In one city, two are dead. In another, 12 were wounded. Two horrific attacks against the Jewish community in less than two weeks.
For over 600 days, since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, the conditions in the United States for deadly antisemitic acts have grown. At rallies and on campuses, in coalition rooms and online spaces, slogans sometimes directly drawn from Hamas’s terrorist manifesto have been chanted and painted on placards, and shouted from stages and in the streets. “Globalize the Intifada.” “By Any Means Necessary.” “From the River to the Sea.” “Zionists Out.” These are not simply words; they can be interpreted as calls for violence.
The call was heeded on May 21 by a shooter who took the lives of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside a Jewish event in Washington. The call was heeded on Sunday, on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, by someone firebombing a peaceful Jewish march in Boulder, Colo., calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas. Several older protesters, including at least one Holocaust survivor, were left critically injured. The victims were targeted because they were at Jewish events.
To many Jews, like myself, these attacks are terrifying, but not shocking. Antisemitism is surging. When antisemitic rhetoric is left unchecked, it costs lives and leaves others fighting for theirs.
As a country, we Americans are practiced in calling out antisemitism when it appears in the form of bullets aimed at synagogues or neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us.” But fighting hate means calling out antisemitism every time — long before speech turns violent — even when it comes from activists who otherwise share our values. When antisemitism emerges within progressive spaces, cloaked in the language of justice, too often it is met with silence and discomfort, creating echo chambers where dangerous ideas are amplified rather than confronted.
I have watched progressive silence meet Jewish pain since this war began with Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel. When reports emerged that Hamas had used sexual violence as a weapon of war on Oct. 7, 2023, in Israel, feminist groups, globally, largely remained quiet. Movements that champion bodily autonomy — in reproductive justice and L.G.B.T.Q. organizations — refused again and again to acknowledge that both Palestinians and Israelis are entitled to safety, dignity and freedom from violence.
During Pride month, Jews witnessed blanket calls to ban Zionists outright from events. I have watched the morphing of the word “Zionist” — the basic belief in Jewish self-determination — into a slur.
Jewish organizations like the one I lead, National Council of Jewish Women, have long sounded the alarm about rising antisemitism. In response, we have been gaslit, ignored and told that our fear is overblown, our outrage unjustified. Among many groups that have fought to secure and reclaim civil rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, we have seen antisemitism dismissed as not bad enough to matter, our grief met with cynicism, our safety treated as optional.
We have been asked, unreasonably, to fully disavow our relationship to Israel, spiritually and emotionally, just to be accepted by supposed allies.
We have been pressured to denounce a foreign government we do not vote for, as if our participation in domestic conversations about justice and equity depends on it. Before the attacks of the past two weeks, when we spoke out, we were told we were overreacting, not focusing on the most vulnerable populations, or even that we deserved condemnation, and vitriol, because we simply supported Israel’s right to exist.
Our position on this war, or on Israel, does not affect how extremists perceive us. To them, we are all Jews, and that alone makes us targets for hate and violence.
This is how antisemitism works. Antisemitism scapegoats Jews, depicting us as both invisible and omnipresent, casting us as powerless when convenient, and all-powerful and controlling at other times.Antisemitism isolates, allowing hatred against Jews to grow and fester. The person charged with Colorado’s attack, according to an F.B.I. affidavit, told the police that he wanted to “kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.”
In both recent attacks, the suspects allegedly announced their actions were taken to “free Palestine.” Antisemitic violence does not make Palestinians, or anyone else, safe or free. We must continue to call for nonviolence, both here and abroad.
Ask any Jew in America. We know where the exits are when we walk into Jewish spaces. We are familiar with bag checks as part of Jewish life, the way others know airport security. And we know that at any moment, regardless of whether we have been among those working for peace, our identity as Jews makes us targets for exclusion and violence.
We need allies who show up not only when Jews are murdered or attacked, but also when Jews are vilified. We need coalitions that make space for the complexity of Jewish identity. We need people who understand that standing against hate means standing with Jews — not only some of us, not only when it is easy, not only when we are grieving.
If you only show up for Jews in the wake of violence and not in every instance of antisemitism, you are not standing against hate. You are standing by.
Sheila Katz is the chief executive of National Council of Jewish Women.
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