The Commentary Magazine Podcast

Episode Title: The Intifada Really Goes Global
Date: December 15, 2025
Host: Jon Podhoretz
Panel: Abe Greenwald, Seth Mandel, Eliana Johnson, Christine Rosen

Overview

In this deeply somber episode, the Commentary team gathers in the wake of a weekend marked by anti-Jewish violence around the world: the massacre at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, the murder of director Rob Reiner and his wife, disruptions of Hanukkah events in Amsterdam, an attack at Brown University, and terror arrests in Germany and Syria. The hosts reflect on the sense of cascading chaos, globalized antisemitism, political denial, failures of governance, and the increasingly dire situation for Jews outside Israel. The panel laments the failure of Western leaders to recognize or act against the mounting threat and discusses assimilation, multiculturalism, and the erosion of civilizational self-confidence in the West.

Main Discussion Points and Insights

1. A Weekend of Global Anti-Jewish Violence

• Bondi Beach, Sydney: Father and son with ISIS ties attack with machine guns, killing Jews during Hanukkah.
• Brown University, USA: Shooting in a classroom; potential targeting of the head of the College Republicans, Ella Cook.
• Amsterdam: Hanukkah concert disrupted and canceled due to the performer’s Israeli Jewish identity.
• Other incidents: Arrests in Germany (terror plot), killings in Syria (Americans), notable lack of adequate responses or clear communication from authorities in each case.

Quote:

"It's like this thing where...it just floods us...You only need one guy with a gun or two guys with a gun to go onto Bondi beach with machine guns." — Jon Podhoretz (05:20)

2. Failure and Cowardice of Western Leaders

• Leaders in Australia — notably PM Anthony Albanese — fail to name Jews or antisemitism in their statements, focusing instead on generic calls for gun control.
• The reaction to these attacks often downplays their anti-Jewish character, with institutions and political figures avoiding direct acknowledgment.
• The Western security response is characterized as passive and bureaucratic, with authorities slow to act and issue warnings (e.g., 17-minute delay at Brown).

Quote:

"There are failures of governance and law enforcement from the top down... The failures are just legion... I'm speechless." — Eliana Johnson (13:10)

3. Normalization and Subsidization of Antisemitic Rhetoric

• The phrase “Globalize the Intifada” is no longer fringe; it is tolerable or even defended in mainstream politics (notably in NY’s mayoral politics and SJP activism).
• Politicians avoid condemning such rhetoric, enabling campus and social media environments that incubate anti-Jewish violence.

Quote:

"If you subsidize something, you get more of it...having a mayor who has telegraphed a message that 'Globalize the Intifada' is kind of okay with him—what will that lead to?" — Jon Podhoretz (29:07)

4. Multiculturalism, Assimilation, and Civilizational Self-Confidence

• The panel critiques the West’s shift from encouraging assimilation to subsidizing cultural separateness, creating “cultures of grievance” ripe for radicalization.
• Australia, once viewed as a diasporic safe haven for Jews, now faces the consequences of immigration “without assimilation.”

Quote:

"We are supporting the opposite of assimilation. And that is psychotic. ...It's disastrous for American cohesion." — Jon Podhoretz (44:05)

5. Antisemitic Attacks: Not Random but Rational and Networked

• Unlike most American mass shooters, anti-Jewish attacks are seen as intentional, planned, and the product of “a vast, well-funded international machine”—from radical political activism to foreign bot farms amplifying hate.
• The logic of “globalizing intifada” means every Jew, everywhere, becomes a potential target, regardless of their stance on Israeli policy.

Quote:

"Attacks on Jews are never random... Anti-Semitic actions have been a fact pattern in the history of humanity for 3,000 years. So if it happens on Bondi Beach this weekend, or ... in Poland ... Ukraine ... Spain ... it's all the same attack."
— Jon Podhoretz (51:01)

6. Diasporic Jewish Responses: Exile or Defiance?

• Threats drive increased Jewish emigration to Israel from Australia and France, political realignment (UK Jews toward Tories), and greater defensive measures.
• Israeli “normalcy” of public religious celebration contrasted with the insecurity in the diaspora.
• Debate over whether violence weakens or hardens Jewish resolve and identity.

Quote:

"Has it been hardening that resolve?... American left-wing Jews are not quite there yet because the situation in America is not dire yet." — Jon Podhoretz (66:15)

7. Western Civilization at Risk

• Islamism is viewed as thriving on Western tolerance, and attacks on Jews are cast as a wider attack on all the foundational values of open, free societies.
• The panel highlights a lack of robust leadership, both left and right, to confront these threats, and notes a missed opportunity for the right to reclaim the moral high ground.

Quote:

"Attacks on Jews are attacks on everything this country stands for... There must be stronger statements of what these attacks mean, particularly in a free society..." — Christine Rosen (67:01)

8. Concluding Reflections

• Despite an American Jewish community still relatively secure compared to Europe or Australia, the rise in explicit antisemitism and the infiltration of anti-Jewish rhetoric in mainstream politics—especially in “the city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel”—make the near future precarious.
• The strength and resolve shown by Israel, and resistance by Ukraine against Russia, are cited as examples of needed civilizational confidence.

Notable Quotes & Key Moments (with Timestamps)

• "The willful ignorance of the fact that we all know what 'globalize the Intifada' means—this was tolerated into being."
  Christine Rosen (13:57)

• "You are a Jew in 1938 who converted to Catholicism in Vienna or in Berlin...You're going in a concentration camp. ... Ideological distinctions are not going to save you."
  Jon Podhoretz (32:26)

• "The anti-Semitic violence is planned, rational, and thought out and networked and part of an infrastructure."
  Seth Mandel (49:15)

• "October 7, in the end, left Israel much stronger, left all of you much, much weaker. The damage done to your country...has been much more dramatic."
  Abe Greenwald (62:45)

• "Israel has demonstrated the national self-respect, the civilizational self-respect...that many on the right now are deriding, but that they really should be pointing to as a model."
  Eliana Johnson (74:12)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–02:48 — Introduction: List of global anti-Jewish attacks and unrest
• 02:49–07:30 — Overwhelmed by constant violence; critique of social media echo chambers and denial
• 07:30–13:57 — Failure of officialdom: delays, obfuscation, and avoidance
• 13:57–20:10 — Tolerated radicalism: how "globalize the Intifada" became mainstream
• 20:10–23:29 — Australia’s and Europe’s descent into open antisemitism
• 29:00–32:14 — New York’s political atmosphere and the mainstreaming of anti-Israel sentiment
• 32:14–36:44 — What “globalizing the intifada” really means—Jews everywhere as targets
• 36:44–42:49 — Assimilation, multiculturalism, and the rise of grievance-based radicalization
• 49:15–51:55 — “Rationality” and the planned nature of anti-Jewish violence
• 59:29–62:45 — Israel as a place of security and normal Jewish life; Europe’s and Australia’s insecurity
• 66:37–74:12 — The question of resolve and identity among diaspora Jews; US politics and the failure of leadership
• 74:12–End — Final reflections: modeling self-confidence, the failure of MAGA isolationism on Ukraine, and coffee recommendations

Tone & Style Notes

• Urgent, somber, passionate — Panelists express anger, exasperation, and resolve; the tone is direct with occasional frustration at societal and official inaction.
• Analytical and anecdotal — Blending personal stories (Hanukkah in Israel, synagogue security in America) with policy and societal critique.
• Collegial combativeness — While the panel is unified in concern, there is ample back-and-forth, especially over the roots of passivity and the trajectory of assimilation.

This episode is an intense, far-reaching exploration of the global escalation of violent antisemitism, the failures of Western elites to confront its real causes, and a heartfelt call for moral clarity and civilizational self-confidence in both Jewish and broader Western communities. The hosts contextualize breaking news in the arc of Jewish and Western history, warning of the stakes for all free societies.