The day after the June 1st Molotov cocktail attack on demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, I received an email from my synagogue. Citing the assault, which injured 15 at a walk for Israeli hostages in Gaza, along with the killing of two Israeli embassy workers outside an American Jewish Committee (AJC) event in Washington, D.C., a week prior, the note from congregation leadership affirmed that “Attacking Jewish people as a response to a war in Israel and Gaza is unquestionably antisemitic.” The letter reminded readers that “the purpose of antisemitic terror is to make us afraid to live public Jewish lives.”
This interpretation of the violence is ubiquitous among both Jewish communal leadership and American politicians on both sides of the aisle. “Make no mistake,” declared the chief executive of the liberal advocacy group Jewish Council for Public Affairs, “if and when Jews are targeted to protest Israel’s actions, it should clearly and unequivocally be understood and condemned as antisemitism.”
Progressive U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez agreed, writing on X (formerly known as Twitter) that “Antisemitism is on the rise here at home, and we have a moral responsibility to confront and stop it everywhere it exists.” Speaker Mike Johnson went farther: “It isn’t about Palestine, it isn’t about Gaza, it isn’t about any particular conflict. It’s because these people want a complete and total extermination of the Jewish people.”
The response is both predictable and puzzling. As troubling as these attacks are, neither the shooter in D.C. nor the assailant in Colorado yelled any obviously antisemitic slogans when they attacked; both chanted “Free Palestine.” Nor is there any evidence that they held classical antisemitic views, like blaming a Jewish cabal for government policies or seeing Jews as especially greedy or mendacious. The D.C. shooter’s manifesto doesn’t contain the word Jew or Jewish or even Zionist. We know less about the attacker in Boulder, who apparently told police that he wanted “all Zionists to die.”
Yet those that have called the violence antisemitic generally insist that the victims were attacked not because they were Zionists but because—and only because—they are Jews. In a representative New York Times editorial, Sheila Katz, chief executive of the National Council of Jewish Women, declared that the victims were targeted because they were at “Jewish events.”
Yet Katz’s pronouncement ignores the fact that the AJC is well known as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, that those killed in the D.C. attack worked at the Israeli embassy, and that American marches for the release of hostages are recognized by most observers as political demonstrations in support of Israel. It would seem that the victims were targeted not because they were Jews, but because of their support for Israel.
I understand why some find the distinction irrelevant. Jews are being killed and attacked for their views; this is undeniably upsetting. “The very conversation—is this antisemitic or not—trivializes the issue,” Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, said on a recent podcast. “We Jews who support Israel are now being targeted by acts of violence. Does it matter whether somebody calls it antisemitism or not?”
In a sense, Kurtzer is correct. The severity of the violence should, on its own, offer sufficient grounds for condemnation. Yet for American Jewish leaders and politicians, it clearly matters a great deal whether or not this violence is called “antisemitism.” There are obvious political reasons why.
For many in the Jewish world, antisemitism is an “eternal” hatred; it persists throughout time, a virus always on the verge of outbreak. If that is the cause of the violence—if indeed there is no cause except irrational prejudice—then there is little we can do to stop it.
But if one’s interest is the safety of Jews, then it’s imperative to examine the motivation of the violence as stated by those that committed it. Doing so makes plain the uncomfortable but increasingly obvious fact that when associated with Jews as a whole, Israel’s annihilatory campaign of indiscriminate bombing and starvation in Gaza puts Jews around the world in danger. Those committed to preventing such attacks should be working to stop that destruction and to refute that association.
Instead, Jewish leaders are doing the opposite. Katz writes passionately that “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.” In other words, the violence has everything to do with the victims being Jewish and nothing to do with their support for Israel or their identification with Zionism.
Simultaneously, Katz makes clear that to her there is no relevant distinction between the two. “We [Jews] have been asked, unreasonably, to fully disavow our relationship to Israel […] just to be accepted by supposed allies.” She laments that the word “Zionist” has become a “slur,” when it means nothing more than “the basic belief in Jewish self-determination.”
By this logic, anyone opposed to Zionism is an opponent of Jewish freedom; that is, antisemitic. Yet if support for Israel is simply part of what it means to be Jewish, and anti-Zionism is tantamount to antisemitism, then why should anyone—whether a student activist, congressional lobbyist, or murderous loner—be expected to make a distinction between Zionism and Judaism that the leaders of the Jewish community refuse to make themselves?