Antisemitism’s rise after Oct. 7 should scare us all

A new study released on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel finds that an astonishing 3.5 million American Jews say they have experienced some form of antisemitism in the year since.

Just a few data points from the study by the National Opinion Research Council at the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigious social science institutions in the world:

•  A quarter of Jewish respondents avoid displaying their Jewish identity in the workplace — an increase of 33% over the past year.

• A quarter of those affiliated with a synagogue or other Jewish institution “report that their institution has been targeted with graffiti, threats, or attacks since October 7.”

•  At universities, 39% of Jewish students report they have felt uncomfortable or unsafe at a campus event due to their identity, while 29% have felt or been excluded from a group or event because they are Jewish.

It’s not just feelings. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there have been at least 150 instances of physical assaults on Jews because they are Jews in the US over the past year. And more than 8,000 incidents of verbal or written harassment targeting Jews. And 1,840 incidents of vandalism.

That means nearly 10,000 explicitly antisemitic crimes have been committed against Jewish people in the US. In the year prior, there were 3,300 such incidents. That number was already cause for profound concern, but an increase of 200% in a single year should be the stuff of nightmares for all.

And it just isn’t.

If it were, Kamala Harris would mention it in every speech, because her entire campaign is premised on her being a caring person. But apparently her support for American Jews is best expressed in the oft-retailed fact that she cooks a mean brisket.

We Jews don’t just feel like we’re in danger. We are in danger. And there’s something distressingly familiar to me about the response this is generating.

During the crime wave from the 1960s to the 1990s, New Yorkers who were robbed or attacked or even raped often unexpectedly found themselves on the defensive. After initial expressions of sympathy or concern, friends and acquaintances — even the cops who were called to deal with the offense — might begin to ask some odd questions.

Questions like: Why were you walking alone on a dark street late at night where there aren’t any doormen? Were you drunk? Did you make eye contact with your attacker in a way he might have found disrespectful or threatening? Why were you carrying so much money? And, of course, the worst: Were you dressed provocatively somehow in a way that lured your assaulter toward you?

They were just asking questions, mind you! And before you answered, they might offer up stories of their own mitigation strategies. I walk in the street instead of on the sidewalk. I don’t carry my wallet, only a few dollars. I always look like I mind my own business. And I always wear a long, heavy coat rather than something attractive.

I know this because I was on both sides of this equation. I was mugged several times as a teenager in the 1970s — and at some point in the aftermath, the subject would turn to the things I might have done to encourage the mugging. And after I had developed stratagems to get around in a lesser state of risk, I lectured others on how to avoid the confrontation they had already been traumatized by.

In the same way, American Jews — and Jews worldwide experiencing worse outbreaks of hostility, like our brethren in Great Britain — find ourselves having to answer questions about just what it is we might have done to paint a target on our backs.

Almost immediately, the answer comes back in the same way, although in a hundred different forms. It’s Jewish support for Israel, or the Jewish connection to Israel, or Israel’s very existence itself, that is the provocation.

Hamas’ acts on Oct. 7 and the Hezbollah rocket war that began on Oct. 8, and the Houthi assaults from Yemen that began in the winter, and the direct Iranian rocketry hurled at Israel beginning in the spring — all of these are not considered acts of unprovoked aggression by a terrifyingly large and influential number of people in the US among our political, intellectual and academic elites.

Rather, they have been deemed responses to Israeli aggression, Israeli colonialism, Israeli cruelty.

And if there isn’t an Israeli near to hand to blame, well, as the oral tradition of Islam that predates the existence of the Jewish state by 1,300 years declares, “The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me — come and kill him.’ ”

In this way, the Jew-hatred that is the toxic and disgusting byproduct of the events of the past year isn’t anything new. It’s something very old. It can be seen in that Muslim “hadith” I just quoted, and in the views of anti-Jewish thinkers throughout history, both religious and irreligious — St. Paul, Martin Luther, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Henry Ford, Adolf Hitler.

On Oct. 7, the scapegoating of the Jews emerged from the hidden tunnels of Gaza and the crevices of the darkest areas of the human heart and returned as the threat it always has been.

Fortunately today, Jews now have a nation, a mighty army, a determination to triumph over their enemies — and nuclear weapons.