The Blood Libel Amendment

We’ve all seen it. Since President Trump came into office, he has sought to implement an antidemocratic and unconstitutional agenda that includes chilling free speech by arresting students who spoke out against Israel and defunding America’s top universities. In order to justify these moves, he has leaned on the need to confront rising antisemitism in America, and he has styled himself as a bold crusader out to defend American Jews.  

Trump’s posturing, of course, is a lie. You can’t be genuinely worried about antisemitism and dine privately with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, or hire Sebastion Gorka to work in your White House, or say nothing after Elon Musk used a Nazi salute on stage and then laughed it off.

And it is not only Trump who is pretending to care about Jewish safety. Republicans in Congress have also been exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to score political points. Earlier today, the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee passed what I am calling “The Blood Libel Amendment.” It allows for antisemitic speech to be protected from sanction under the false pretense of religious liberty. 

This amendment to the Antisemitism Awareness Act is written innocuously. It simply says that “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon… the free exercise of religion.” The backroom reality, however, is more upsetting. This language was proposed to win the votes of a handful of Republican senators, who want to ensure that nothing will stop churches from teaching the Blood Libel to another generation.

Jews around the world are sensitive to the Blood Libel, and for good reason. It is the accusation that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. It’s rooted in early Christian narratives which portrayed Jewish leaders as responsible for the Romans’ crucifixion of Jesus. Over time, this belief was twisted into even more extreme forms, including false allegations that Jews engaged in ritual murder of Christian children. These baseless myths led to centuries of discrimination, violence, forced conversions, expulsions, and pogroms. 

We see the Blood Libel continue to influence radical right wing movements in the United States to this day. QAnon, for instance, contains a core premise of a secret cabal that is trafficking and cannibalizing children. QAnon’s version does not explicitly name Jews as those behind the cabal, instead it speaks of shadowy powerful elites in a manner that is eerily similar to other classic antisemitic screeds.  

I do believe that some Republican Members genuinely worry about antisemitism, but it speaks volumes that their concerns are not strongly held enough for them to stand up to their leaders and get them to change course. I’m not sure they realize just how harmful their effort to protect the Blood Libel is to Jewish safety. Certainly, nobody in the American Jewish community can consider them to be our allies in the fight against antisemitism if and when they vote for legislation with a clause intended expressly to sustain the Blood Libel. 

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Hadar Susskind is the President and CEO of New Jewish Narrative, a national Jewish organization that believes that peace and justice are the birthright of Israelis, of Palestinians, and of all people.