It’s a depressing statistic when the FBI highlights the widespread anti-Jewish hatred in America today. Jews account for two percent of the US population, yet they were the second most-targeted group for violence that is categorized as a “hate crime.” In 2024, that was at 18 percent, up from 5.8 percent in 2023. However, today, among all religiously motivated hate crimes, 69 percent target Jews. By any measure, that reveals a profound degree of antisemitism has taken hold in America.
Since our founding, Jews have been part of the American fabric. Unfortunately, antisemitism has occurred throughout history, here and abroad. Yet American Jews have benefited significantly from the freedom and opportunity that our country offers. It is why so many fled Europe, where they were despised and slaughtered in pogroms and later systematically murdered in an intentional Nazi Holocaust. Many came to our country to pursue their dreams. Unfortunately, in contemporary America, that dream has become a nightmare.
The disgusting lot that calls to “globalize the intifada” are the new voices for death camps. Those who support baneful terrorists in the Middle East, like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the vermin in Iran that foment terror, have taken hold of a segment of the American population—especially from the far left and on college campuses—that spew antisemitism. Indeed, so bad has this malice advanced that now New York City—the center of the American financial propriety—has elected a socialist mayor who is unashamedly antisemitic, as is his radical father, who encourages such. In that respect, the voters of Gotham have institutionalized Jew hate in the form of a reckless populist movement that would not only change America into something it was never designed to be, but also eliminate Jews from American life. Hamas has its man in Gracie Mansion.
Those who foment antisemitism would say it’s about Israel and its war against Hamas, as if the latter did not start it with the slaughter of 2,000 Jews on 7 October 2023. Do not believe Hamas sympathizers. The antisemite behavior of recent days has little to do with Israel. It has everything to do with the desire to kill innocent Jews for one single reason: they are Jews.
The slaughter of Jews on an Australian beach last week had nothing to do with the war in Gaza. It was designed to attack Jews on Hanukkah, their religious holiday of hope. The murderers expressed hatred for Jews of all ages, down to a 10-year-old girl. This is inexpressibly disgusting. It must stop.
I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, a place where “white Anglo-Saxon protestants” (WASP) were privileged and prosperous. So too did Jews live among us, having taken advantage of the opportunities in Richmond. Yet my exposure to Jewish life was limited. I recall the assistant Rector of the Episcopal Church we attended took our entire youth group to a synagogue on a Saturday to join the local Jewish community in their worship service. He wanted us to appreciate our roots as Christians in the Jewish faith and culture. After all, Jesus, the man who we believe was incarnate from God, was a Jew. Our priest thought it essential to grasp our connection to Jewish life and understand how we had been grafted into God’s chosen people.
Indeed, Romans 11:17 speaks to how Christians, through the act of Jesus, are “though a wild olive shoot” now “grafted in among the others”, the Jews, and now “share in the nourishing root of the olive tree.” As such, Christians should understand that our Jewish friends are our brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, this is not widely embraced. But even if religions differ, our respect for human life must take a prominent place in an unrelenting condemnation of antisemitic behavior.
No longer can any of us be silent. We must speak in unity as Americans for all Americans, and in particular those who are hated because of their ethnicity and faith. When Jews are murdered, we are murdered. When Jews are hated, we are hated. When the globalization of the intifada becomes a virtue for some, violence is excused. No longer.
Those who use that term might say clearly what they mean: the advocacy of cold-blooded murder, not anything else. Indeed, let’s not give hateful people the dignity of according to them the slightest comfort for their opinions about Israel, Gaza, or anything else. They must be ostracized from civil society until they relent from their hatred.
But we must not fall into hatred of any people to achieve that end. We must silence them and their hatred with peaceful rejection. They can have their speech. But they need not have our respect, goodwill, or financial support. To know the pain in what they advocate, they must feel the pain of rejection for their despicable antisemitism.
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