Jews may be a tiny people, but resurgent antisemitism portends sizeable problems for all Americans. It also reflects a well-funded, coordinated campaign.
These were among the important lessons at last week’s conference Challenging Extremism, Antisemitism, and Hate: From the Middle East to US Colleges, hosted by The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. The day-long conference considered Jew-hatred as a multi-faceted problem that intersects with education, culture, media, politics, security, and law.
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz called antisemitism “evil” and a “brain rot,” before surveying the political landscape. “Roughly a decade ago, we began to see antisemitism rising on the left.” Democratic leaders “tried to look the other way and hope that it would go away.” Now, Congressional Democrats have “a real and cognisable pro-Hamas wing of the party. Not every Democrat agrees with the pro-Hamas wing, but almost to a person, they are terrified of them.”
Looking rightward, “in the last year, I have seen more antisemitism on the right than at any time in my lifetime. I think it is a profound threat,” Cruz continued.
The problem, though, surpasses “a handful of influencers, many of whom, I believe, are being paid tens of millions of dollars by Qatar.” These influencers’ “message is gaining real purchase with young” right-wingers, and Cruz worries about college students concluding “our team” hates Israel and Jews.
Cruz has decided “to do everything within my power ... to utterly and completely defeat this rising antisemitism on the right.” He’s endured public attacks believing “this is an existential threat ... I don’t want to wake up in five years and find us living in a country where both major parties are thoroughly anti-Israel and unapologetically antisemitic – and I believe that is a very real possibility.” The only answer is “to completely and utterly defeat this poison,” as this is a “battle for the soul of our country.”
For Jason Miyares, Virginia’s former Attorney General, October 7 was “one of those … pivotal moments in … modern American history” and “a moral test” that “our college campuses failed”.
The stories Jewish students shared with Miyares at off-the-record events at campus Hillels were “horrific.” To bridge the gap between students’ experiences and campus leaders’ actions, Miyares brought campus police chiefs to Richmond to train them. Beyond offering his support, “we laid out very explicit guidelines of how they needed to advise their universities and their campus police” to maintain welcoming campuses for all.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon dubbed Jew-hatred “an American problem, not a Jewish problem. It strikes at the heart of who we are as a nation of Americans, a people committed to the right to worship freely and the right of equal protection under the law.” With an eye toward protecting all American’s civil rights, Dhillon’s team is “leading a relentless charge to root out antisemitism wherever we find it.”
Dhillon described attacks on synagogues and Jewish individuals since October 7 as “part of a coordinated and well-funded assault on our American values through … antisemitism.”
When Dhillon visited Jews whose synagogues in New Jersey and California had been targeted, “All of these communities have told me they feel like they’re under a coordinated attack, and the authorities aren’t doing enough to help them.” Dhillon warned would-be bad actors: “We are watching, and there will be consequences.”
The Department of Justice has already “brought suit against … the groups that we believe organised the intentional disruption of worship at an American synagogue, and we’re looking beyond those groups as well.
Who is organising these attacks on Jews? Who is coaching them? Who is funding them? Who is providing the material support for these acts of domestic terrorism?”
American Jew-hatred remains a complex problem requiring a multi-part response. Committed Jew-haters may never relent, but it’s worth explaining to other Americans why antisemitism poisons the country and never justifies law-breaking.
Cruz rightly believes this is “a fight that matters” and posited that like Queen Esther, we’re all here “for such a time as this.” In short, combating Jew-hatred is key to preserving American greatness.
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