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Jonathan A. Greenblatt

Double standards undermine our fight against rampant antisemitism

This Holocaust Remembrance Day, with hatred rising from many directions, the Jewish community needs all the allies we can get
(L): A man cheers after fellow demonstrators breeched barricades that had been erected around a pro-Palestinian encampment at MIT, Monday, May 6, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass.(AP Photo/Josh Reynolds); (R) President Donald Trump supporter Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes convicted on charges relating to the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, talks to reporters outside the DC Central Detention Facility, after being released from a jail in Maryland, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (Montage by The Times of Israel)
(L): A man cheers after fellow demonstrators breeched barricades that had been erected around a pro-Palestinian encampment at MIT, Monday, May 6, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass.(AP Photo/Josh Reynolds); (R) President Donald Trump supporter Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes convicted on charges relating to the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol, talks to reporters outside the DC Central Detention Facility, after being released from a jail in Maryland, in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (Montage by The Times of Israel)

Eighty years ago this week, the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Allied troops. What they found there was a crime against humanity unlike the world had ever seen or has seen since: the industrial-level slaughter of 1.1 million Jews, just one phase of the systematic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazi regime.

What enabled this genocide was, simply, antisemitism. Drawing on centuries of antisemitic beliefs and tropes, the Nazis weaponized it to put Jews at the center of a conspiracy that explained all of Germany’s and the world’s problems. When we say, “Never Again,” about the Holocaust, we are committing ourselves to fight antisemitism wherever it is found.

And, unfortunately, antisemitism is on the rise.

Globally, ADL’s recent survey found that 46 percent of the world’s adult population – an estimated 2.2 billion – harbor elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes. That’s more than double compared to 1.1 billion people 10 years ago.

Here in the US, the percentage of Americans with “significant” antisemitic attitudes jumped in 2024 to 24 percent, more than double the 2019 figure and the highest level since 1964. The number of antisemitic incidents has reached record levels in four of the past five years.

In the 12 months after the 10/7 attack on Israel, there were more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents in the US, a 200-plus percent increase compared to the same period of time in the prior year. It is the highest number of incidents ADL has ever recorded in any single 12-month period since we started tracking such data in the 1970s. It also comes on top of a nearly 900-percent increase over the last decade.

In the face of this five-alarm fire, we must act. We must recognize what has not worked, improve what has, and constantly innovate. And we must enlist as many allies as we can in the fight against antisemitism.

Especially since 10/7, there has been a resurgent new Jewish grassroots. Alumni at some of our most prestigious universities are making their voices heard. Parents are standing up to school districts that are ignoring antisemitism on their playgrounds and anti-Zionism being taught in the classroom. Students are pushing back on the anti-Zionism seeping into their curricula and campuses. Hundreds of thousands of people are organizing themselves in WhatsApp and Facebook groups. And new organizations, such as the American Jewish Medical Association, are being stood up to fight for the Jewish community.

While we at ADL have been fighting antisemitism for more than a century, we acknowledge that our approaches to date have not solved the problem and have responded to this upsurge with new approaches. It would be foolish to pretend that we have all the answers. In light of this new reality, we have adapted and adjusted our techniques to tackle the issue with meaningful — and measurable — approaches.

For example, we launched an annual campus report card to praise campuses that are protecting Jewish students and to shame negligent institutions to prod them to action. We partnered with the Brandeis Center, Hillel International, and the law firm Gibson Dunn to set up CALL, a first-of-its-kind legal hotline for students and staff who have been victimized by antisemitism. In its first 15 months, the system has handled more than 800 individual Title VI complaints.

ADL also has leaned into litigation, filing more lawsuits in a 12-month period than we had done in our first 111 years of existence. These included suits filed against universities, school districts, corporations and a landmark lawsuit that we filed on behalf of American victims of 10/7 and their families against Iran, North Korea, Iran, and Syria for their role in facilitating the single-deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust. It is a massive lawsuit – and we plan to win.

Our Center for Technology and Society is working closely with tech companies to stamp out antisemitism on their platforms. We are engaging the path-breaking companies building GenAI products to ensure they are calibrated to understand antisemitism. And ADL joined with some of the most prominent civil rights organizations — such as the National Urban League – to launch #UnMaskHateNY and restore and strengthen New York’s laws against masked harassment and intimidation. We will be expanding this anti-masking campaign to other states in the weeks and months ahead.

And yet, despite all this activity, there is so much more work to be done. Indeed, neither the ADL nor the Jewish community can win this war on our own. We need all the allies we can find to defeat antisemitism.

Yet too often, the fight against antisemitism becomes politicized. Reporters, elected officials, and “influencers” rush to condemn antisemitism when their political foes say something antisemitic. And yet, when it’s their friends, they fall silent and retreat to their partisan corner or, if forced to say anything, equivocate and excuse the bigotry.

Time after time, I have seen those on the Left who — rightly — condemn neo-Nazis and white extremists, but opt not to say a word when students at elite colleges call for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, harass, intimidate, and even commit acts of violence against their Jewish classmates.

Again and again, I have seen those on the Right — rightly — rail against antisemitism on campus or in the media but urge us to look past those promoting the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” or, more recently, the pardons President Trump gave to the January 6th insurrectionists including a large number of violent, antisemitic extremists including members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

This hypocrisy does not help the Jewish community. These double standards undermine the urgent fight against antisemitism. The partisanship is divisive and damaging to the cause.

I know it’s hard to call out your friends, but that is precisely who they will listen to. Can you imagine how effective it would have been if the presidents of the Ivy League schools issued an unambiguous condemnation of antisemitism — or simply enforced their rules against the encampments last spring? Can you fathom the impact it would have if President Trump took Tucker Carlson to task? Can you envision the power of Bernie Sanders emphatically confronting Hasan Piker for the unending antisemitism on his Twitch program?

The time has come to stop using antisemitism to score political points. We must gather all the allies we can to fight this bigotry. We might not agree with every position our friends may have, and that’s OK. We cannot afford that purity. The fight against antisemitism doesn’t need litmus tests; it needs leaders.

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we need more than ever to remember how deadly antisemitism can become and do everything we can with whoever will join us to say, never again.

About the Author
Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.
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