[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
The terrorist attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur left two people dead and the United Kingdom shaken. Yet it wasn’t an isolated act of madness, but rather the culmination of decades of moral decline in that country. Jewish life has now retreated behind walls; families are quietly applying for second passports.
The United States is not there yet — but we’re heading in the same direction. Whether we become an unwelcome country for Jews depends on how our generation responds to the same rising antisemitism that has been essentially unchecked across the Atlantic. It’s really a test of whether our democracy still has a conscience — and a future.
Jew-hatred has surged in both the UK and US since Hamas’ massacre two years ago, when more than 1,200 Israeli civilians were brutally murdered and raped and hundreds were kidnapped into Gaza. Instead of uniting in condemnation, too many voices in Western academia, politics and media twisted the moment to fit their agendas — rationalizing and even celebrating terrorism as “resistance.” In this warped narrative, the slaughter of innocents became “bravery,” while Israel’s defense of its citizens was smeared as “genocide.” And when elites excuse terrorism abroad, they normalize hatred at home.
It has become abundantly clear that turning Israelis into villains pushes people to see Jews as oppressors and human-right violators. The result is a reversal of the lines between victims and perpetrators that fuel division, resentment and in time, violence toward Jews.
In the United States, this same moral inversion is now rising on the left, as well as from radical Islamists — and it is a mortal threat to the pluralism on which the American experiment depends. These groups share a conviction that America and the West are illegitimate systems that must be torn down. They advance that agenda by branding Israel and the United States as colonial oppressors and sowing division from within.
This country is built on the promise that every citizen can live openly without fear. Antisemitism strikes at the heart of that promise.
When hatred of Jews is tolerated, intolerance becomes permissible in public life, and once accepted against one group, it spreads to others, until the entire body politic is convulsed with hatred, division and violence.
It is no exaggeration to say that saving the United States’ future depends on defeating antisemitism, just as it has worked to stamp out racism. Americans must confront antisemitism wherever it appears, including within our own political camps.
Silence in the face of hatred gives it license to grow, yet outrage is not the proper response, either — at least, not by itself. We must turn our anger into action, exposing those who spread antisemitism, tracing their funding, demanding accountability from universities and media institutions and strengthening laws to protect the innocent.
The United Kingdom refused to do this. For years, police refused to enforce hate-crime laws. Universities tolerated mobs chanting for Israel’s destruction. Politicians equivocated in the name of “balance.” The result is visible today: Jews living behind fences, a public desensitized to hate and a moral compass that no longer points north.
Alas, the same antisemitic currents that hollowed out British courage long before Oct. 7, 2023, have also been flowing through American institutions, especially academia and media, where hatred is often repackaged as “justice.” What began as the demonization of Israel is quickly becoming the dehumanization of Jews. If allowed to spread further, this hatred will destroy America from within.
For centuries, Jews endured persecution at the mercy of rulers and mobs who could turn against them overnight. America was different. Jewish immigrants arrived with little but built one of the most successful, civic-minded communities in the nation. The United States offered something new and urgently needed in Jewish history: protection under a democratic system grounded in liberty and equal rights. Now that promise is being tested.
The American idea — liberty, pluralism, equality under law — cannot survive if hatred of one group becomes acceptable. The hatred we see on our campuses and in our city squares is not merely about political protests. It is a stress test of our nation’s moral core.
We can either accept antisemitism and the decline that follows, or we can prove that America still believes in itself.
This article was originally published by the New York Post.
Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American “Venture Philanthropist.” He can be reached at adam@milsteinff.org, on X: @AdamMilstein, and on Facebook.
“We’re headed in the same direction.”
Or Beheaded . . .
If somehow, the Democrats and their Muslim buddies gain power remember that we conservatives still have our guns. Millions of guns and trillions of rounds of ammo.
The Brits stupidly disarmed themselves. All they have left are rusty WWII Enfield rifles hidden away in walls or underground, with some very old ammo.
Electing a Marxist/Communist Muslim Mayor of New York City City will not stand as an example of “America still believing in itself.” Mamdani is the litmus test of America’s faith in itself.
Sadly, the U.K. government has begun enforcing sharia. The United Kaliphate also has, perhaps, the most effective ban on speech of any country in the world.
Hate has no place here in America
“For centuries, Jews endured persecution at the mercy of rulers and mobs who could turn against them overnight.”
That persecution led Theodor Herzl to advocate that Jews move to what is now Israel. France supposedly had the core values, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Yet persecution against Jews was present in France even before the Dreyfus Affair. It ramped up considerably during the Affair, even when strong evidence came to light exonerating Dreyfus. To Dreyfus, the persecution in France was the last straw.
Of course, the Nazi era made Zionism even more compelling.
Persecution of Jews is ramping up in the West again, largely driven by an increasing Muslim population there. Money from Qatar and other rich Muslim countries is also a factor. Jews are only around 0.2% of the world’s population, yet so many are obsessed with them. Zionism stands for the survival of Jews as a free and independent people.
In the second paragraph, “To Dreyfus” should be “To Herzl”.
It’s not expansionist or imperialist so it’s not an ism.
Israel has it right, if you leave your survival up to other people you’re exterminated.
The more I read European history the more apparent and horrible the anti-Semitism is in the whole. There have been some beautiful, inspiring exceptions, especially in the face of the Nazis. In the past it is understandable, if the situations were reversed there is no real reason to think it would be any different, especially with the indifference shown towards Christians in Israel since becoming a country, but with the lessons of WW2, the escalation and 1933 atmosphere now in Europe seems impossible. It may lie entirely in Europe’s love of socialism and its influence. The acceleration and acceptance of socialism (librals/Nazis once again) would explain the paradox.
Illegal muslim immigrants are now murdering indigenous people at random, on our streets in broad daylight. These are frenzied attacks resulting in the victims being repeatedly stabbed. The most recent was a gentleman out walking his dog when an illegal Afghan decided he would be the target for his wickedness. This gentleman died from his more than 20 stab wounds, another is in hospital with serious injuries and a boy of 14 was also stabbed but thank God he didn’t sustain life threatening injuries.
Interestingly, on one of the regular muslim marches, the commies were present as usual, a video captured this exchange :
commie to muslim marching past him : ” We’re on the same side.”
muslim to commie : “No we’re not”.
commie : “Yes we are”.
muslim : “No!”
Will this realisation change the commie attitude to islam? I doubt it. Commies always need to feel the consequences of their actions and beliefs before they can ‘wake up’ into the real world.
Every Western country who let Islamic people in made a big mistake. Israel fights to defend it’s country, but others have let the enemy in like Trojan horses. It’s time to stand up to this Islamic people making them abide by our laws no matter what their religion says.