New York Times
Saturday, June 14, 2025
The list of horrific antisemitic attacks in the United
States keeps growing. Two weeks ago in Boulder, Colo., a man set fire to peaceful
marchers who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages. Less than two weeks earlier, a young couple was shot to death while
leaving an event at the Jewish Museum in Washington. The
previous month, an intruder scaled a fence outside the official residence
of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and threw Molotov cocktails while Mr.
Shapiro, his wife and children were asleep inside. In October, a 39-year-old Chicago resident was shot from
behind while walking to synagogue.
The United States is experiencing its worst surge of
anti-Jewish hate in many decades. Antisemitic hate crimes more than doubled
between 2021 and 2023, according to the F.B.I., and appear to have risen
further in 2024. On a per capita basis, Jews face far greater risks of being
victims of hate crimes than members of any other demographic groups.
American Jews, who make up about 2 percent of the
country’s population, are well aware of the threat. Some feel compelled to hide
signs of their faith. Synagogues have hired more armed guards who greet
worshipers, and Jewish schools have hired guards to protect children and
teachers. A small industry of digital specialists combs social media looking for
signs of potential attacks, and these specialists have helped law enforcement
prevent several.
The response from much of the rest of American society
has been insufficient. The upswing in antisemitism deserves outright
condemnation. It has already killed people and maimed others, including an
88-year-old Holocaust survivor who was burned in Boulder. And history offers a
grim lesson: An increase in antisemitism often accompanies a rise in other
hateful violence and human rights violations. Societies that make excuses for
attacks against one minority group rarely stop there.
***
Antisemitism is sometimes described as “the oldest hate.”
It dates at least to ancient Greece and Egypt, where Jews were mocked for their
differences and scapegoated for societal problems. A common trope is that Jews
secretly control society and are to blame for its ills. The prejudice has
continued through the Inquisition, Russian pogroms and the worst mass murder in
history, the Holocaust, which led to the coining of a new term: genocide.
In modern times, many American Jews believed that the
United States had left behind this tradition, with some reason. But as Conor
Cruise O’Brien, an Irish writer and politician, noted, “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” It tends to
re-emerge when societies become polarized and people go looking for somebody to
blame. This pattern helps explain why antisemitism began rising, first in
Europe and then in the United States, in the 2010s, around the same time that
politics coarsened. The anger pulsing through society has manifested itself
through animosity toward Jews.
The political right, including President Trump, deserves
substantial blame. Yes, he has led a government crackdown against antisemitism
on college campuses, and that crackdown has caused colleges to become more
serious about addressing the problem. But Mr. Trump has also used the subject as a pretext for his broader campaign against the
independence of higher education. The combination risks turning antisemitism
into yet another partisan issue, encouraging opponents to dismiss it as one of
his invented realities.
Even worse, Mr. Trump had made it normal to hate, by
using bigoted language about a range of groups, including immigrants, women and
trans Americans. Since he entered the political scene, attacks on Asian, Black,
Latino and L.G.B.T. Americans have spiked, according to the F.B.I. While he
claims to deplore antisemitism, his actions tell a different story. He has dined with a Holocaust denier, and his Republican Party has
nominated antisemites for elected offices, including governor of North Carolina. Mr. Trump himself
praised as “very fine people” the attendees of a 2017 march in Charlottesville,
Va., that featured the chant “Jews will not replace us.” On Jan. 6, 2021, at
least one rioter attacking the Capitol screamed that he was looking for “the
big Jew,” referring to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, Mr. Schumer has said.
The problem extends to popular culture. Joe Rogan, the
podcaster who endorsed Mr. Trump last year, has hosted Holocaust conspiracy
theorists on his show. Mr. Rogan once said of Jews, “They run everything.” In the Trumpist
right, antisemitism has a home.
It also has a home on the progressive left, and the
bipartisan nature of the problem has helped make it distinct. Progressives
reject many other forms of hate even as some tolerate antisemitism. College
campuses, where Jewish students can face social ostracization, have become the
clearest example. A decade ago, members of the student government at U.C.L.A. debated blocking a Jewish student from a leadership post,
claiming that she might not be able to represent the entire community. In 2018,
spray-painted swastikas appeared on walls at Columbia. At Baruch, Drexel and the
University of Pittsburgh, activists have recently called for administrators to
cut ties with or close Hillel groups, which support Jewish life. In a national
survey by Eitan Hersh of Tufts University and Dahlia Lyss, college students who
identified as liberal were more likely than either moderates or conservatives last
year to say that they “avoid Jews because of their views.”
One explanation is that antisemitism has become conflated
with the divisive politics of the current Israel-Hamas war. It is certainly
true that criticism of the Israeli government is not the same thing as
antisemitism. This editorial board has long defended Israel’s right to exist
while also criticizing the government for its treatment of
Palestinians. Since the current war began, we have abhorred the mass killing of civilians and the destruction
of Gaza. Israel’s reflexive defenders are wrong, and they hurt their own cause
when they equate all such arguments with antisemitism. But some Americans have
gone too far in the other direction. They have engaged in whataboutism
regarding anti-Jewish hate. They have failed to denounce antisemitism in the
unequivocal ways that they properly denounce other bigotry.
Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, has
suggested a “3D” test for when criticism of Israel crosses into
antisemitism, with the D’s being delegitimization, demonization and double
standards. Progressive rhetoric has regularly failed that test in recent years.
“Americans generally have greater ability to identify Jew hatred when it comes
from the hard right and less ability and comfort to call out Jew hatred when it
comes from the hard left or radical Islamism,” said Rachel Fish, an adviser to
Brandeis University’s Presidential Initiative on Antisemitism.
Consider the double standard that leads to a fixation on
Israel’s human rights record and little campus activism about the records of
China, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela or almost any other country. Consider how often
left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist
and express admiration for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — Iran-backed
terrorist groups that brag about murdering Jews. Consider how often people use
“Zionist” as a slur — an echo of Soviet propagandafrom the Cold War — and call for the
exclusion of Zionists from public spaces. The definition of a Zionist is
somebody who supports the existence of Israel.
Historical comparisons can also be instructive. The
period since Oct. 7, 2023, is hardly the first time that global events have
contributed to a surge in hate crimes against a specific group. Asian Americans
were the victims in 2020 and 2021 after the Covid pandemic began in China.
Muslim Americans were the victims after Sept. 11, 2001. In those periods, a few
fringe voices, largely on the far right, tried to justify the hate, but the
response from much of American society was denunciation. President George W.
Bush visited a mosque on Sept. 17, 2001, and proclaimed, “Islam is peace.” During Covid, displays of Asian allyship filled social media.
Recent experience has been different in a couple of ways.
One, the attacks against Jews have been even more numerous and violent, as the
F.B.I. data shows. Two, the condemnation has been quieter and at times
tellingly agonized. University leaders have often felt uncomfortable decrying
antisemitism without also decrying Islamophobia. Islamophobia, to be clear, is
a real problem that deserves attention on its own. Yet antisemitism seems to be
a rare type of bigotry that some intellectuals are uncomfortable rebuking
without caveat. After the Sept. 11 attacks, they did not feel the need to
rebuke both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Nor should they have. People should
be able to denounce a growing form of hatred without ritually denouncing other
forms.
Alarmingly, the antisemitic rhetoric of both the
political right and the left has filtered into justifications for violence. But
there has been an asymmetry in recognizing the connections. After a gunman
murdered 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018,
observers correctly noted that he had become radicalized partly
through racist right-wing social media. There has been a similar phenomenon in
some recent attacks, this time with the assailants using the language of the
left.
The man who burned marchers in Colorado shouted “Free
Palestine!” and (awkwardly) “End Zionist!” The man charged with killing the
young Israeli Embassy workers in Washington last month is suspected of having
posted an online manifesto titled “Escalate for Gaza, Bring the War Home.” His
supporters have since published a petition that includes “Globalize the
Intifada.” The demonizing, delegitimizing rhetoric of the right bore some
responsibility for the Pittsburgh massacre; the demonizing, delegitimizing rhetoric
of the left bears some responsibility for the recent attacks.
***
Americans should be able to recognize the nuanced nature
of many political debates while also recognizing that antisemitism has become
an urgent problem. It is a different problem — and in many ways, a narrower one
— than racism. Antisemitism has not produced shocking gaps in income, wealth
and life expectancy in today’s America. Yet the new antisemitism has left
Jewish Americans at a greater risk of being victimized by a hate crime than any
other group. Many Jews live with fears that they never expected to experience
in this country.
No political arguments or ideological context can justify that bigotry. The choice is between denouncing it fully and encouraging an even broader explosion of hate.
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