(As delivered)
We are not OK.
We are not OK.
As my friend Bret Stephens so succinctly put it, all of us now live in an October 8th world.
We have endured the painful, distressing, and clarifying events of the past 151 days. That video we just saw could be 10 times, 100 times as long and it still wouldn’t capture all the anti-Jewish hate of just the past few months.
The world of October 8 is one in which the perpetrators of the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust are celebrated as heroes – not just in Ramallah or Beirut, but in London and New York and on campuses like Harvard and Columbia.
An October 8th world is one in which prayers for the safety of hostages – men, women, children, the elderly are met with vile hate-speech and moral confusion.
An October 8th world in which rape and sexual assault draw universal outrage, unless committed against Israeli women and girls.
An October 8th world in which college campuses are policed relentlessly for the smallest of microaggressions, but there seems to be no cop on the beat when the insults and threats are screamed at Jewish students in the quad, outside their fraternities, or even in the classroom.
The world of October 8 is one of an unprecedented surge of antisemitism all over the planet.
In Brazil, incidents are up 960 percent.
In France, 384 percent.
In Germany, 320 percent.
And here in the United States, up 360 percent since 10/7.
If there were ever a moment to break the glass and pull the alarm labeled “Never Again,” that time is right now.
According to ADL’s Center on Extremism in just three months after 10/7, there were 3,291 antisemitic incidents in the America. That’s an average of 34 anti-Jewish acts each and every day.
Antisemitism isn’t just an abstract issue. It’s a real-life threat to our lives…to Jewish life in America…and, again, to Jews around the world.
Yes, it could happen here -- because it is.
Yes, never is now -- because if we don’t insist on it, the consequences could be devastating.
And that means we need to clear-eyed about the threats we face -- and have the determination to face them.
***
One of the biggest threats is that our opponents have worked tirelessly to muddy the message…to make what is morally clear, fuzzy…to lie and to gaslight about what’s happening.
At times, it feels as if we are living in a Kafka novel.
As we all know, there is a group of people who wants us to believe that anti-Zionism does not equal antisemitism…that somehow one can be adamantly opposed to the existence of the world’s only Jewish state…where half of the Jews on planet Earth live…but really have no problems with actual Jews.
It’s absurd.
Let’s make this very clear: anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
And look, before the folks at Harvard or Berkeley…or the editors at left-wing Jewish magazines that very few of us actually read…before they start to object, let’s also be clear what anti-Zionism means.
Antizionism doesn’t mean having a problem with a set of actions by the Israeli government. Antizionism doesn’t mean protesting the policies of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Antizionism doesn’t mean you support Palestinian human rights. Anti-Zionism doesn’t mean that you’re not upset about the conflict in Gaza.
That’s what our enemies want you to think -- and they are lying.
Antizionism, plain and simple, means that Jews – alone among the peoples of the world – do not deserve freedom and self-determination in their homeland.
Antizionism is a negation of Jewish history, a denial of Jewish humanity.
Today, in our October 8 world, American Jews – and Americans of all kinds – they’re hearing with their own ears and they’re seeing with their own eyes the hollow claim of those who purport to be anti-Zionists but not antisemites.
That’s rich.
It’s like saying in 1964, I don’t hate Black Americans, but I just don’t think we need to pass the Civil Rights Act or end Jim Crow.
It just doesn’t add up.
If your idea of expressing dissent against Israeli government policies is to attack Jews in America (or anywhere, for that matter), that doesn’t make you a de-colonizer...a freedom fighter...or a progressive.
It makes you a bigot. Plain and simple.
And don’t take my word for it: you know who is cheering on the anti-Zionists? The neo-Nazi’s and right-wing extremists and the nativists that ADL has been tracking and battling for years…and still is tracking and battling.
The tiki-torch marchers in Charlottesville and the SJP radicals are two sides of the same antisemitic coin!
***
But I must say, I have to share, what amazes me is that when ADL says that anti-Zionism is antisemitism…...or when the Hillel director says that the mob chanting “from the river to the sea” outside their door on campus is a threat…journalists at major newspapers don’t listen to the victim – instead, they literally go looking for an alternative point of view.
You all know what I’m talking about.
You’ve all read these stories in The New York Times.
You’ve all read these paragraphs: “To be sure, Professor So and So says” or “the head of Jewish Voice for Peace counters…”
Really?
Really?
You know, when my friend Derrick Johnson – the head of the NAACP – says that something is racist, reporters from the New York Times or journalist from MSNBC don’t rush to the phones to get an alternative point of view from David Duke or the Proud Boys.
So why is it different for us?
Why are Jewish people being told over and over and over again that we have no say in what constitutes antisemitism?
Why are the majority of us dismissed or marginalized or told we just don’t get it.
Even worse, we are told that words don’t mean what we know they actually mean.
Take the word, “genocide.”
Educated people from the UN, foreign ministries around the world, and of course on elite college campuses here at home want us to believe that genocide is an army fighting a defensive war – while facilitating humanitarian aid even as they are texting and calling civilians urging them out of harm's way.
And yet we are told genocide is NOT the terrorists literally next door who not only said they want to kill every Jewish man, woman, and child – but actually did all they could to reach every victim possible.
We are told that “From the River to the Sea” doesn’t mean eliminate the Jewish state and the Jews living between the two bodies of water…it is just a catchy slogan.
We are told “believe every woman,” except if those being raped are Jewish women.
We are told that “globalize the Intifada,” is not a call for a violent uprising, but now a Gandhian plea for non-violent resistance.
Really. What’s up is down…hot is cold…day is night.
As Orwell famously put it, “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
A case in point.
Time and again, especially since 10/7, elected officials, campus administrators, and the media tell us that the problem in America is the rise in antisemitism AND the rise in Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hate…that’s because of the conflict between Israelis and Hamas, there is now a conflict happening, spilling out here in the US on both sides.
That both are being attacked,
Both are equally threatened on campus,
Both are routinely being routinely, serially harassed by professors and teachers.
Now, I want to make sure nobody in this room and no one watching online is misconstruing my words.
Anti-Muslim hate is an absolutely unjustifiable form of bigotry full stop.
It should have no place in our country or anywhere. And when it happens, we need to take it seriously. We need to combat it, prosecute it, and stop it from happening -- whether it's a teenager being shot in Burlington, VT for walking down the street or a small child, an innocent child killed in suburban Chicago.
For years, ADL has been a partner in that fight – calling it out time and again, including advocating for resources that protect Muslim institutions and laws that prevent hate crimes against Muslims.
We’ve done that that without hesitation, we will do it in the future without hesitation and I am proud of that track record.
And yet the fact is, however, there is no data that shows that incidents of anti-Muslim hate today are at a level or of a kind comparable to the rampant, raging antisemitism engulfing our country.
And to assert that these two issues are of the same magnitude right now or of the same urgency is to minimize antisemitism…it is to silence Jews and those concerned specifically about anti-Jewish hate.
Let’s be crystal clear- this is not a contest about who has it worse. All Americans should be against all types of hate. The problem is the need that too many people seem to have in not singularly calling out and battling antisemitism on its own.
It is tone deaf, it’s insulting. And frankly, it feels like it is being done to minimize antisemitism, and wave away our very real concerns...and at ADL, we won’t let them.
ADL will never stop calling out and fighting antisemitism – whether it comes from the violent white nationalist or the hardened antizionist. Both are threats. We will battle them with equal energy.
We will do so because we will never be quiet in the face of anti-Jewish hate.
Unfortunately right now, that battle is taking a different, more serious, and more dangerous shape.
Groups like SJP and other Hamas apologists have embraced a whole new playbook since 10/7.
Until now, their strategy was one of isolation or “anti-normalization,” as they call it -- focused on boycotts, divestment, and urging progressive groups and all Americans to shun and ostracize their Jewish neighbors.
There are lots of examples of this tactic – like refusing to let Jewish groups march in the gay pride parade in Chicago, or law school groups in Berkeley trying to bar “Zionist” speakers, or climate activists in DC refusing to attend a rally and stand alongside their Jewish peers.
But now that’s no longer enough for them.
On October 8th, as Israeli soldiers were still tracking down murderous terrorists hiding in Israel…as families, some of whom you will hear from today, were still wondering if their loved ones were dead, kidnapped, or just incinerated beyond recognition…as all of us in the public was trying to grasp what actually had happened inside Israel, SJP released a new toolkit to their followers.
This toolkit, which you still can find online, unapologetically celebrated the atrocities of Hamas, and it also spelled out new strategy of confrontation to, in their words, “dismantle Zionism.”
And we have seen the results of this strategy all over the country.
That video we saw before I came on gave you a taste of it.
It’s the angry mob that vandalized a falafel restaurant in Philadelphia -- just one of hundreds of businesses that we know of that have been hit from coast to coast.
It’s the encampment outside the suburban home of our country’s Secretary of State, the highest-ranking Jewish-American in the country…where so-called activists have erected a sign declaring their space “Kibbutz Blinken” to evoke a nightmarish comparison with the kibbutzim savaged on 10/7 day and night. While he travels the world trying to bring peace, they menace his young family, constantly screaming into megaphones and speakers terrify and terrorize them.
It’s the Museum of Modern Art right here in New York where, a few weeks ago, the building was shut down as pro-Hamas protesters shouted the names of the prominent Jews who happen to sit on MOMA's board of trustees.
And, of course, it is campus after campus, where student unions have been occupied…classrooms disrupted…as SJP and its fellow travelers berate and belittle Jewish students, almost always with impunity.
Facing these threats, it seems that the Jewish community in the United States has two choices: flight or fight.
It pains me, as the head of the ADL, as a father, it pains me that some have made the choice to flee, to hide their identity – to wear a baseball cap instead of a kippah, to remove the mezuzah on their doorpost. I know of many parents who have instructed their kids to change the names on their Uber profiles, so they appear less obviously Jewish.
I’m guessing that includes some of you in this room today.
These tough decisions, deeply personal decisions, and I’m not judging but I get it. I understand the desire to deflect the threat.
I understand the urge to protect our kids.
But I am also seeing another response.
Not deflection, but defiance.
Not flight, but fight.
There are reports of jewelry shops unable to keep gold Stars of David in stock as young people are proud to wear them around their necks.
There are accounts of high schoolers suddenly donning kippot, proudly demonstrating to their classmates that they are Jewish and proud.
This isn’t just a phenomenon driven by young people.
Open your phone. I bet nearly everyone in this room has a text chain or WhatsApp chat or Facebook group buzzing with people sharing information and organizing to help our brothers and sisters in Israel and to fight back against this onslaught of antisemitism around the world.
What we have seen in this new Jewish grassroots…in community after community…and in the work ADL does every day gives me hope.
It shows me and it shows all of us that the time for complacency is over. We can’t assume American Jewish life will continue to be a comfortable life – unless we do something now…unless we transform ourselves from observers to activists, from onlookers to advocates.
Our community has accomplished so much in this country – and contributed so much.
No one can take that away from us – and it’s time we stopped letting think that they can do so.
The Jewish community has been an indispensable part of this country since its earliest days.
We have overcome discrimination, broken barriers and exceeded expectations.
We started companies, founded labor unions and cured diseases.
We built schools, funded universities, and started hospitals.
We created theatres, launched studios, and started charities.
We changed norms, passed laws, and secured judgements that made this country better for its Jewish people and ultimately better for all of its people.
You see, the bottom line – there is not a part of American life that the Jewish community has not touched and impacted for good.
And so, the time has come to say:
The harassment and the attacks must stop.
Explaining away your antisemitism will no longer be tolerated.
Refusing to prosecute the laws or to enforce the policies of your institution when the perpetrators are targeting Jews, it must cease.
The twisting of language…the moral cowardice…the blind eye toward antisemitism must end now.
If not, you will hear our voices.
You will see us outside your doors.
And we will see you in court.
Our donations that you relied on – gone.
Our votes that you seek – forget about it.
Our friendship or alliances – no more.
At this moment…in this October 8th world, we will not be silent.
We not let our country be lost to the antisemites and bigots.
We will not flee.
We will fight.
And we will win.
Am Yisrael Chai.
And God bless America.
Thank you.