Jewish self-defense is the only way
Jews in the United States must jettison the fantasy that they are exceptions to history and that “it can’t happen here.”
By Benjamin Kerstein
JNS
Oct 20, 2025
Rabbi Meir Kahane, center, stands among Jewish Defense League members, Washington, March 20, 1977.
After two years of a multifront war, the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora can forgive themselves for taking a moment to be happy. The hostages are back, Hamas has effectively surrendered, and U.S. President Donald Trump has promised a new era of peace and prosperity.
For the Jewish Diaspora, however, one thing is certain: The war, or at least the struggle, is far from over.
In the past two years, the Diaspora has become another front in the ongoing war against Israel. Jews have been subjected to a campaign of terror that has included hate marches, defamatory rhetoric, constant blood libels, intimidation, harassment, violence and outright murder. As a result, many Diaspora Jews, especially in Europe, are wondering how long they have.
Some American Jews, for the first time in generations, are asking themselves the same question. They have long told themselves, “It can’t happen here.” But it did happen here. Powerful forces in American society—polluted by the antisemitic Red-Green alliance between radical progressives and radical Muslims—rose up against American Jews in a campaign to marginalize, disempower and ghettoize them.
At the moment, this demented movement appears to be reeling from Hamas’s defeat. After all, they did everything in their power to save the terror organization and, in the end, failed miserably.
Diaspora Jews, however, should not mistake this silence for surrender. The Red-Green alliance has no intention whatsoever of stopping. These are, after all, genocidal antisemites, and they plan to play the long game. They believe that a world that loathes the Jews will, eventually, consent to destroying the Jews.
Moreover, they know that they cannot break Israel without breaking the Jews, and they will continue to do everything humanly possible to do so. To the alliance, this is a momentary defeat, but it is far from the end.
They will, in other words, be back.
What form this renewed campaign of antisemitic terror will take is uncertain. The alliance may wait until Israel’s next war to unleash its barbaric hordes. More likely, once recovered from their melancholy, they will simply continue the terror as if nothing at all has happened.
American Jews should not underestimate the power of this relentless enemy. They rule the streets, the universities, the NGOs, international institutions, the far-left, Muslim American organizations, and now, large sections of the Democratic Party. They intend to use these weapons to the fullest extent possible, leading to the marginalization or de facto expulsion of the American Jewish community.
In other words, if the alliance is not stopped, American Jews might have 25 years before aliyah becomes the only option. Worse still, by then, the alliance may have already succeeded in ending American support for the Jews’ only refuge.
Fortunately, the alliance can be stopped.
It can only be stopped, however, by the Jews themselves. American Jews must never allow another Oct. 8—the day the hate rallies started. They must never be caught unawares again. They must be prepared to stand as an iron wall against the alliance, its hordes and the institutions it controls.
They can only do so by organizing for their own self-defense. That is, American Jews must forgo their traditional quiescence and develop the capacity to neutralize, deter, and ultimately, defeat the Red-Green alliance and its institutional supporters.
This must take the form of a mass movement dedicated to the cause of self-defense and the formation of a national organization that will coordinate and direct defensive action.
In my new book Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, I outline what such an organization might look like. Above all, it will be an organization that prepares the Jews to defend themselves both physically and spiritually.
By physically, I mean the obvious: training in self-defense techniques, weapons handling, direct action, intelligence gathering, protests and marches, guarding institutions and individuals, strategic confrontation and other means of countering antisemitic violence, including through the use of counter-force when necessary, and within the bounds of law and Jewish morality.
By spiritually, I mean the construction of an iron wall around the soul of the Jew: re-educating Jews in order to foster Jewish knowledge and self-respect, as well as a renewed militancy based on our long history of prophet-warriors, from the Maccabees to the Israel Defense Forces. Jews must learn to overcome all attempts at intimidation, look the antisemite in the eye and say: “You are the devil.”
To build such a movement, however, we must follow an essential imperative—no delusions, no despair.
American Jews must jettison the fantasy that they are exceptions to history; that “it can’t happen here.” They must reject the admonition “don’t make trouble” because it will only “make things worse.” It can happen here because it can happen anywhere, and it is time to make trouble while there is still trouble to be made. The only thing that will make things worse is doing nothing.
But American Jews must also reject despair. Unlike in other countries, American Jews possess the numbers, resources and power to effectively defend themselves. What is needed is only the channeling of their inchoate energies, their righteous anger and outrage at the way they have been treated. They must reconnect with the long history of an ancient people that has always defended itself by any moral means necessary and possible when the time came.
But as Rabbi Tarfon said millennia ago: “The day is short, the work multiplies, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the master of the house is impatient.” American Jews may not have long, and they should act accordingly.
Fortunately, the reward is indeed great. At the moment, Israel’s future looks a little brighter than it has in some time. If American Jews rise in their own self-defense, theirs will as well.
This column is adapted from the book Self Defense: A Jewish Manifesto, available at Amazon via Wicked Son Books and the Z3 Project.
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