The second intifada, which started in September 2000, prompted unprecedented awareness of the Palestine liberation cause, especially in the US and Europe. I was a student back then at Kent State University—a university historically known for its activism and powerful protests, particularly the anti-Vietnam war demonstration in the 1960s and 1970s. It just happened that the same year the university commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Kent State University massacre, where the US soldiers shot and killed four students and wounded nine others in an attempt to dispel a major anti-war demonstration. 

The spirit of activism was so palpable that year. I could clearly feel the shift in solidarity and support in favor of the Palestinian cause on US campuses, thanks to the many Arab-American student groups that were established across American universities, but also due to the brutality of the Israeli occupation and its genocidal tendencies. A peak watershed moment that swung the pendulum in Palestine’s favor and exposed Zionist lies and brutality was the killing of Muhamad al Durra. The short video of 12-year-old Muhamad and his father crouching behind a small barrier, pleading for help, while Israeli snipers kept shooting at them, became the icon of the second intifada. The video “went viral” at a time when social media did not exist yet. It was the dawn of the internet and hard to predict that 23 years later, social media will show thousands of Muhamad Al-Durras being killed in cold-blood by the Israeli apartheid regime.

The Zionist movement in the West was so terrified from this sudden uptick in solidarity with Palestine on US campuses that the Israeli allocated millions of dollars in the past two decades to monitor University faculty, intimidate students, and target both with false “anti-Semitic” accusations and other fabrications. Dozens of groups, with direct ties to Israeli intelligence and its US lobbying arm AIPAC, were established for that particular purpose, including Camera on Campus, Canary Mission, and the Israel on Campus Coalition.  These groups illegally spy on US citizens and target any pro-Palestine students and faculty, especially the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Their goal was to avoid another wave of solidarity similar to the one triggered by the second intifada. 

And although the small pro-Palestine liberation wave in 2000 quickly subsided, it was not due to the pro-Israeli campus spy groups. It took a much bigger event.   

Exactly one year after the second intifada, the September 11 terrorist attacks happened, and overnight much of the pro-Palestine sympathy and solidarity evaporated or was subordinated by the overwhelming news of the attacks by Al-Qaeda, an extremist group that was originally created, funded and supported by the CIA and the Saudi regime to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. It had nothing to do with Palestinians nor with Iraqis, but the US used it as a pretext to destroy Iraq—based on the weapons of mass destruction lie and other baseless fabrications. The Israelis too used 9/11 as a pretext to continue their ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, build more illegal settlements, steal more land, and imprison more Palestinians.

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Today, again, the Israeli genocidal apartheid regime is losing the media narrative on an unprecedented global scale, and millions of Westerners are becoming aware of the 75-year-old injustice Palestinians have faced under the brutal Israeli occupation. All the Israeli lies and propaganda are not helping its case or hiding its crimes. People worldwide are becoming more educated about this historic injustice. The Israelis are running out of tricks, and all their millions of dollars invested in spying campus groups and lobbying pollical arms that fund thousands of US and European politicians’ election campaigns are falling flat on their faces. Even their attempt to fund a US politician with 20-million dollars to run against the outspoken Palestinian-American congresswoman Rashida Tlaib backfired, and the bribe was turned down by senate candidate Hill Harper, in a rare honorable stance in US politics, which is notoriously influenced by donations from lobbying and special interest groups. 

Even the historically pro-Israeli mainstream Western media were not able to counter the deluge of images disseminated on social media that has exposed the Israeli war on hospitals, bakeries, schools, and children in Gaza. But I have no doubt the Israelis will do something about this. It will be big, evil and murderous, designed to attract massive media attention and counter the enormous wave of pro-Palestine solidarity in the US—the country that has spent over 130 billion dollars of its taxpayer money to sustain this racist apartheid regime, money that could have gone to maintaining the crumbling US infrastructure or to support the declining education and healthcare systems in that country.

I am concerned that the Israeli Mossad will secretly conjure up a terrorist attack in the US or another Western country, at the scale of the 9/11 attacks, or even worse, in order to distract from their genocidal crimes in Palestine and in an attempt to win back the media narrative.

I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but there is indisputable evidence of the strong connections between the Israeli intelligence and multiple extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, many of whom have been funded, armed, and supported directly by the Israeli Mossad, and others by the CIA. These extremist “rebel” groups are mercenaries who are willing to butcher and kill anyone in return for money. It is not inconceivable that the Mossad will direct one of these extremist groups to launch a terrorist attack in the West—an expensive and complicated operation that will require deep involvement by the Israelis. 

Many have been wondering where all these extremist groups disappeared in the past few weeks, and why they haven’t spoken out against Israeli crimes. In fact, some of their leaders came out and attacked the Palestinian resistance and tried to sow sectarian hatred and division between the different resistance groups, playing on the Sunni/Shia divisions, but their hateful calls fell on deaf ears. 

In addition, the Israelis have been using propaganda that targets Europeans and Westerners with claims that the Israelis are fighting terrorism in Palestine so it does not reach Europe. A terrorist attack in the West right now would hand the Israelis a golden opportunity to tell Western audiences “I told you so” and conflate between Palestinian resistance and extremist terrorism. Of course, the Palestinian resistance will have nothing to do with that, but both the Israelis and Western governments will take advantage of it to silence any pro-Palestine voice, justify continued support of the Israeli genocide, and use the attacks as a pretext for their own political agendas, just like they did after the 9/11 attacks. Just imagine what this will do to the plummeting popularity of the Biden administration and the unpopular European leaders today—a godsend for their reelection campaign. 

If it happens, western citizens should know that their governments will be complicit. It is inconceivable today after all the security precautions put in place since 9/11 that any terrorist operation could happen in the West without governments knowing in advance about it. A terrorist operation in the West will cost so much money and require so much intelligence and advanced weaponry, only major governments can afford and are capable of executing. It should also be clear to everybody that the main beneficiaries will be the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime and Western leaders who are losing elections, particularly US President Joe Biden.