kahn’s apartment was splattered in red paint by pro-Palestine activists. This is their modus operandi. Intimidate. Threaten. Even though his newspaper has heavily promoted many Hamas claims — even those later found to be false — he nevertheless found himself to be the latest Jew to find his home defaced by terrorist sympathizers.
And this brings me to the not-so-subtle issue of the growing embrace of violence in the Palestinian American protest movement. One of their key chanting phrases is to “Globalize the Intifada.”
They are referring to two highly organized Palestinian murder campaigns (the First: 1987 to 1990, the Second: 2000 to 2005) that killed more than 1,000 Jews by blowing up buses, schools, hotels, nightclubs and restaurants throughout Israel.
Of course, the cowardly Palestinians were targeting unarmed Jews.
We just saw remnants of the murderous Intifada only this last week when two Palestinians at close range fired their guns at Jews who gathered at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Six Israelis were murdered and 12 wounded on the September 8th attack.
Hamas called them “heroic resistance fighters,” according to National Public Radio’s Daniel Estrin, who reported from Tel Aviv.
This latest terrorist act continues the dark days of October 7th, when Hamas unleashed its armed militias against civilians living in Israeli Kibbutz’s near the Gaza border. As we all know, on that day, they hunted unarmed Jews, burned them alive as they huddled in safe rooms, raped women who attended a festival, and intentionally murdered all the men, women and children they could find.
Not only Israelis, but citizens from more than 40 countries were butchered that day.
Then Hamas kidnapped both alive and dead people to serve as hostages and barter them away in forthcoming negotiations.
But since October 7th, attacks on Jews are becoming a daily experience. Let’s just look at the actual violence of the last six months.
In April, Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor and his family fled from their official place of residence in the middle of the night when accused suspect Cody Balmer purportedly firebombed it on the solemn Jewish holiday of Passover.
According to the arrest warrant, Balmer told police that Gov. Josh Shapiro needed to know that he firebombed his home so that the governor would “not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.” Police even “found stickers of Cuban communist revolutionary Che Guevara in Balmer’s home” and he was also an avowed socialist, according to media reports.
In May, Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26 were also gunned down outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C.
The killer, Elias Rodriguez, reportedly shouted “Free Palestine!” as he was arrested.
Soon after, Rodriguez was lionized by various Marxist and Socialist groups. Unity of Fields – formerly known as Palestine Action US – announced a “Free Elias Rodriguez Organizing Committee.” The campaign is co-signed by 28 other pro-Palestine or Marxist groups.
Additionally, in June, an Egyptian Muslim threw Molotov cocktails at a Boulder, Colorado, Jewish group that peacefully marched and called for the release of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Mohamed Sabry Soliman burned 15 Jews, including an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor. Another Jewish woman, also 82, succumbed to her burns after suffering terribly for a month.
Soliman similarly shouted “Free Palestine” and later told police that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people.”
But there are other activists who apparently believe in murder and political violence that has nothing to do with Jews. They feel as if they have a moral right to kill their perceived adversaries.
Of course, there is the increasing lionization of Luigi Mangione, who, in cold blood, murdered United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson last December in New York City.
Remarkably, thousands have rallied to Mangione’s side and there is even an official Facebook page titled “Free Luigi Maginone.” They proclaim that “Luigi Mangione is a hero of the people and deserves freedom! Join to support his cause and share anything related!
Mangione’s defense team previously released his statement to his supporters, saying, “I am overwhelmed by – and grateful for – everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support. Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions, as mail has flooded from across the country, and around the globe.”
Then, of course, there were the two unsuccessful assassination attempts against now-President Donald Trump.
The history of modern-day, politically-directed violence has largely been undertaken by Left-wing revolutionary activists, although there have been noteworthy right-wing acts of political violence as well.
In the 1970’s, both the revolutionary Leftwing Black Panthers and the Weather Underground were the main advocates for political violence in the United States. The Panthers and the Weather Underground hailed violence against the state and engaged in gun fights with police. The Panthers also gunned down some of their own people, claiming they were informants or didn’t follow their orthodoxy.
The Weather Underground heralded and admired many fellow international “revolutionary, antiimperialist“ allies who carried out terrible political violence overseas. In Europe, they included the brutal German Baader-Meinhof Group, also known as the Red Army Faction, as well as the violent Irish Republican Army.
The Weather Underground also regarded the Palestinian Black September group, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and, of course, the Vietcong, as allies.
As many of my readers know from my earliest days as a Substack columnist, I was myself was a Left-wing political activist who was a roommate of Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis. We lived in D.C.
There, I frequently met with and became friends with many of Rennie’s co-conspirators, including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Tom Hayden — along with other New Left activists.
The Left adored anti-Democratic revolutionaries. I remember when Rennie and I met Jerry Rubin in a hotel room in Manhattan after he came back from a lengthy stay in Libya. He regaled accounts of his meetings with the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Jerry, who was Jewish and once worked on an Israeli Kibbutz, excitedly told us Gaddafi was his personal hero. Before he returned to the states from Israel, he also went to Cuba to meet another dictator and hero of his, Fidel Castro.
In my early Substack posts, I did a deep dive into Saul Alinsky, a revolutionary strategist, who authored what would be the “Bible” for Leftwing activists, “Rules for Radicals.” Alinsky became our “guru” who guided groups like the revolutionary-oriented Weather Underground and the Black Panthers.
“Rules” conveyed many lessons for radical activists. One key takeaway was the need for militancy and the importance of being regarded as a “dangerous enemy.” Alinsky stressed it was important to “induce fear” in your opposition.
Alinsky advised his followers: “In a fight almost anything goes.”
The father of the revolutionary American Left urged activists to pick a political target. Today is it Charlie Kirk? Alinsky urged Left-wing activists to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Obviously, there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks.”
In killing Kirk, polarization can occur. A few radicals have celebrated his assassination. Will this morph into a Rodriguez or Mangione underground movement?
For Alinsky, society’s polarization instead was a very good thing. “With this focus comes a polarization. As we have indicated before, all issues must be polarized if action is to follow.”
Kirk is widely known as a good person, a follower of Christ, and a man who openly espoused debate and the free flow of ideas. Therefore, some say, he is beyond attack, especially a murderous attack.
Not so, says Alinsky. He says the “good person” label is a ruse and “political idiocy.”
“Can you imagine in the arena of conflict charging that so-and-so is a racist bastard and then diluting the impact of the attack with qualifying remarks such as “He is a good churchgoing man, generous to charity, and a good husband”? This becomes political idiocy,” Alinksy argued.
So, arguing that Charlie Kirk was a good person is, in Saul Alinsky’s opinion, “political idiocy.”
It’s time we stand up to these small-time, crazy activist tyrants, who seek to intimidate and instill fear in American society. We’re an honorable a society that still lives for our ideals. We must uphold them as energetically as those who wish to tear them down.
Charlie Kirk will go down in American history as a man who believed in free debate, free speech, and American ideals — being a martyr who died for those ideals.
(Views expressed by guest commentators may not reflect the views of OAN or its affiliates.)
Richard Pollock is a former New Left activist and was a roommate with Chicago 7 defendant Rennie Davis. He understands New Left strategy and tactics. For four decades, Richard was an investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C. Among his positions, he served as the senior investigative reporter for the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller News Foundation, and at OAN. While at OAN he served in the Washington, D.C. bureau and hosted its investigative reporting specials. He is semi-retired and his posts from D.C. can be read on Substack.com
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