On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists carried out a barbaric attack against the population of Israel, killing over 1,400 Israelis and foreign nationals and kidnapping more than 200 hostages — from babies to Holocaust survivors — and dragging them off to Gaza. As President Joe Biden expressed, it was the “deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.”
The world rightly recoiled at these atrocities. Across America, elected officials, community leaders and thousands of Americans have taken to the streets in the days since, marching in support of Israel and calling for the release of the hundreds of innocent hostages who hail from Israel, America and nations around the globe. Families of the kidnapped have been forced to wait in agonizing limbo, relying on a brutal terror group for information about their loved ones’ well-being.
When extremists call for the death of Jews, when they march through cities praising those who kill us, we must take them at their word.
And yet, Jews in Israel and around the world have also watched as others marched in support of Hamas’s ISIS-style brutality. In Sydney, Australia, people were filmed chanting, “Gas the Jews.” And in New York’s Times Square, an anti-Israel protester was photographed holding up a swastika symbol. On Wednesday, an iconic Jewish eatery on New York’s Upper East Side was vandalized with a swastika as well.
Less than a century after the Holocaust, the world risks forgetting the stakes: When extremists call for the death of Jews, when they march through cities praising those who kill us, we must take them at their word. The Hamas massacre shows we do not have the luxury of doing anything else.
But even before these attacks, American Jews were sounding the alarm about an alarming rise in hatred. According to a 2022 report from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), “Forty-one percent of American Jews say their status in the United States is less secure compared to a year ago.” The Anti-Defamation League reports that it has seen a jarring spike in antisemitic incidents in the past week alone. The ADL has noticed an established pattern in the past: Fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas in May 2021 led to a demonstrable surge in violence and harassment against Jews in the United States.
The protests in New York City have only reinforced this fear. The past is not buried, nor is it ever far from our minds — for good reason.
In 1939, Nazis here in America rented out Madison Square Garden. On Feb. 20 of that year, more than 20,000 of them filled the arena and spent hours praising Hitler and spewing virulent antisemitic conspiracy theories. It was just a few months later that Hitler began his campaign for a “final solution,” aiming to systematically murder every single Jewish person on Earth. By the end of the Holocaust, approximately one-third of the world’s Jewish population had been killed. Hitler must have felt buoyed by the support he received that February night in New York. So must Hamas when its members see protesters in America celebrating their murders.
This is why Hamas’ barbarity and its aftermath has resonated so deeply with so many. If your Jewish friends seem angry or anxious, it is because the collective trauma of antisemitism is a scourge that weighs heavy on all of our hearts, and some members of society seems intent on undermining our pain. We barely have time to grieve one antisemitic massacre before being forced to face down the next one.
If your Jewish friends seem angry or anxious, it is because the collective trauma of antisemitism is a scourge that weighs heavy on all of our hearts.
Today, Hamas and its backers in Tehran are proud to advertise that their central goal is the deaths of as many Jews as possible. We have heard these calls before. We will not allow another Holocaust. Israel’s forthcoming response to Hamas will ensure the terror group is never able to threaten the innocent again — for all of our sakes.
For the rest of us, it is imperative to internalize that the rape of Israeli women, murder of Israeli children and kidnapping of Israeli elders cannot be rationalized or justified. To do so is to head down a slippery slope that reeks of that February night in the heart of New York.
This is not just an Israeli or Jewish quandary. The best way to prevent another massacre or worse is to call out antisemitism in all its forms. To avoid the temptation to equivocate. To fight against evil. We hope you will mourn with us, and we hope you stand with us. We desire peace even as we remain forever vigilant against the historic dehumanization of Jewish people and the ways that dehumanization can make us targets.
From Kibbutz Be’eri to Times Square, we are seeing a deadly revival of Nazism’s darkest tenets. And from Israel to America to everywhere else, we are serious when we say: “Never Again.”
