Why We Must Stand Against Anti-Semitism in Our Time

I recently spoke with an acquaintance who served as a political appointee in a previous administration. Nothing special about that. There are over 4,000 political appointee positions across the Federal Government in each administration. Most don’t stay around too long – just long enough to burnish their resumes and then get out while they can still cash in. The average political appointee stays only two years– so roughly 8,000 people cycle through the 4,000 political appointee jobs every four years. And, of course, most people who come to Washington never leave. So you do the math, and there may be 50,000 – 75,000 former Administration officials in D.C. at any given time. If you’re keen to join them, all it generally takes to bubble up to the top of the pollical appointee list is well-placed donations and time in your schedule.

The former political appointee and I were talking about the future of U.S. foreign policy, and he confidently stated that if I wanted to know what U.S. foreign policy would look like, I should look no further than the America First movement. When I got back to my office, I began searching, and the first thing I came across was Nick Fuentes’ America First Foundation, so I clicked to get a picture of one possible version of our future. I don’t get shocked easily, but what I read left me stunned…

“[W]e have got to get rid of Jewish Power in America… [Jews] condone the rape and murder of Gentiles. Do you think it might be a problem that the people who are running your banks, who are making the movies your children watch… think all Christians must die?”

Before continuing, it’s worth noting the obvious – not only is this the kind of language that has stoked hideous acts of violence against Jews for millennia, but none of it is true. As fringe as the rhetoric is, it turns out Nick Fuentes may have more influence than we might imagine. In 2022, Kanye West brought him as a guest to a private dinner with former President Trump at Mar-a-Largo, and he boasts of large, enthusiastic crowds at his events.

Not to be outdone by the far right, the far left has succumbed to the age-old malady of antisemitism. Indeed, antisemitism is maybe the only thing both extremes of politics agree on. The Soviet Union was a hotbed of antisemitism, and that impetus on the left continues today. Britain’s Labor Party, for example, has been divided by credible charges of antisemitism, much of it involving crossing the line between criticizing Israel’s domestic and foreign policy, into demeaning and stigmatizing Jews.

And it’s not just overseas. During the current Gaza protests, antisemitic chants and calls have been heard on many U.S. campuses. For example, protestors chanted, “Say it loud, say it clear, Zionists are not welcome here,” at George Washington University in Washington, DC, this week. Imagine the reaction to a similar chant that Chinese, Arabic, gay, or female students are “not welcome” at a major US university. Yes, protesters claim Zionism is separatable from Jewish identity, just as some claimed the Muslim ban wasn’t Islamophobic. But no amount of subterfuge can obscure that calling “Zionists” to be banned is a call for Jews to be excluded.

Calls for the destruction of Israel have also been common on campuses – often in the form of the chant “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea, Palestine shall be free.” All you need is a map to understand that this innocuous-sounding rhyme is a catchy reformulation of Hamas’s explicit goal to wipe Israel – at least the Jews in Israel – off the map. Calls for Jews to “go back to Poland” have also rung out. Of course, less than 1/3rd of Israeli Jews have ancestors who lived in northern Europe. And these Jews descended themselves from Jews expelled by various occupiers of Israel over centuries.

And when Jews do visit Poland? This week, Jewish visitors to Auschwitz were met with chants and calls from anti-Jewish protestors. No one should be subjected to that kind of harassment while mourning their dead, let alone Jews at the site where over a million Jews were murdered.

Even if all of this can be ignored or explained away, explicit support for the October 7th attacks cannot. When over 1,100 Jews were murdered by Hamas on October 7, chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine issued statements. Not expressing shock and sorrow at the brutality. Not outraged that Shani Louk, a young Jewish woman, was raped, and then Hamas paraded her naked body through the streets of Gaza as people spat on Shani’s body and yelled, “God is great.” Not calling for the release of Kfir Bibas, a nine-month-old baby abducted and, with over 200 others, held as hostages in despicable conditions for no reason other than they are Jewish. No. On American campuses, before the war in Gaza started, Students for Justice in Palestine issued statements blaming Israel exclusively for what happened and supporting Hamas’s actions. For example, the SJP chapter at Bard College distributed a flier stating they “unequivocally support Unity Intifada” just days after the October 7 attack. In case you didn’t understand what they meant by “unity Intifada,” they included four images of the paragliders used by terrorists to fly to the homes of Jews and enter them to kill and kidnap the Jewish residents.

To say hateful rhetoric crosses a line from legitimate political discourse into antisemitism is not to say discourse itself is antisemitism. Of course, we can criticize Israel, its Prime Minister, and its military actions. It’s true that Israel’s actions in Gaza are causing immense suffering to civilians. We can argue over whether the U.S. should be supplying weapons to Israel and what needs to be done to protect civilians. We can call for a change of government in Israel, a change in U.S. policies, support for various peace plans, ceasefires, and potential agreements. But criticizing a nation’s actions is one thing; supporting their destruction, celebrating terrorism against civilians, saying Jews aren’t welcome on campuses, and telling them to go to Poland? That’s not legitimate criticism; that’s hatred.

In all the debate, two appropriated slogans have been weaponized against Jews – the first is that Jews are “colonizers” in Israel, and the second is that Israel is an “apartheid” state. Both are stigmatizing, and neither is accurate. As noted previously, less than a third of Jews have ancestry from northern Europe. And even the Jews, who were dispersed more broadly from Israel over the centuries, originated in Israel. Israel has many Jewish archeological sites, from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where Solomon’s Temple and Herod’s Temple once stood, to the Modi’in synagogue, which is over 2,000 years old. There are even well-known Jewish sites outside the modern state of Israel, such as the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. It wasn’t Romans, Arabs, Syrians, Ottomans, or the British who carefully copied ancient Jewish scripture 2,000 years ago and stored the scrolls in clay jars within sight of the Dead Sea in what is now called the West Bank. It was Jews. Jews who were native to the land. You can’t “colonize” your ancestorial homeland. Imagine calling Native Americans “colonizers” when they move back to the land where their ancestors once lived. It would be preposterous on its face. Why should we indulge in such stigmatizing statements about the Jews in Israel? It is perfectly legitimate to argue over how to handle the conflict over land and political power. But weaponizing the term “colonizer” to erase the Jewish connection to Israel is a form of rhetorical genocide.

Similarly, “apartheid” is an Afrikaans word from South Africa that has been appropriated to delegitimize Israeli society. Israel is far from a perfect society, but having been there three times and having been to post-apartheid South Africa twice, where I learned about the apartheid era and observed its legacy, two more dissimilar societies are hard to imagine. For starters, while there are predominantly Jewish and Arab residential areas in Israel, many regions are mixed. And the divisions are far more complex than Arabs and Jews; there are a wide range of Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Ahmadi, there are Druze, Samaritans, every variation of Judaism, and there are secular Israelis, among others. The last time I visited Jerusalem, I stayed in the traditional Muslim area – which was terrific – and walked through the Old City, where Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship, and up to the Mount of Olives to watch the sunrise. It was one of the most unforgettably inspiring experiences of my life. One evening, while dining at a rooftop Arab Israeli restaurant, I watched a group of Jewish men dancing on a rooftop not too far away, the Muslim call to prayer began from a nearby mosque, and church bells started ringing. That’s my ultimate Jerusalem moment.

There are over two million Arab Israelis, and they serve as lawyers, judges, members of parliament, physicians, academics, and in many other fields; and they preside over cases, make laws, treat patients, teach classes, just like their Jewish Israeli colleagues. I’ve had a chance to meet with a broad range of Israeli public officials – both Arabic Israelis and Jewish Israelis. It’s nothing like Apartheid South Africa’s strict separation, and pretending it is is not only intellectually dishonest, it’s designed to delegitimize and stigmatize the only majority Jewish state on earth. That doesn’t mean there isn’t prejudice in Israel – there is. Or that there aren’t frictions, barriers, frustrations, hatred, or deep societal fissures. There are. Or that the Israeli government has the best record on human rights in the world. It doesn’t. But apartheid-era South Africa? Not even close and appropriating that terminology is designed to stoke prejudice, not to enlighten.

When Israel is treated totally differently from other nations, when demeaning and factually inaccurate terms are employed to marginalize the world’s only majority Jewish state, when it is the only nation to come out of the messy period of post-colonization whose right to existence is repeatedly questioned despite many other countries across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Pacific that were created during that chaotic period with similarly complex boarder, religious, and ethnic disputes, you have to ask what is going on. Is it just a coincidence that the only predominantly Jewish state in the world is singled out with calls for its destruction? It is hard to believe it is.

H. L. Menchen said, “For every complex problem there, is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong,” and the Middle East is an example. None of us have the answers for the Middle East, and anyone who thinks they do only displays their ignorance. But what all of us can do as we debate the rights and wrongs, and what should be done, is to avoid crossing the line from criticism of national policies and politicians into antisemitism or any other form of hatred.

There’s a poignant photo of Otto Frank that crossed my desk this week. Otto was the father of Anne Frank, whose beautifully written diary chronicled her time in hiding, attempting to evade the Nazis. Tragically, she died in a concentration camp only months before its liberation. In the photo Otto, the only member of his family to survive, has returned to the attic after the war to be once again in the space where the family hid. When I look at the photo, I don’t see a foreigner, a concentration camp survivor, or a Jew; I see a father: a father just like me. In his posture, his expression, and most of all, his eyes, I catch a glimpse into the excruciating loss he feels as he stares into that empty space where his beautiful little girl once hugged him, dreamed of her life ahead, and artfully confided her childhood hopes and fears into her precious diary. Through the gift of empathy, God gives to all of us, I feel a fraction of his unspeakable loss.

Antisemitism is an ugly, malignant force. We see its poisonous fruit in the pain in Otto’s eyes. We also see it in the faces of Shani’s mother and Kfir’s family. And we’re hearing it on the far left and far right today. For those of us who are not Jews, we have a choice. We can adopt the twisted logic of antisemitism. We can remain indifferent. Or we can stand up publicly and unambiguously. If we fail to stand, we’ve seen this movie before and know how it ends.

James Standish earned his JD, cum laude, from Georgetown, his MBA from the University of Virginia and his bachelors degree from Newbold College, England, where he was student association president. He served as executive director of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and as director of legislative affairs for the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. He now runs his own firm and serves as president of the Byington Center.