I am 68 years old. When I grew up in the 1960s, in addition to the Israeli narrative that was drilled into all of our heads, I was taught something very simple about being Jewish… don’t be afraid, stand tall, be proud of who you are, engage with the world.
Yes, antisemitism existed… I experienced the occasional slur or joke growing up, like many Jews of my generation did. There were moments when someone made it clear they didn’t like Jews. But it never made me feel unsafe. I’ve spent my life traveling extensively, meeting people from every culture and background imaginable. I’m not a “tough guy,” I’m simply someone who was raised to believe fear shouldn’t define how we live.
Which is why I struggle so much with what I’m seeing now.
It feels as though an entire generation of Jews, and to some degree the generation raising them, is being taught something very different. They are constantly being warned that the world is hostile to Jews, that disagreement is danger, that criticism is hatred, and that discomfort is antisemitism. I hear repeatedly how unsafe Jews are, especially Jewish students on college campuses, and while there have absolutely been real incidents of antisemitism that deserve condemnation, I question how much of the broader feeling of being unsafe comes from actual danger and how much comes from being told, over and over again, that we are unsafe… especially our college students. Being uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe, being challenged is not the same as being threatened, and hearing ideas you strongly disagree with is not necessarily hatred.
And when everything is called antisemitism, nothing is antisemitism.
That does not mean antisemitism isn’t real, of course it is. It has existed for centuries, it exists today, and when it appears we should confront it directly and without hesitation. But expanding the definition to include every uncomfortable interaction, political disagreement, campus protest, or criticism of Israel doesn’t protect Jews… it weakens the meaning of the word, makes it harder to distinguish genuine hatred from legitimate criticism, and ultimately makes us less safe. AND when every one of these supposed transgressions is counted in the statistics used to demonstrate the explosive growth of antisemitism, regardless of context or severity, I believe that too becomes sadly self-defeating.
There is another part of this conversation that I believe we need to be willing to confront, and I know it makes some people uncomfortable. Israel has spent decades presenting itself not simply as a homeland for Jews, but as the ultimate guarantor of Jewish safety everywhere. Embedded in that idea is an increasingly powerful message… Jews will never truly be safe without a strong, heavily militarized Israel capable of protecting us.
That can very easily lead to another conclusion… if Israel is what keeps Jews safe, then attacking Israel politically becomes an attack on Jewish safety. Criticizing Israeli policy becomes hostility toward Jews… questioning the actions of the Israeli government becomes a threat to Jewish survival. AND, god-forbid, questioning the billions of dollars a year in U.S. military support, even when those weapons are being used not simply to defend Israel but to inflict enormous harm on others, becomes almost sacrilege. And eventually, supporting Israel becomes less a political choice than a test of Jewish loyalty.
I REJECT THAT WHOLEHEARTEDLY.
Being Jewish has never meant blind loyalty to any government, including the government of Israel. And criticizing a government is not the same thing as being hostile to its people. I can believe Israelis deserve safety and security while also believing Palestinians deserve freedom, dignity, rights, security, and a viable political future. Those ideas are not mutually exclusive unless we decide to make them so… OR we blindly accept a narrative that treats Palestinians collectively as an enemy rather than millions of individual human beings with the same right to dignity and security that we claim for ourselves.
This is also why I am troubled by the familiar argument that Palestinians have repeatedly proven they don’t want peace because they have rejected every two-state solution offered to them. There is truth buried inside that history, Palestinian leaders have rejected proposals and unquestionably made consequential mistakes. But simply listing rejected offers while ignoring what those offers actually contained tells only half the story.
An offer is not inherently fair simply because someone calls it an offer.
From the Palestinian perspective, many proposed solutions involved fragmented territory, continued Israeli control over critical elements of sovereignty and security, settlement blocs remaining in place, and unresolved fundamental questions involving Jerusalem, refugees, borders, and freedom of movement. We can debate whether Palestinian leaders should nevertheless have accepted particular proposals or negotiated differently. But saying, “We offered them a state and they said no, therefore they never wanted peace,” strips away nearly everything that made those negotiations difficult in the first place.
Every negotiation looks different depending on which side of the table you’re sitting on.
And when someone asks me, “Fine, then what is your plan?” my answer is that I don’t need to possess a detailed blueprint for resolving one of the world’s most complicated conflicts to recognize that the current situation is morally and politically unsustainable. Millions of Palestinians cannot indefinitely live without meaningful political rights and self-determination while settlements continue expanding and then be told that questioning that reality represents a threat to Jews.
Israelis deserve security. Palestinians deserve dignity, rights, and a future. Both truths have to matter.
Fear makes acknowledging both truths more difficult. Fear has always been politically useful because frightened communities are much more willing to grant power to those who promise to protect them. When people become convinced that their survival depends upon a particular government, military, leader, or political ideology, questioning that source of protection can begin to feel dangerous in itself.
That is exactly why I worry about raising generations of Jews to believe they are perpetually surrounded by enemies. Jewish history certainly gives us reason to remain vigilant… but vigilance and fear are not the same thing. Remembering the Holocaust should teach us to recognize genuine hatred and confront it… it should not require us to interpret every criticism or disagreement as another step toward 1930s Germany.
And there is an irony here that I think too often gets overlooked. While enormous attention is directed toward Palestinian protesters, critics of Israel, and college campuses, some of the most dangerous antisemitism historically, and still today, comes from white nationalist movements rooted in Europe and the United States. Those are the ideological traditions that produced the Holocaust, and they have not disappeared. We are even seeing elements of that rhetoric re-emerge in American politics, including from people and movements welcomed into the political mainstream.
Supporting Israel does not automatically make someone an ally of Jews. A person can strongly support the Israeli state for political, religious, strategic, or ideological reasons and still hold deeply antisemitic beliefs about Jewish people. Conflating support for Israel with opposition to antisemitism only makes that contradiction easier to ignore.
There is another uncomfortable reality. When the Israeli government commits acts that much of the world sees as oppressive, destructive, or morally indefensible, those actions can become ammunition for people who already hate Jews. That never excuses antisemitism… antisemitism is the responsibility of antisemites, full stop. But when Israel repeatedly presents itself as acting on behalf of Jews everywhere, when a large and very vocal part of the Jewish community supports that premise, or at least doesn’t challenge it, and when Jews are simultaneously told that defending Israel is part of defending Judaism, we should not be surprised when others begin making the same dangerous conflation.
That makes separating Judaism from the actions of the Israeli government even more important, not less.
And this brings me back to where I started…
The Judaism I grew up with was rooted in pride, resilience, curiosity, relationships, and engagement with the broader world. We were taught to stand up for ourselves, yes, but also to stand alongside others. We were taught to participate in society, not retreat from it. We knew antisemitism existed, but we weren’t taught to search for it around every corner. Our history contains more than enough real fear. I don’t believe we need to manufacture more of it.
I want us to recognize antisemitism when it is actually there, call it what it is, and confront it forcefully. But I also want us to have enough confidence in ourselves to distinguish hatred from criticism, danger from discomfort, and Judaism from the policies of a government. Because if everything becomes antisemitism, eventually the word stops telling us where the real danger is.
Fear was never the Jewish identity I was taught… pride was. Pride in who we are, pride in our resilience, and pride in our ability to engage openly with a world that will sometimes challenge us, sometimes disappoint us, and yes, occasionally hate us. I refuse to let that possibility make me afraid of everyone else.