You’re Not Brave. You’re Terrifying.

As a Jew in 2025, I feel like I’ve stepped into a dystopian novel—part The Plot Against America, part history textbook, and part nightmare. But this isn’t fiction. It’s happening in real time.

Back in April, Mohsen Mahdawi—a Columbia student and legal permanent US resident—was detained by ICE. He had shown up for what he believed was a routine citizenship interview. What followed was a brief period of detention and then his release by a federal judge, after a wave of public outcry and media attention.

But let’s be very clear: Mahdawi is not a dissident. He publicly honored his cousin, a known terrorist commander. He said he could “empathize” with Hamas’ October 7 massacre. He wore symbols that celebrate Jewish death. He was a central figure in a movement that led chants calling for intifada while Jewish students were barricaded in libraries and hunted on their own campuses.

And yet, when the news of his detention broke, the reaction wasn’t horror at what he stood for—it was horror that anyone would dare hold him accountable. He was hailed as “brave.” Commenters wept for his “right to speak.”

A NYT reader, misquoting Voltaire, misreading history (The New York Times, “Columbia Student Who Was Arrested at Citizenship Interview Is Freed,” comments section. Accessed May 1, 2025, 9:00 a.m.)

One woman, glowing with self-righteousness, tried to invoke the classic free speech cliché: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Instead, she wrote, “While I may not agree with what he says, I’ll fight like hell for his right to say it,” and—perhaps most tellingly—credited it to someone named L.J.G. Misquoting it is one thing. What matters more is how confidently she repeated a line she clearly hadn’t examined, in defense of a man she clearly doesn’t understand. The misattribution itself speaks volumes: a person parroting recycled virtue-signaling in service of glorified cruelty. But perhaps it’s for the best she didn’t know the true origin. The phrase was penned by Evelyn Beatrice Hall to summarize the views of Voltaire—a man who openly detested Jews, describing them as “an ignorant and barbarous people,” and claiming they were “born with raging fanaticism in their hearts.” So yes, a quote inspired by one of history’s most eloquent antisemites is now being used to defend a man who empathized with the mass murder of Jews. You can’t script irony this bitter.

The caricature suggests the Jews are sucking the economic life from Gentiles, comparing Jews to inhuman and unpleasant creatures. (Der Stürmer, December 1929, “Deutsche Weihnacht.” Calvin University German Propaganda Archive. Accessed May 1, 2025. https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/sturm28.htm)

Would these same defenders have considered the grotesque caricatures from Der Stürmer as “protected speech” too? That Nazi-era propaganda sheet specialized in illustrations portraying Jews as parasites, manipulators, and threats to society—images designed to dehumanize and incite hatred. These weren’t fringe publications; they were mainstream tools of indoctrination. Disturbingly, such imagery hasn’t been confined to history books. We’ve seen echoes of these depictions resurface in modern academic settings, UN exhibitions, and campus protests, often under the guise of political critique. When people defend Mahdawi’s “right” to glorify terrorism, it begs the question: where do they draw the line? To many of us, it appears that line was erased long ago.

And this isn’t coming from the dark web or neo-Nazi forums—it’s coming from polite society. From comment sections, lecture halls, and editorial pages. These aren’t fringe voices. These are New York Times readers. Ivy League faculty. Social justice influencers in ethically-sourced scarves. People who would never defend a white supremacist—but fall over themselves to protect someone who glorified the rape and slaughter of Jews, so long as he wraps it in postcolonial vocabulary.

They call it principled. They think it’s noble. They don’t hear themselves. But we do.

We’ve heard them before.

They’re the ones who insisted that antisemitic professors were just “challenging power structures.” That anti-Israel marches were just “peace rallies.” That Hamas was just “resisting occupation.” These are not new ideas—they’re old ones with better PR.

In every generation, Jews have met this voice: articulate, righteous, and utterly hollow. The ones who say “I don’t condone violence,” but still provide the ideological cushion for it to thrive. The ones who don’t break windows—but justify the ones who do. The ones who tell us to calm down, while the walls close in.

They are the people who normalize the unspeakable by pretending it’s just another point of view. And their impact is far more dangerous than the slogan-shouting radicals, because they dress hatred in the language of reason.

And let’s not pretend these people care about all humans. They don’t. Many can’t even bring themselves to say the word “Jewish” without flinching. Their compassion has borders, and Jews live outside them. They’ll scream for someone like Mahdawi—but ask them to defend a Jewish child hiding in a college library and suddenly it’s “complicated.”

Their moral compass isn’t broken. It’s just never pointed in our direction.

And yes, I expected it. We all did. Because we’ve been watching this slow moral collapse since October 7. But expecting it doesn’t make it easier. I still find myself reading the comments, again and again, as if forcing myself through the same ritual of emotional torture—hoping this time it will feel less surreal, less brutal, less personal.

It never does.

Because what scares Jews today isn’t theoretical. It isn’t “our fear.” It’s your indifference to our reality.

And the reality is perverse.

All across the world, synagogues now require armed security—and not just on holy days, but every single day. Jewish-owned businesses are defaced. Flyers with swastikas appear on light poles. People are harassed in grocery stores for wearing a Magen David. Students are asked in job interviews if they’re Zionists—as if that should determine their employability. Jews are assaulted on sidewalks. And online? Jewish creators are buried by algorithms while open antisemitism goes viral.

This isn’t “heated discourse.” This is persecution with a public relations team.

It reminds me, viscerally, of The Plot Against America, Philip Roth’s terrifying alternate history in which fascism seeps into society not with jackboots, but with nods and smiles. Where antisemitism doesn’t arrive with a bang—but settles in slowly, like background noise. Where what once felt like speculative fiction now feels like documentary footage.

And Sartre’s words echo louder than ever: “If the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.” Mahdawi’s defenders don’t support free speech—they’ve just found a socially acceptable way to express their antisemitism. Supporting a man who glorified October 7 isn’t an oversight. It’s a mirror. One they’re increasingly proud to hold up.

This isn’t about left vs. right. It’s about reality vs. delusion. Right vs. wrong.

Because while the outrage over Mahdawi’s detention reaches a fever pitch, barely a word is spoken in defense of Jewish safety, Jewish freedom, or Jewish life. Our pain is inconvenient. Our grief, too messy. Our survival? A political problem.

And then there are the comments. The ones that strip away any illusion that this is about law or rights or fairness.

“Glad the hostage was freed.”
“This is a victory for free speech and due process.”
“Now do the same for the rest of the detainees.”
“Thank goodness. A temporary win for Harvard and every university fighting federal pressure.”
“He was brave for speaking on NPR.”
“He has more conscience than the Washington establishment.”
“Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism.”

They speak with the smug confidence of people who believe they are on the moral high ground—who genuinely think they are the guardians of liberty. But read those lines again, and ask what they are actually defending.

They are defending someone who called a massacre understandable. Who praised a terrorist. Who wore the symbols of a genocidal group while Jewish students locked themselves in buildings for protection.

Glad the hostage was freed? This man was not a hostage. He was not tortured. He was not taken in the middle of the night by a rogue regime. He was briefly held by a democratic government under suspicion for connections to extremism, and released after a hearing. Meanwhile, real hostages—Jewish hostages—remain underground in Gaza, and these same voices are silent.

The mental gymnastics are grotesque. The morality is upside down. The people who cheer his release call it “justice,” but can’t spare a word for the Jews he made less safe. They weaponize due process and free speech as shields for the very ideologies that burn democracies down.

And yet, what’s perhaps most broken about our society today is this: as Jews—or as anyone who dares stand with Israel—we can’t even write a piece like this without feeling the need to justify why it’s wrong to publicly honor a terrorist. Why it’s grotesque to empathize with a group that raped, burned, and butchered people alive.

Why is that something I’m expected to clarify?

What kind of world demands that Jews explain why their own massacre isn’t noble—then turns around and accuses them of committing genocide for defending their lives?

These aren’t hardened extremists making these arguments against us. These are parents. Moms and dads. People with children of their own. And I wonder—truly—how they would react if it were their daughters raped, their sons burned, their parents dragged underground and still held in a tunnel. Would they fight like hell to release the man who said he could “empathize” with it all, as he sat in a comfortable detention cell for two weeks?

Yes, I wonder.

It was never really about Trump. He’s just a convenient enemy. What so many of them really despise—what they have always despised—is us. Jews. Zionists. Israelis. Survivors with opinions. People who refuse to disappear.

And as for the Jews who stand shoulder to shoulder with those voices, proudly defending the “freedom” to glorify October 7 as a historic resistance moment—what can be said?

They are not defending free speech. They are defending their seat at the table. They are terrified of being excluded by the very people who would turn on them in a second. They think being useful will save them.

It won’t.

History has a long and bitter memory when it comes to Jews who thought they could outrun their own identity by aligning with those who hate it.

When history asks how it happened again, remember this moment:

The silence.
The applause.
The brunch tables.
The defense of a man who glorified a massacre.
The selective outrage.
The algorithms that punished our voices and boosted theirs.

Because what terrifies us now isn’t Hamas.

It’s how many of you would make tea while lighting the match.