Two Jews, three opinions. That sounds like a bad Mel Brooks joke, but it is exactly what the bipartisan Commission on Civil Rights testimony on campus antisemitism sounded like this month.
The Jewish world appears genuinely divided on whether the federal government should take real, muscular action to protect Jewish students. I find that strange, bordering on surreal.
The United States has been the greatest protector of the Jewish people in all recorded history. America welcomed refugees after pogroms and the Holocaust, stood with Israel when much of the world wouldn’t, and built the freest, safest diaspora community Jews have ever known.
Yet a vocal segment of the community is seized by the fear that if President Donald Trump does anything in the name of stopping antisemitism (defunding universities that tolerate harassment, enforcing Title VI the way we enforce it for every other protected class), that will produce more antisemites.
I’m sympathetic to Jewish nail-biting. I also have “chai” anxiety about politicos turning Jews into partisan footballs. But here, that fear is dangerously misplaced.
The “not in our name” movement rests on two flawed assumptions. The first is that antisemitism is something we can manage or de-escalate through our own behavior. The second is that the hatred is ultimately about something we did. Neither is true.
Antisemitism is an ancient, irrational hatred. It has survived every attempt at assimilation, every political realignment, every change in Jewish behavior. Jew hatred has been dressed up as religious duty, economic resentment, racial pseudoscience, and now as anti-Zionism. At bottom it is about who we are.
We are a people who introduced monotheism to a pagan world, who gave the West its moral grammar, and who somehow produced outsized contributions in every field despite millennia of exile and massacre.
Jew hatred isn’t a rational response to Israeli policy or campus activism or Jewish privilege. It’s a nasty virus that mutates but never dies. Jew hatred won’t disappear no matter what we do or who is in the White House.
But university administrators who turned blind eyes toward anti-Jewish crimes respond to enforcement and career-ending consequences.
Pretending Jews can stop antisemitism by rejecting help from the wrong president is pure mishegas. Think of the guy in the classic Jewish flood parable who waves off every rescuer, yelling, “Hashem will save me!” only to drown, wondering why no miracle showed up. (In Heaven, G-d shrugs, “I sent you three boats!”)
The data from the antisemitism hearing in Congress itself proved the point. The surge in incidents didn’t begin with Trump’s second term. It exploded after Oct. 7, 2023, under the previous administration, while many universities and federal offices dithered, or worse.
The students who testified are sincere and brave for speaking up. Their concern that aggressive federal action will politicize Jewish suffering and turn it into a pretext for other agendas is understandable.
But I’m twice their age and that’s old enough to know, as the kids say, haters gonna hate. Worse, when even basic enforcement of existing civil-rights law is framed as a partisan assault, the antisemites win twice: once by attacking Jews, and again by making Jews afraid to accept defense.
So where do we go from here? Stop treating protection as a partisan luxury. Equal enforcement of the law isn’t a favor to Jews or to Trump. It’s the bare minimum America owes every citizen. Demand civil rights for everyone, including ourselves.
The encampments are largely gone, and administrators are suddenly paying attention because universal rules are finally being applied without apology. Yes, we should watch for overreach and defend free speech. But the solution isn’t paralysis or waiting for the right president. It’s consistent, principle-driven action no matter who sits in the White House.
In the end, Jews don’t get to pick and choose which forms of bigotry deserve zero tolerance. We don’t tell the fire department “not if that guy is driving the truck.” History has been brutally clear on what happens when we wave off the lifeboats. Clarity about who we are is what has always saved the Jewish people.
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