Politicians, progressives and students revel in accusations that Israel is "genocidal" and "settler colonial." Those accusations are ahistorical and false, yet they fan the flames of antisemitism.

When students march chanting from "the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free," they are — whether they know it or not — calling for the elimination of Israel. Only 18% of the original 1920 mandate for Palestine became Israel, the world's only Jewish state. Most of the rest became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan where Islam is the state religion, as it is in over two dozen other countries.

When American Jews see threats to the home of 46% of the world's Jews, they understandably feel uneasy. The threats are only magnified when the marchers advocate for Hamas, whose covenant calls not only for the elimination of Israel but the killing of all Jews. If a second Holocaust can wipe out half or more of the world's Jews only eight decades after the first one, who can blame American Jews for feeling endangered?

American Jews are assailed day in and day out by friends, family and co-workers as to whether they support Israel or not. I heard from one Jewish writer that "I have never felt so conflicted about my Jewish identity." A college classmate sends out urgent emails reporting alleged missteps by the Israeli government, even when those claims are rooted in Hamas propaganda. Does he do anything to point to the Chinese genocide of Tibetans, the ongoing slaughter in South Sudan or the tens of thousands of victims of sexual assault in American prisons each year? No, he does not. His intentions may be good, but the double standard is clear: an obsessive focus on the alleged wrongdoing of the world's lone Jewish state only adds fuel to the antisemitic inferno.

According to the FBI's 2024 statistics, Jews, roughly 2% of the U.S. population, were the targets in about 70% of reported religion-based hate crimes.

This hatred has deadly consequences. Last year in Boulder, Colorado, a man shouted "Free Palestine" as he threw Molotov cocktails at a vigil for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, killing 82-year-old Karen Diamond. He later told investigators, according to a sworn FBI affidavit, that he wanted to kill "all Zionist people." This past March, Ayman Muhammad Ghazali rammed a truck into a Michigan synagogue and opened fire in what the FBI called a "Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism." An NPR story seemed to frame the attack as retaliation for Israeli air attacks on Ghazali's home village in Lebanon where his brother — a Hezbollah commander, according to Israel — had been killed. NPR's public editor later explained the story wasn't meant to imply "that Ghazali's attempt to kill more than a hundred children was justified."

In the year after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, antisemitic incidents in the U.S. surged by more than 200%. But the threat isn't new. In 2018, a shooter, who claimed Jews were aiding Central American "invaders," shot dead 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. And three weeks before the October 2023 attack, my brother-in-law, a retired police officer, took on an assignment to provide security at a San Francisco Bay Area synagogue.

While many fan the flames out of a misguided sense of social justice, others do so after careful calculation. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has steadfastly refused to recognize Israel's right to exist. He blamed the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli occupation, ignoring that Israel had withdrawn from Gaza 18 years before. He revoked the city's executive order that barred business or investment decisions which discriminated against Israel. Meanwhile, his political ally council member Shahana Hanif posted her hope that Allah would condemn to hell Muslim participants in a pro-Israel rally held in front of the mayor's mansion.

"Monsters" is what Mamdani recently called AIPAC, the American pro-Israel lobbying group — and not just any kind of monsters, but monsters who move "millions in dark money" to "turn us against one another." The Anti-Defamation League of New York/New Jersey responded that he had crossed "a dangerous line by invoking dehumanizing and conspiratorial rhetoric with a long and troubling history in antisemitic tropes."

Campaigning against Israel is proving a too-convenient way to win votes. Based largely on an anti-Israel platform, Brad Lander, supported by Mamdani, easily wrested the nomination from a sitting Democrat in the U.S. House. Another Mamdani endorsee, Darializa Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian Arab rally the day after Oct. 7, also upset an incumbent who headed Congress's Hispanic Caucus. Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Michigan, claims Israel has "captured too many of our politicians." Graham Platner, the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine who wore a Nazi tattoo across his chest for years, is sending out fundraising pitches accusing Israel of genocide and blasting AIPAC donors who "are blanketing the state with TV ads."

I don't often agree with the author and podcaster Sam Harris, but he hit the mark when he wrote: "This obsession with Israel, and the double standards to which its people are held, now forms the center of mass of that shapeshifting moral affliction widely known as 'antisemitism.'"

An Algerian sportscaster recently claimed the "Jewish lobby" pressured referees to favor Argentina's Lionel Messi, a Roman Catholic, during a World Cup match, which Algeria lost 3-0. Antisemitic conspiracy thinking is clearly running amok.

Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt warns the spread of antisemitism is moving "at warp speed, unlike anything I have ever seen." The late Irish academic and diplomat Conor Cruise O'Brien famously wrote that "antisemitism is a light sleeper." It has been awakened once again, both in the United States and around the globe.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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Photo credit: Cole Keister at Unsplash