The ‘Good Jew’ Will Not Be Spared

The first failure in self-defense often happens before the attack. A person sees the warning signs and explains them away. He questions his judgment, looks for his own mistakes, and finds reasons to excuse the person moving toward him.

Some Jews on the radical left are making the same mistake.

They see hostility gathering around the Jewish people, yet much of their moral attention remains fixed on Israel’s imperfections. They condemn Israel, separate themselves from Zionists, and attack other Jews who recognize the threat.

Some appear to believe this will protect them. If they criticize Israel loudly enough, perhaps the people who hate Israel will accept them as “good Jews.”

This is an old and dangerous illusion.

A person who wants to kill Jews will not examine their voting records first. He will not read their social media posts to see whether they condemned Netanyahu, opposed the war, or marched against Israel.

The “good Jew” remains a Jew to the person who wants Jews dead.

Israel has flaws because every country is built and governed by imperfect people. Israelis can challenge their government, replace leaders, investigate failures, and fight over policy. These arguments happen every day inside Israel.

Public Jewish criticism enters a different environment when Israel is facing a global campaign that describes its existence as a crime. The criticism becomes ammunition, regardless of the speaker’s intention.

Jewish voices are used to validate claims that Israel is genocidal, colonial, illegitimate, and undeserving of survival. Their Jewish identity becomes the evidence. The people repeating these accusations can say, “Even Jews admit it.”

This provides moral cover.

An accusation that might sound openly antisemitic suddenly appears credible because a Jew repeated it. The Jewish radical becomes a permission slip for people who want to attack Israel and intimidate Jews while denying any hostility toward the Jewish people.

The anti-Israel campaign and the antisemitic campaign are cooking in the same pan.

They use the same ingredients. Jews are accused of possessing excessive power, controlling governments, manipulating the media, valuing only Jewish lives, and causing the violence directed against them. “Zionist” becomes the acceptable replacement for “Jew.”

People continue to insist that hatred toward Israel and hatred toward Jews are separate. That distinction collapses in the street.

The anger may begin with the Israeli government. It soon reaches an Israeli student, a Jewish-owned business, a synagogue, a hostage rally, or an American Jew wearing a Star of David. I experienced this when I was attacked in New York for being Jewish. As a self-defense instructor in NYC, I regularly hear similar stories from people who begin training after their own encounters with antisemitism.

The same pattern is visible across the United States. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the third-highest annual total since it began tracking them in 1979. Physical assaults reached a record high.

This hatred did not develop separately from the campaign against Israel. It grew inside rallies, institutions, political movements, and online communities where Israel was presented as uniquely evil and anyone connected to it became morally suspect.

Radical-left Jews helped legitimize this language. Some excused threats as political expression. Others treated Jewish fear as propaganda or described Jewish self-defense as another form of aggression.

They were so busy examining Jewish guilt that they failed to identify the threat developing outside.

Alan Dershowitz recently warned about Jewish support for anti-Israel politicians by referring to “the 7,000 Jews who voted for Hitler in 1932.” The exact number cannot be verified from reliable election records because German ballots did not identify voters by religion. The historical phenomenon behind his warning is real.

The Association of German National Jews had several thousand members. It opposed Zionism, attacked other Jews as disloyal, fought the international boycott of Nazi Germany, and presented itself as the responsible Jewish voice that placed Germany above Jewish interests.

Its members believed their patriotism and rejection of Zionism would demonstrate that they belonged. They considered themselves different from the Jews the Nazis condemned.

The Nazis saw Jews.

The regime dissolved the organization in 1935. The Gestapo arrested its founder, Max Naumann. His military service, German nationalism, opposition to Zionism, and support for Hitler gave him no protection.

The historical lesson concerns one recurring error. Members of a threatened minority convince themselves that helping a hostile movement attack their own people will earn them an exemption.

Hatred does not reward cooperation. It uses cooperation.

The “good Jew” remains useful while his identity provides credibility. Once the movement no longer needs Jewish permission to attack Jews, his usefulness ends. His Jewish identity remains.

Some radical-left Jews may sincerely believe they are acting from universal moral principles. Their intentions do not control the consequences. Words change what people consider acceptable. Repeated accusations teach the public who deserves sympathy, who deserves suspicion, and whose suffering can be excused.

When Israel is repeatedly described as a genocidal evil, violence against Israelis begins to feel righteous. When Zionists are described as supporters of genocide, targeting Zionists begins to feel justified. Since most Jews have some personal, religious, cultural, or family connection to Israel, the target quickly expands.

The person spreading the accusation may never commit violence. He helps create the moral environment in which someone else will.

This is how rhetoric becomes permission and eventually action.

Jewish morality demands self-examination. It also recognizes self-preservation as a duty. A moral people must remain capable of identifying danger, protecting life, and acting before hatred becomes violence.

Some Jews have learned to understand the grievances of everyone except their own people. They can explain the anger of those who threaten Jews, justify the language of those who celebrate Jewish deaths, and provide social context for violence directed at Israel.

Their compassion has become detached from threat recognition.

This reflects a broader coalition built around hostility toward Jews. Radical activists and religious extremists may disagree on almost everything else. Israel gives them a common enemy. Jewish anti-Zionists help make that alliance appear principled.

A Jew should never believe that attacking Israel will purchase safety. History has already tested that strategy.

Our enemies will not divide us according to the categories we create for ourselves. They will not spare the secular Jew, the religious Jew, the Israeli Jew, the American Jew, or the Jew who spent years proving his opposition to Israel.

A person may condemn Israel every day and reject every connection to Zionism. The person searching for Jews to kill will still see a Jew.

Do something amazing,
Tsahi Shemesh