By Seth Mandel
Monday, August 03, 2026
One common response to anti-Semitism is to ask the person
exhibiting hatred toward Jews to look at the situation from the perspective of
the Jewish target, which might make them more sympathetic toward their victim.
But Jews could also learn much from doing the reverse and looking through the
anti-Semite’s eyes.
Not because anti-Semites have legitimate grievances and
not because a Jew should feel responsible for someone’s Jew-hatred. Rather, it
would be beneficial to many Jews to understand that we make far more
distinctions among and between ourselves than our haters do.
Let’s take just one random example of the seemingly
endless running list of anti-Semitic acts of note.
In the old Jewish quarter of Cordoba, Spain, there is a
statue of Maimonides, the 12th-century sage Rabbi Moses ben Maimon. Maimonides
was a philosopher, a trained physician, and one of the most important
authorities of Jewish law. This weekend, the Maimonides statue was spray-painted
with a swastika.
How different is this from, say, the anti-Semitic trend
of superimposing a swastika over the Star of David on a homemade sign? And how
different from those is someone putting a swastika over the Star of David on an
Israeli flag?
To the anti-Semite, this question is ridiculous: There is
no conceptual difference. And on this, the anti-Semite is correct.
At elite universities, are Jewish students hiding just
their Israeli flags or are they also tucking their Star of David pendants into
their shirts?
Again, a ridiculous question.
It is not treated as ridiculous to those enabling the
mainstreaming of anti-Semitism in politics and entertainment and the media,
where the anti-Semite’s handiwork is parsed for any excuse to exonerate his
intentions.
And it is too often treated as a legitimate distinction
by American Jews, who are shocked by the anti-Semitism in formerly friendly
spaces but feel obliged to let the world know that, first of all, the Israeli
government doesn’t represent them.
No one who paints swastikas on Jews cares about what the
Israeli government does or does not believe.
Which brings me to a story that ought to be a five-alarm
fire but somehow isn’t.
A few days ago, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel,
who is Jewish, held an anti-Semitism roundtable. In the course of that
discussion, Nessel revealed her plans to avoid attending the state Democratic
Party’s convention, which begins at the end of the month. Nessel said:
I don’t feel safe going. I feel
like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around.
I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I
don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying. And I
believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to
me.
A top state Jewish Democrat doesn’t feel safe at her
party’s convention. Michigan is a very important state, both in Senate
elections this year and in presidential years. And the convention is where
candidates are finalized.
Some background. Nessel, as attorney general, filed
charges against several pro-Hamas activists at the University of Michigan for
on-campus lawbreaking and getting violent with police who were trying to clear
a major fire hazard created by demonstrators. Rep. Rashida Tlaib led a public
campaign accusing Nessel of bias toward her fellow Jews. The McCarthyite
campaign eventually succeeded in pressuring Nessel to drop the charges after
progressives had turned the case into a circus and a referendum on Nessel’s
Jewishness.
It was among the most un-American spectacles imaginable,
and it presaged what happened at the Michigan Democratic endorsement convention
in April, when anti-Semitic hecklers and a heavily progressive-activist crowd
taunted and shouted down Jewish candidates and those deemed too friendly to
Jewish causes.
Anybody watching progressive activism over the past
couple of years knew exactly what the goal of this display was: to bully Jewish
Democratic politicians out of the party’s public gatherings. And now it seems
to have worked.
The candidate riding this wave of anti-Semitism is Senate
hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, who talks almost exclusively about Jewish money on the
trail and who campaigns with anti-Semitic figures.
Nessel is not alone in her discomfort in organized
Democratic Party settings, and even those who plan to attend the convention
believe that Nessel’s status as an elected official and a target of
anti-Semitic harassment might affect their own calculations were they in her
shoes. JTA got the following comment from Halie Soifer, head of the Jewish
Democratic Council of America:
She’s not alone. We’ve heard from
other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier
this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like
a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into
antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.
This line of thinking has to stop. Nessel isn’t afraid of
“pro-Palestinian protests.” She’s being targeted for harassment because she’s
Jewish. That’s it—that’s all that’s happening here. She isn’t showing up to
Palestinian events and then getting nervous and leaving. She’s being hounded by
anti-Semites. And that’s the distinction that actually matters.
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