How Low Will the Antisemites Go?

Since the horrific terror attack on Israel on October 7, we have witnessed an alarming and unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism that demands our urgent attention and unwavering resolve. In a disturbing twist of narrative, supporters of Hamas have skillfully shifted the global discourse away from the unspeakable atrocities committed by terrorists on that fateful day, redirecting focus onto Israel’s justified response in pursuing the perpetrators. The reprehensible protests orchestrated by these supporters have unleashed a torrent of verbal abuse, obstruction, exclusion, calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), threats, harassment, and even physical violence—yet this is merely the surface of a much deeper, more insidious anti-Semitic undercurrent.

In the digital realm, social media platforms have become battlegrounds where, despite efforts to suspend abusive accounts, an unrelenting deluge of vitriolic hate, falsehoods, dehumanization, and incitement to violence rages on. Once ignited, the fervor of anti-Semites knows no bounds, spiraling into ever more grotesque and baseless accusations.

We are witnessing a modern-day blood libel against the Jewish people, a perverse and absurd campaign that blames Jews for events they had no hand in, casts them as the architects of all global evils, and perpetuates the tired trope of omnipotent control over humanity. This litany of blame spans centuries—from the crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans, to the tragic yet mistaken attack on the USS Liberty amid the chaos of the 1967 war, to the assassination of JFK by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, and even the 9/11 attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda henchmen. The scope of evils falsely pinned on the Jewish community is staggering, encompassing acts explicitly forbidden by our faith—usury, pedophilia—and even sprawling socio-political and economic ideologies like communism, stretching from Russia to China, North Korea, Cuba, and beyond. Most outrageously, Jews—who constitute less than 0.2% of the world’s population—are accused of wielding dominion over media, banking, governments, and, absurdly, even the weather itself.

Since October 7, the venom has intensified, with Jew-haters hurling charges of genocide, infanticide, and a litany of war crimes against Israel. These accusations persist despite the undeniable truth: the war in Gaza was initiated by Hamas, a terrorist organization that has constructed hundreds of miles of terror tunnels, cynically embedded itself in schools, mosques, hospitals, and homes, and provoked a conflict that, remarkably, has resulted in the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio of any urban warfare in history.

Let me be clear: I do not claim that all Jewish people are without flaws. No group on this earth can claim perfection. We are human—capable of both virtue and vice. Yet, from an Orthodox Jewish perspective, our 613 mitzvot serve as a profound moral and ethical compass, guiding us toward faithfulness to the Almighty and a life of righteousness and self-betterment. Contrast this with the actions of Jew-haters—some of whom are unfortunately Jewish—who wage economic warfare through BDS, political warfare at the United Nations to delegitimize Israel, legal warfare via the International Court of Justice, and physical warfare through violence against Zionists and Jews, alongside calls for the annihilation of Israel itself.

This past week, I was left utterly speechless by an image that epitomized the depths of this hatred: Jew-haters desecrating a photograph of one of modern Judaism’s holiest figures, the Rebbe, with an act as vile as urination. It was a stark revelation—there is no limit to the depravity, the baseless blame, the dehumanization, and the incitement to violence that these individuals will inflict upon us.