Prepare for the worst, fight for the best

One of the more surprising things I learned recently was that the Jewish Golden Age of Spain did not end with the Christian conquest. It ended centuries earlier, following a regime change among Spain’s Muslim rulers. A bit of history: Spain – at the time known as Al-Andalus – was colonized by the Muslims in the early 700s AD, and became a global magnet for Jews around the second decade of the 900s under the reign of Abd al-Rahman III, who established his Caliphate in Cordoba. Jews flocked to this Golden Medina where they thrived for approximately 250 years until internal Muslim schisms led to the rise of their then far-right political sect, the Almohad. The Almohad captured control of the government of al-Andalus in the mid-1100s and then quickly went to work dismantling Jewish presence. While Almohadic rule ended within less than a century, the Jews of Spain largely did not return. By the time the Jews were finally expelled in 1492, the Jewish community of Spain was a shadow of its former glory.

It is entirely coincidental that the United States, now nearing its own 250th year, is experiencing a similar dynamic: ideological battles among its ruling factions where the extremes (on both the Left and the Right) all exhibit a penchant to blame the collective Jew for their troubles. As we saw on display at the Right’s 2025 Turning Point conference and future president-designate JD Vance’s remarks, as we see on display in the incoming administration of Zohran Mamdani, Israel has become a wedge issue that helps the extremes take over their parties. Calls to exclude ‘Zionists’ from public and private spaces have become, in these circles, common – and whaddya know, Zionists happen to be Jews. Whether or not this antizionism is manufactured by Oil Money has now become secondary to the question of what we need to do about it to avoid the fate of the Jews of al-Andalus.

First, I believe we need to shake off our assumption that America is exceptional. It is, of course, just as every person is unique. But America – and American political culture – is susceptible to the same dynamics that have affected other exceptional political entities over the centuries. For example, take the Weimar Republic: a revolutionary political entity that promised to be the culmination of centuries of German enlightened development, a republican experiment in the heart of Europe. While the Republic itself was short-lived, it represented the culmination of Jewish advancement, which started more than a century before its founding with Frederick William III’s emancipation of the Jews in 1812. Within a century, over 100,000 Jews were serving in its military, and Jews rose to the ranks of Prime Minister, Foreign Minister. As late as 1929, the Jew Rudolf Hilferding served as the German Finance Minister.

Then, as we all know, things changed. The exceptional progress of Jewish emancipation and integration in Germany underwent a rapid shift as an extremist minority representing approximately 1% of the German population took over the government and that minority’s leader legally established himself as sole leader in 1933. Within less than two decades, the same nation which celebrated Jewish culture and intellectualism as one of the hallmarks of its national success decided to invest its life and liberty and treasure into the project of exterminating not only its own Jews, but the Jews of Europe and the Middle East.

So while we should pray that America does not fall for the same historic dynamics that affected Al-Andalus and Deutschland, we should remember that we’ve seen this pattern of extremism before in exceptional countries, and the rapidity of the process of expulsion and extermination is not one we should take lightly.

Recognizing the problem, however, doesn’t solve it. To solve it we need to take a multilayered approach: first, we need to amplify non-Jewish voices who are fighting in opposition to the rising antizionist extremes, much in the same way that Qatar has amplified the hate-filled voices we hear today (that is, covertly). Second, we need to go on the offensive against those foreign entities seeking to corrupt the liberalism that has been a hallmark of America and expose their influence (that is, overtly). Third, we need to build the capacity to respond to the escalating events targeting Jews locally and globally (and this will require Israeli expertise).

Taking these steps requires us to recognize that what worked for the Jews in the immediate past is ill-suited to winning the struggles of the present. The foundations may be the same, but the posture must be different: we cannot afford to play a defensive action. We need to block that which we can, we need to cut off that which no longer serves us, and we need to invest heavily into alternatives in case we learn that the battle is already lost. This means creating cross-organizational taskforces, it means increased integration between American and other global Jewish efforts, and it means mobilizing capital by reminding people how the Jewish golden age in Andalus, Alexandria, Baghdad, Thessaloniki, Cairo, and Berlin ended not long ago: use it or lose it.

There is hope because America has been in a similar situation before and did not slip into the familiar patterns of the past: in the 1930s, the Michigan-based Roman Catholic priest Father Coughlin became one of the top broadcasters in the US, reaching 30 million listeners with his antisemitic screed. His journal, Social Justice, serialized the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and his followers defended Kristallnacht and struggled to keep the US out of World War II. He was stopped, and America was saved, because the State took action – not for the sake of the Jews, but for the sake of ensuring America remained a safe haven for all of its citizens. America is worth fighting for, if not for its sake, than for the world: humanity is much better served by a liberal democratic global superpower than the mercantilist empire that is China. Let us hope Americans have the capacity to fight that fight today – and prepare in case they don’t.