In the Fight Against Antisemitism, Silence = Death

When thousands of men in the prime of their lives began dying of AIDS in the early 1980s, our government recklessly and cruelly ignored their pleas for help. That’s because, at the time, almost all of the victims were gay. And when these young men came to the crushing realization that they were in this fight alone, they took to the streets in “Silence = Death” t-shirts and engaged in risky civil disobedience. They had to. Their lives depended on it.

While Jews around the world are facing a different kind of deadly threat, we do share one thing in common with those brave young men. We must advocate for ourselves because no one is coming to save us. Six million of our ancestors learned that lesson the hard way 85 years ago when Nazis and their collaborators throughout Europe loaded them into cattle cars and shipped them to death camps. We learned it again after the October 7 massacre, when much of the free world rallied in support of our killers.

We must advocate for ourselves because no one is coming to save us.

In the eight decades after the Holocaust, survivors throughout the diaspora said to anyone who would listen, “Never Again.” They were delivering a warning, but some of us processed their words as closure. We were naive, believing that humans were incapable of repeating these atrocities. That we had fundamentally changed.

Starting on October 7, the antisemitism that percolated at society’s fringes began to make its way into the mainstream. Instead of embracing us after the devastating attack, the people with whom we marched for BLM, reproductive rights, gay rights, animal rights and the climate turned their backs on us. Friends, colleagues and social media acquaintances who once treated us kindly called us baby killers, white colonizers and supporters of apartheid and genocide. Once again, Jewish people became the root of the world’s problems. And a fair target.

This new paradigm gave cultural and educational institutions, NGOs and social justice movements license to push Jews out of civic life. Celebrities, social media influencers and elected officials contributed to the purge by supporting calls for intifada, even as violence against Jews escalated. On college campuses, participating in “anti-Zionist” activism became a form of social currency. In recent months, Jew-hatred has been so normalized that some Democratic candidates are now running for public office on an “anti-genocide” platform.

Empowered by public support and the silence of our frightened allies, mobs of masked “Free Palestine” activists have descended upon Jewish neighborhoods, calling for intifada, protesting at temples, vandalizing restaurants, disrupting events, harassing families and, at times, becoming physically violent. To add insult to injury, the perpetrators and their supporters accuse Jews who dare to speak out against the attacks of “weaponizing antisemitism.”

Through their words and actions, these so-called activists have demonstrated that they’re motivated not by a desire for peace in the Middle East, but by a thirst for violence in their own backyard. Their faces might be hidden by keffiyehs, but the hatred in their eyes is unmistakable.

While some Jews are speaking out against the tidal wave of antisemitism, far too many of us are removing our Stars of David and remaining silent – hoping that it will blow over or that someone else will protect us. But history tells us that we take the path of least resistance at our own peril.

In order to help extinguish this five-alarm fire before it engulfs us, each of us must speak out against antisemitism whenever and wherever we encounter it, even if that means taking personal risks. We must denounce the propaganda and set the record straight. And we must become more visible and vocal than ever before.

We know that our advocacy can make an impact. In November, when lawmakers in Dublin announced their intention to “de-name” a park named after an Irish World War II hero who was Jewish, Jews around the world successfully pushed back. And we did it again in December, when several European countries demanded, unsuccessfully, that Eurovision expel Israel from the singing contest in 2026.

But, given the fast pace at which antisemitism continues to spread into the mainstream, we simply aren’t doing enough to guarantee our safety and to protect the most vulnerable among us. Like the bold and courageous AIDS activists in the 1980s who stepped out of their comfort zones to survive, Jews must do the same. And we must Never Forget that Silence = Death.

Donny Moss is a NYC-based animal rights campaigner with TheirTurn.net and VegMediaWatch.org