New laws and lawfare must hold Jew-Haters accountable

In reflecting on what is now a factually reported rising tide of Jew-Hatred/antisemitism in America, the Diaspora and yes, even in Israel, it is clear to me that the strategies of the comprehensive alphabet soup of Jewish advocacy organizations and denominations have been ineffective and in fact are failing wasting tons of resources with preaching to the choir and not holding others accountable. The fact of the matter is that there is a full blown world-wide culture of incivility bordering on intellectual, historical and physical cancel culture of the Jews once again, the likes of which we have not seen since the beginnings of the Holocaust in Europe with a very scary prognosis for all Jews in Israel and many of us in the Diaspora. It is a multi-front war being waged in schools, colleges and universities, the halls of Congress and other governments, the arts, the public square and the media, in houses of worship and on the street in our neighborhoods and even work places. It is driven by hate, conspiratorial theories, and the need for scapegoating “the other” for problems people can’t or won’t handle themselves and need to blame. It is not new, it’s always been here, it’s growing and not going away.

The only way to fight it is to make it both expensive and illegal to engage in promoting it and acting out on it. We need a massive overhaul of criteria for elected officials with one of the top priorities for them to be crusaders against all forms of religious and ethnic hatred including Jew-hatred. We need to elect them to begin to criminal guidelines and sanctions to prosecute for promoting and/or acting on racial and religious hatred. It’s not just about discrimination, which is an end product of hatred…it’s about expanding the definition of “incitement” to include hateful words in public which could be used to incite. Freedom of speech must be legally defined to exclude hatred in public and social media discussion and groups connected with hateful agendas must lose their tax-exemptions and be subject to prosecution. Elected leaders should be censured and possibly sanctioned for using hateful and inciting speech in the halls of Congress when it comes to referring to ethnic and religious groups. Making these policies law and enforceable with sanctions will put a check on them. The time has come.

It should not matter where the hatred comes from whether it be the ruling party or the minority party; or a majority ethnic, racial or religious group or a minority ethnic, racial or religious group. The fact of the matter is that hatred breads hatred and we are living in a world once again at war, fighting big lies, big prejudices and big hatreds. This boils down to religious leaders calling for congregants to kill Jews and college professors defending terrorist actions against Jews and politicians calling for ends to defensive alliances with Israel using hateful falsehoods and lies to be held legally responsible for inciteful hate. We have enough history with with hateful incitement with violent action towards Jews that there is justifiable cause for anti-hate legislation with severe sanctions. I am not asking for any curtailment of free speech; however incitement is not protected free speech. Just ask Donald Trump and all his sycophants who have spent millions of dollars defending themselves from prosecution for their actions on January 6, 2021 when it is has become legally clear that their interpretations of “freedom of expression” and “right to peacefully protest” turned into “violent incitement” and “insurrection.” We must now extended this to protecting this country from the catastrophic Jew-hating path on which it appears to be traveling. It is time for those engaging in lawfare and politics to start engaging in removing Jew-hating inciters, strengthening incitement and hate actions to include Jew-hatred and holding expressing such accountable legally and criminally. Never again must mean…never again!