When Did Anti-Semitism Become Acceptable Again?

Will there ever be peace. mutual respect and an end to reciprocal hate?

Over the last decade, anti-Semitism has dramatically exploded.

In the United States, antisemitic incidents have surged to record levels, thousands in a single year, more than one every hour. After October 7, they spiked dramatically almost overnight. Across Europe and beyond, Jews are being harassed, attacked, threatened again.

More than half of American Jews say they’ve experienced anti-Semitism in just the past year.

More than half.

For a good portion of my life, I naively thought hatred of people of my faith was diminishing. The first time I felt the sting of antisemitism was when I was in my second year of teaching and encountered a parent at Trailridge Junior High School Back to School Night. In a room full of other parents, one asked me, “Are you that Jew teacher I’ve heard about?” I thought of that incident as an aberration.

For a brief moment after October 7, the world seemed to understand why Jews have felt the persecution, hatred, and violence historically directed against Israel and the Jewish people.

And then, as Israel was burying its dead, something shifted. Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu began a brutal over-response that silenced that empathy. Remembering the daily assaults on Israelis and worldwide Jewry, Netanyahu and his ultra-right-wing supporters felt justified in delivering the strongest message possible to Hamas and its supporters that Israel would not allow itself to be destroyed.

As the weeks went by, the world witnessed Israeli and Palestinian families both experiencing the agony of losing family members to war. I witnessed many who embrace Islam, Judaism and Christianity deeply disturbed by both the actions of Hamas and Israel.

I am not a supporter of Netanyahu nor have I ever donated to AIPAC. I prefer the vision of a different advocacy voice from the Jewish community, known as the J Street alliance. J Street, headed by Jeremy Ben-Ami, supports a two-state solution, the same vision once held by the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the late Yasser Arafat, the former leader of the Palestinian Authority.

But then anti-semitism roared back as many felt justified in criticizing Israel while lending their voices to those who have long sought to demonize Israel, and by extension, Jews in general.

Many people, claiming to be lovers of peace and justice, began to shout on college campuses and at protests worn-out conspiracies about Jews and Israel.

In the past, those who condemned both Israel and Jews in the diaspora were considered right-wing nut jobs. Today, people who consider themselves progressive, compassionate, and thoughtful are sending the same messages and rumors that Jew haters have expressed for thousands of years.

People of my faith have heard this crap, throughout recorded history, that Israelis and Jews are aggressors, oppressors, and outsiders.

I have been most offended by people who assume the actions of Netanyahu, actions that I and millions of American Jews oppose, as an excuse to define Israel and Jews in the darkest way possible.

Why is it that when Jews defend themselves from terrorist organizations trying to annihilate them, they somehow become the villains?

And now, the combined recklessness of Netanyahu and Donald Trump has led the world into a conflict that is just a few steps from igniting something far worse.

The Trump-Netanyahu war of choice has led to worldwide instability, continuing escalation, civilian casualties, and global economic disruption. Critics are now accusing Israelis, and by extension Jews, of manipulating the United States into conflict.

Of course, Trump himself has publicly denied being persuaded or influenced by anyone but his own instincts.

So here we are, oil routes disrupted, global markets shaken, entire populations living under threat.

People across the political spectrum, right-wing extremists, conservative Republicans, and even progressive Democrats, are speaking about Israel and Jews in ways that should make all of us uncomfortable.

The Jewish people are the descendants of six million murdered in the Holocaust. Descendants of people expelled from countries across Europe. Driven out during the Crusades. Persecuted for centuries for one reason: being Jewish.

For some reason, many of Israel’s critics cannot, or will not, understand the trauma nearly every Jew carries. Thousands of years of persecution leave a mark.

How can one not understand the imprint that history leaves on Israelis and Jews living in the diaspora?

And then comes the argument that never seems to go away, that Jews have no right to the land of Israel. No right to a homeland. No right to exist there.

Forgetting, or ignoring, that Jews have a 5,000-year connection to that land.

It’s as if every other culture gets to claim its history, its roots, its homeland, except Jews.

Italians can love Italy, the Irish can cherish Ireland, the French can celebrate their history, but Jews are told we don’t belong anywhere.

I recently read a post from someone who said they would never support any candidate who has received donations from AIPAC. They suggested that Jews advocating for Israel are acting in the interest of a foreign country and should simply remain silent unless they condemn Israel.

No one should be surprised by this kind of response. It is one of the oldest anti-Semitic accusations there is, that Jews are outsiders, disloyal, not fully part of the country they live in.

Jews in America supporting Israel are not foreigners. We are Americans, fully and completely.

And then there are some who say Jews have no right to invoke the Holocaust to justify the existence of the Jewish homeland. They suggest that the Holocaust was 80 years ago, so it’s time to move on. That no more sacrifice is needed.

That may be convenient. But it’s not reality.

The descendants of people who were gassed and shot to death don’t just forget. The descendants of a people hunted for centuries don’t just move on because it makes others uncomfortable. That memory is survival. And it is part of why Israel exists in the first place.

None of this means Israel is above criticism. It isn’t. No government is. But there is a line, and it is constantly crossed.

There is a difference between criticizing a government and demonizing a people. The world used to know that. Lately, it feels like people have forgotten that or decided it no longer matters.