Historians will be familiar with the observation in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, or “Kohelet” as it is known in Hebrew, about the repetitive cycles of past and present: “What has been will be again; what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

This passage is especially resonant when it comes to antisemitism. The underlying libels—killing for blood in ritual use, treachery and treason, colonial theft against an indigenous population—may differ from generation to generation, but the manner of their expression remains essentially the same.

It’s unlikely that a single pro-Hamas protester knows about the antisemitic “Hep Hep” riots in Germany 200 years ago, in which students played a prominent part. But those were triggered by the rejection of Jewish civil emancipation, just as the harassment of Jewish students on campuses today is triggered by outrage against Jewish national self-determination. “Hep Hep” was the rallying cry then; “We don’t want no Zionists here” is the rallying cry now.

Perhaps the most consistent feature of all is violence. Violence against Jews is the culmination that the messengers of antisemitism, tired of rhetorical quarrels and pleading for “action,” seek. Some say so plainly. There are many more too cowardly and disingenuous to do so, but who justify violence as an inevitable and legitimate response to the alleged crimes of the Jewish state and the mass of Jews outside who identify with it. The question was never if the pro-Hamas movement that has disfigured our country would itself turn to violence, but when.

In the last two months alone, we have seen the attempted murder by fire of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family, the cold-blooded shooting deaths of a young Jewish couple who worked for the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., and the firebombing of a rally for hostages held by Hamas in Boulder, Colo., all carried out in the name of “Palestine.” As Americans try to figure out how and why this continues to happen, not least for the sake of a more effective response, relatively recent history remains a useful guide.

Enter Wilfried Bose.

Again, most people, including those cosplaying with keffiyehs, will have no idea who Bose was, but he’s deeply relevant to what’s happening now. Codenamed by his revolutionary comrades as “the Little Fat One,” Bose was born in Germany not long after the defeat of the Nazis. Like many Europeans of his generation, he was an enthusiastic participant in the student protests of 1968. As the New Left’s fantasies of seizing power faded in the early 1970s, he joined other German radicals in the underground left-wing terrorist movement.

Bose underwent guerrilla training in Yemen, provided not by the Houthi rebels of our time but the now-defunct Marxist republic of South Yemen. In 1976, he led the hijacking orchestrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of an Air France jet flying from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens, where the terrorists boarded. The plane eventually ended up at Entebbe Airport in Uganda, at the time ruled by the monstrous dictator Idi Amin Dada. Once there, Bose and his squad separated the Israeli passengers from the non-Israelis in a scene that reminded many who witnessed it of the “selektion” process for new arrivals at Nazi concentration camps only three decades earlier.

Had Israel not launched its famous “Raid on Entebbe,” rescuing the Air France hostages, they would likely have been executed by their captors, who were directed by the same Palestinian terrorist groups responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. In the end, it was Bose who was killed, along with the other terrorists, by the Israeli liberators.

When I look at the Washington, D.C. gunman, Elias Rodriguez, I see the spirit of Wilfried Bose. Like Bose, Rodriguez, on the evidence of his scattered writings, is possessed of a mediocre intellect, diligent at studying and parroting the doctrines of the pro-Hamas movement but utterly incapable of questioning them. Like Bose, Rodriguez does not shy away from extreme violence and murder; indeed, the fact that he reloaded his pistol to fire more bullets into 26-year-old Sarah Milgrim as she crawled away from him suggests that he gets a kick out of both. Like Bose, Rodriguez also has an ego, and his act of murder has turned him into a folk hero on parts of the left.

This last point is somewhat ironic because in Marxist social theory, the role of the individual in the historical process doesn’t matter very much. History’s ebb and flow is the product of class struggle—the outcome of competing social forces locked in a dialectical battle. Victory or defeat is determined by the type of social formation that emerges from that clash, not the personal experiences of the participants.

But for all its professed radicalism, the far left emotionally identifies with an aristocratic, romantic view of history in which an individual armed with sufficient grit and determination can light the proverbial spark that will change the world. Mix that in with some seriously warped moral values that allow you to celebrate the murder of a couple in their 20s, and you can understand why Elias Rodriguez exercises such an attraction. (Those unable to pick up a gun can always follow the example of his ideological comrade, the Boulder firebomber Mohamed Soliman, and use a homemade weapon instead.)

There is a visible network encouraging others to follow the paths of Rodriguez and Soliman. It includes a Maoist faction within the Democratic Socialists of America—the home of politicians, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani—and “Unity of Fields,” a violently anti-Zionist activist group. The latter has even set up a website that honors Rodriguez with a radical chic rendering of his portrait alongside the words “For Gaza From Elias.”

“What we are asserting is more than a recognition that the violence and oppression meted out by the zionist (sic) movement will inevitably give rise to counter-violence, an indisputable truism,” it declares. “We are saying that such counter-violence is legitimate. It is justice.”

These groups and factions embrace and promote terrorism. Their tentacles likely extend to the other organizations that have harassed and trolled Jews since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, like Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime and the Palestinian Youth Movement. Many of these activists have realized that protest has its limits, and that the goal they seek—the destruction of Israel—cannot be attained through political engagement. Like Bose, they will head underground, inspiring each other with killings and atrocities.

There can be no dialogue with these groups and no attempts at understanding. Even if we can’t prevent the patterns of history from repeating, we can still exercise our agency through the decisions we make when familiar situations from the past make themselves felt in the present. That means being vigilant in our own communities, recognizing and acting on the knowledge that we have a right of self-defense, lobbying for the stiffest sentences for offenders, including the death penalty where pertinent, and above all, pressuring state and federal authorities to cut any stream of oxygen that sustains these groups.

The pro-Hamas movement, like Hamas itself, has declared war on Jews outside Israel. Of all the fronts in this war, this is arguably the weakest link. For now, most of our battles will continue to be fought in the realm of the media. At the same time, we have learned that there are many more lethal things than tweets on X or posts on Instagram. Our blood may be flowing, but we cannot let them win.

Source: JNS