The Ebb and Flow of Antisemitism

One year ago, the United States was gripped by an epidemic of antisemitism that was so aggressive and so blatant that many Jewish parents feared sending their young children to school, Jewish students were regularly accosted and sometimes attacked on college campuses, Jews were sometimes pummeled on the streets, synagogues and cemeteries were vandalized throughout the United States, and American Jews were widely accused of abetting and sometimes even participating in genocide. Across the nation, hundreds, sometimes thousands, demonstrated, openly rooting for the destruction of Israel and victory for Hamas.

The media foisted intense coverage on each of these incidents, aggrandizing the perpetrators while pretending to decry their activities. Commentators were fond of saying that American Jews could not be held responsible for the carnage in Gaza, but made certain to juxtapose interviews of often masked protestors with scenes of death and mutilation halfway around the globe. Gasoline-on-the-fire, after all, inflames ratings as well.

To be sure, there was ample reason to denounce Israel’s wanton slaughter of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, including hospitals, devastation of Gaza’s economy, and allowing hundreds of thousands to be exposed to disease and brought to near-starvation. Forgotten, however, was that Israel’s incursion into Gaza was in response to an act of terrorism by Hamas of unspeakable barbarism and cruelty, rife with the murder of children, kidnappings, and horrific sexual violence. Few mentioned that Hamas was widely despised within Gaza, where it demeaned women, persecuted gays, and tortured and murdered anyone even suspected of insufficient loyalty or religious zeal…and that they cared so little for their own people that they made it a point to hide among them, where Israel had no choice but to kill the innocent along with the guilty.

What is more, many, perhaps most, American Jews joined in the chorus pleading with Israel for restraint, but that did not seem to matter to the river-to-the-sea crowd. The outpouring of one-sided hatred continued unabated and was so extreme, so pervasive, that many Jews wondered if they were living through the rise of American Nazism. As election season began, almost every Jew feared, and most in the media predicted, that the stigmatizing and scapegoating would not only continue but would likely increase.

But it did not. Just the reverse.

Make no mistake. Antisemitism is both real and widespread and has been a part of American Jewish life before there was even an America. But the wave of bigotry that swept across the country in the wake of Israel’s devastation of Gaza seems to have largely receded, retreating to the same dark, twisted, vermin-infested corners of society in which it has always festered. Predictions of even worse violence, more aggressive campus activism, and open hostility toward Jews did not materialize. This although Israel, rather than scaling back its activities in Gaza, actually intensified them.

In addition, the Netanyahu government expanded the war to Lebanon, where it assassinated Hassan Nasrallah, decimated the Hezbollah leadership, and leveled sections of Beirut, once more killing large numbers of innocent civilians. Recently, Israel further stepped up its activities, attacking the Houthis in Yemen, and in an even more provocative act, announced it intends to annex and settle areas of the Golan Heights, once a buffer between it and the now-deposed Assad regime in Syria. The reaction among pro-Arab activists to this land grab has been somewhere between muted and nonexistent.

The explanation for this surprising moderation seems to be political rather than theological—that as the political climate changes the degree to which antisemitism goes from denounced to accepted and back again changes as well. It is impossible to know for certain if there is a one-to-one cause, but there are factors that may well have contributed.

It is important to keep in mind that for many years, Israel was a media darling, its military lauded, its clandestine services awe-inspiring, its technology sector praised, and its ability to survive and thrive while surrounded by enemies often seen as extremist fanatics a fulcrum of support. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and future prime minister Ariel Sharon was responsible for documented atrocities, there were no real protests or a significant increase in antisemitic incidents in the United States. Rather, his actions were excused as, while possibly going a bit too far, part of the price to be paid for warding off bloodthirsty enemies.

After the October 7 attacks, sympathy for Israel was near universal. Then came the question of how they would respond. Some of the more savvy commentators, such as Tom Friedman, advised strongly against an actual invasion, counseling that such an action would be military and political quicksand, playing into Hamas’s stated goal of inciting regional war.

But Netanyahu did invade and that was where the trouble started. Israel, which for decades was the underdog, was transformed overnight into the bully. Netanyahu resisted all calls to dial back the assault, using the continued holding of hostages as his excuse, even though the families of many of those hostages were begging him to negotiate. There was also speculation that he was perpetuating the conflict to postpone his trial for corruption and thus stay out of jail.

Little of that has changed but the mood surrounding both him and his nation has. Israel’s image is slowly but significantly being rehabilitated and for that a good deal of credit must go to Iran.

There is no government on Earth that Americans view with greater antipathy, and for good reason. In addition, Iran bankrolls Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as Hamas, and when that relationship came to command more news coverage than the dead and dying in Gaza, sentiment began to change. Hamas did not help itself by refusing any deal that would free the hostages, but that eventually became less of a factor than that it and the two other terrorist groups were Iranian puppets. As a result, the slaughter in Gaza began to be viewed as a set-up, part of an Iranian plot to weaken support for Israel and eventually cause its destruction. When Americans had to choose which regime they wanted most to lose, the choice was simple.

The key turning point was the missile strike that Iran launched in October, supposedly in response to Israeli aggression. Few found Iran persuasive and, even worse for the mullahs, the attack proved to be a bust.

It can be argued that the decline of overt antisemitism and shift of primary blame for the disaster in the Middle East from Israel to Iran is merely a coincidence. Whether that is true or not, antisemitism is largely back to the undercurrent it generally is.

Antisemitism remains a grave problem and, like all forms of bigotry, a blot on the national character. But as events have played out, it does not seem that Jews are under a greater threat than Blacks, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, or any other group in the crosshairs of a ruling party that openly embraces white Christian nationalism.

In other words, resisting injustice should not be stratified or compartmentalized. We are all in this together.