No one can be surprised by the surge in
antisemitic violence currently sweeping across the United States. Still,
it’s time to draw some conclusions about those who have actively
contributed to the atmosphere of incitement against Jews, as well as
those who have enabled or remained neutral about it.
The question is: Will those in leadership
positions in government, the media, civil society, Jewish communities
and their organizations begin connecting the dots to the growing toll of
incidents and the way that Jew-hatred has been normalized in public
discourse?
Since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab
terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the demonization of
the Jewish state and its supporters has become commonplace. Yet the
problem has long since ceased to be one in which Jews are merely dealing
with hostile environments. Large numbers of people have routinely
expressed support for violence that happens elsewhere, including Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who did with respect to the atrocities of Oct. 7.
Or think of the mobs of university
students and faculty who chanted for Jewish genocide (“From the river to
the sea”) and terrorism against Jews (“Globalize the intifada”). The
notion that these were simple slogans and not calls for violence against
Jews in the United States wasn’t just naive. It was the product of a
mindset that refused to understand that when you foment and legitimize
hate against a particular population, that population will have a target
on its back.
A growing toll of
violence
Smoke rising from Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich. after Lebanese
immigrant crashed his truck into it on March 12, 2026.The attack
at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., in the center of the
state’s Jewish community, by a Lebanese immigrant-turned-U.S. citizen
who drove his truck into the building and opened fire on security guards
before being killed, was just the latest situation where Jewish
institutions or individuals have been targeted. It comes after a laundry
list of other incidents, some of which were highly publicized and many
that were not. But they all follow a similar pattern in which
perpetrators with grudges against Jews or Israel or who claim to support “Palestine” have made the leap from rhetoric to attempts to shed Jewish blood.
Whether it was the firebombing of a march
for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colo., in which an 82-year-old
Holocaust survivor was murdered or the cold-blooded slaughter of two
Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., or less “serious” crimes
like the assault
this past week on two Israeli-American men in a San Jose restaurant
because they were heard speaking Hebrew, the list of attacks in which
Jews have been singled out for violence continues to grow. That doesn’t
even take into account violence that is happening abroad, such as the
murder in December of 15 people at a Chanukah celebration on Bondi Beach
in Australia. And it must be placed in the same context as the many
incidents in which those who claim to be acting on behalf of ISIS, or
other Muslim terrorist and hate groups, like this week’s fatal shooting at Old Dominion University in Virginia, or the attempted bombing of an anti-Mamdani demonstration in New York City.
While it is axiomatic that the only ones
guilty of such crimes are the assailants, it is long past the point of
doubt that they are either inspired by or made more likely to act by
those who engage in public rhetorical Jew-baiting. They are further
enabled by reflexive accusations of “Islamophobia”
against anyone who calls attention to Muslim antisemitism and/or
violence against Jews and others committed by those who claim to act on
behalf of that community.
A drumbeat of incitement
While such attacks are invariably
condemned across the board, the drumbeat of incitement from public
figures linked to hatred for Israel, Zionism and Jewish rights steadily
rises. The blood libels about Israelis committing “genocide” in Gaza and
accusing American Jews of enabling this fiction, coupled with the more
recent accusation that Israel has dragged America into a war on Iran
against U.S. interests, have exponentially increased over the past 30
months.
Mainstream media regularly platforms
biased news coverage of the Middle East that often echoes the lies
emanating from the Hamas terrorist groups and their Iranian paymasters.
These are often repeated by politicians on the far left, such as
Mamdani, or members of Congress like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Von Hollen
(D-Md.), and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich).
Those doing this often claim to oppose antisemitism. They nevertheless
repeatedly elevate age-old tropes about dual loyalty and Jews buying
influence, which are inextricably tied to such hatred. These same media
sources and politicians downplay or deny the hatred of Jews that flows
from the Arab and Muslim community, as well as Islamist nations like
Qatar that spend billions promoting that agenda in academia, government
and throughout American society.
Meanwhile, far-right podcasters like
Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes spin
conspiracy theories about Jewish plots and alleged crimes to vast
audiences of often ignorant viewers and listeners who seek a scapegoat
that can explain everything that is wrong with the world and their own
lives.
Neo-Nazi groyper Nick Fuentes (L) and Tucker Carlson
None of this is new. But what is
disturbing about it is that too many otherwise decent people tolerate
this sort of discourse or simply shrug their shoulders in its wake.
Conservative podcasters like Megyn Kelly
still claim to be middle of the road. But by refusing to take sides
against the likes of Carlson and Owens, and leaning into the canard that
Israelis and Jews are trying to silence dissent or are responsible for
Americans being killed by Iran, they are as much part of the problem as
more extreme voices.
It also applies to those like Vice President JD Vance, whose public stance of neutrality
about his friend Carlson’s hate sent a disturbing message to the
faction of the Republican Party that looks to him for leadership.
What must be done in response to the surge of antisemitism and attendant violence?
First, Americans of all religions, races and political beliefs must unite not merely to condemn individuals who
commit these crimes but also to recognize that the enabling of the
post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism on both the left and right must stop
at once.
Those who spread blood libels against
Jews, whether in the media or in politics, must be ostracized from
decent society, as they might have been in a different time before
memories of the Holocaust faded and such ethnic hatred slipped back into
mainstream discourse.
In a country like the United States, with
First Amendment protection for speech, even Nazis have the right to say
or publish what they like, so long as they do not directly call for
violence. So what is needed now is a concerted effort by responsible
persons to push the conspiracy-mongers and haters back into the fever
swamps of the far right and far left, and out of mainstream society.
Doing so requires a sea change on the
left, in which those who peddle toxic neo-Marxist theories about race
that label Jews and Israelis as “white” oppressors are no longer
considered part of the prevailing orthodoxy among political liberals,
academics and those who dominate popular culture.
Media coverage of antisemitic violence
should cease valorizing or treating Islamist hate as an understandable
reaction to events. As the Honest Reporting group noted in a social-media post this week, when The New York Times
reacts to the Michigan attack with an article focusing on the Zionist
origins of the synagogue that was assaulted—thus implying that it was a
legitimate target of protest if not violence—or in humanizing a would-be
ISIS murderer, they are reporting about crimes against Jews or targets
of Islamist hate in a way they would never do were the targets other
minorities like African-Americans or Hispanics.
‘Gatekeeping’ against
hate
While no one should be subjected to
prejudice or discrimination because of their ethnicity or faith, honesty
is needed about the source of much of this violence within Muslim and
Arab communities. The fear of accusations of “Islamophobia,” which are
mainly employed to silence those who condemn antisemitism, must be
overcome and replaced by courageous truth-telling by Muslims and
non-Muslims.
It will also require those on the right to
forget their phobias about “gatekeeping” that were the product of the
moral panic about race that spread across the country during the Black
Lives Matter summer of 2020 and led to the shutting down of conservative
dissent. Anyone who spreads smears against Jews must be contained, and,
yes, “canceled” from platforms where decent persons appear. Those who
tolerate such hate in the name of free speech must recognize that the
lies they enable are not cost-free efforts to gain Internet clicks and
views, but paths to bloodshed. It isn’t too much to ask that
antisemitism should not be treated as just another opinion about which
people should be expected to agree to disagree.
Trump took an important step in the right direction with his recent disavowal and condemnation of Carlson. But it can’t end there. The former Fox News
host and his maniacal accusations about Jews, Israel and even the
Chabad movement have helped put a target on the back of every Jew in the
United States, as well as evangelical Christians who support Israel. He
should be persona non grata in the White House, at Republican events
and as part of activist groups like Turning Point USA, where he has been
welcomed in the past.
And as important as efforts to turn back
the tide of hate in society as a whole may be, it is just as, if not
more vital, that the Jewish communal leadership stops acting as if they
can deal with this crisis without changing the way they think and act.
Assertive self-defense
needed
There must be an end to a general spirit
in which the Jewish community believes it can cope with attacks by
merely hardening Jewish targets (as important as that is) or by
reflexive calls for Jews to “shelter in place.” Those who are
responsible for the safety of children, students, families and seniors,
or who lead groups tasked with defense of the community, need to model a
different kind of behavior than the business-as-usual strategies they
have employed for generations. That approach, which relied on the help
of erstwhile allies in minority communities or traditional liberal
constituencies, has clearly failed. Jews should respond to hate speech
that enables violence by reclaiming the streets, the campuses and public
platforms with assertiveness, pride and a willingness to go on offense
against those who spread antisemitism.
And, as much as this goes against the
grain for most American Jews, a national campaign promoting
self-defense, including the large-scale exercise of Second Amendment
rights that will make Jewish venues less inviting targets for
terrorists, should be on our national agenda.
Jewish Democrats and Republicans also need
to set aside the partisanship that is so pervasive throughout all of
American society by making it clear to their respective political allies
that the safety of Jews, in America as well as Israel, which remains
under assault by Iran and its allies, is a higher priority than partisan
loyalties.
If those who claim to speak for Jews don’t
wake up and act on these priorities, they and their often outdated and
obsolescent organizations should be scrapped and replaced by those who
are not encumbered by the groupthink of the past.
We must not treat this last week of
violence as if it is just one more trial to be endured, and instead draw
the necessary conclusions about it and change our stance from one of
ineffectual complaints to action.
