No, It Was Not Antisemitism

At least, there is no evidence of it so far.

Here is a typical paragraph of mushy thinking on the heinous murders of two Israeli embassy staffers at the Jewish Museum in Washington last night.

The reactions from the U.S. Jewish establishment roundly condemned the murder of young staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim at the Capital Jewish Museum as explicitly antisemitic…

Exactly how does the writer—or the “U.S. Jewish establishment”—know that the killing, or the killer, for that matter, was “explicitly antisemitic”? Maybe I missed something. But in all the reporting I’ve seen, nothing pointed to antisemitism as a motive. What was reported is that the killer expressed horror at the war in Gaza and the policies of the Netanyahu government.

Now, sometimes those attitudes are fueled by antisemitism. But not always—and probably not even most of the time. You can hate the war, you can even despise the State of Israel, and still not harbor a shred of antisemitism. The corollary is that you can “love” Israel as the Christian Right claims to and be a raving antisemite.

You don’t have to take my word for it—just look at the hundreds of thousands of Jews in the U.S., in Israel, and around the world who oppose this war, and who condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza in the strongest terms imaginable. Are they antisemitic too?

There is a huge and growing number of Jews—young, old, religious, secular—who are done defending Israel. Some call themselves anti-Zionist. Some call themselves post-Zionist. Some just call themselves human. They certainly don't hate Jews. They hate injustice. And they are tired of being told that those two things are the same.

Contrast the Washington murders with the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 Jews were murdered during prayer by a right-wing extremist named Robert Bowers.

Bowers, a Trump supporter, didn’t cite the occupation as a pretext. He didn’t care about Israel. What he cared about was the fact that Jews existed. He posted that “Jews are the children of Satan.” He called Jews “public enemy number one.” He praised Hitler. He shared a meme that said, “The only good Jew is a dead Jew.”

That’s antisemitism. That is what it looks like when Jewish identity itself is the target. Not opposition to Israeli government policy. Not horror at the bombing of refugee camps. Not rage at a government openly starving civilians.

Since October 7, 2023, there’s been a relentless campaign to conflate opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza with hatred of Jews. This isn’t an accident. It’s a tactic. It is meant to delegitimize protest. It is intended to smear people into silence. And it is especially used against Jews who dissent, who are treated as traitors for rejecting the policies of a state that has no right to speak in their name.

This opportunistic conflation doesn’t just poison the debate over Gaza. It also damages the fight against real antisemitism. When every act of protest, every angry slogan, every campus sit-in is labeled a hate crime, the term “antisemitism” loses its meaning. People stop listening. And when that happens, actual antisemites — like those who staff the antisemitic Trump administration and run in Republican primaries — get a free pass. The word becomes background noise.

None of this excuses the murders in Washington. Nothing possibly could. The killing of Yaron Lischinsky (who was not Jewish, not that it matters) and Sarah Milgrim was horrific. It was wrong. It was inexcusable. Two people were murdered in cold blood, and that must be condemned in the clearest possible terms. Regardless of motive, the act itself is barbaric. (As was the Hamas’s October 7th, 2023, massacre in Israel and Israel’s war on Gaza since then.)

But condemnation does not require distortion. Not every crime against an Israeli is antisemitism. Not every critic of Israel is a bigot. Not every violent Jewish death is the result of a hate crime. And if we can’t hold those distinctions in our heads, especially in this moment, then we are doing the victims themselves a disservice.

But that is what the “Jewish establishment” is doing. And they are doing it intentionally to whitewash Israel’s crimes in Gaza. It won’t work, but it will likely endanger more innocent American Jews who the establishment implicates with their “We Are One” lie. And allies us with the likes of Donald Trump, Elise Stefanik, John Fetterman, and JD Vance.

This is Zionism in reverse.

That is when the existence of Israel, supposedly created to make us all safer, makes us all infinitely less safe, which it has certainly done here in the United States. And, more and more, in Israel/Palestine too.

For the record, I see a real symmetry between those on the Palestinian side who are indifferent to the murders of innocent Jews and those on the Israeli side who are indifferent to the murders of innocent Palestinians.

As far as I am concerned, those people are pretty much identical: ethnic chauvinists, who cannot see the humanity on the “other side.” I wish all those people could see each other as natural partners in hate and get far away from those of us who try to be human beings.