What Will It Take?

What will it take? What needs to happen before Jews finally take full measure of the meteoric rise in antisemitism around the world—and start taking it personally? How close to home must it hit?

Since October 7, 2023, when violence and incitement against Jews became casually accepted as a social justice prerogative, far too many, especially those umbilically attached to the Democratic Party, have responded with nonchalance. Everything occurring outside their doorposts—especially for Jews who don’t have mezuzahs affixed to them—is not their affair.

Is there a tipping point when sleeping Jews finally awaken? The time for the rallying of tribal outrage will arrive. Cue the trumpets for this burst of communal solidarity. Self-preservation kicks in. A consensus is reached that what’s befalling Jews globally is not normal. Actually, it’s quite surreal.

Is there a tipping point when sleeping Jews finally awaken? The time for the rallying of tribal outrage will arrive. Cue the trumpets for this burst of communal solidarity. Self-preservation kicks in. A consensus is reached that what’s befalling Jews globally is not normal. Actually, it’s quite surreal.

The mayor of New York City, home to the largest number of Jews in any city outside of Israel—many of whom, appallingly, voted for him—has proven once more that he was never running for local office. “Affordability” was his ostensible lodestar, but “genocide” has been his most consistent mantra—one that he has been chanting since his freshman year at Bowdoin, where he founded his college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

There was no genocide then, just as there is none now.

Municipal finance—how to pay for his socialist grab-bag of redistributed wealth—is not really the mayor’s thing. He’d prefer to conduct foreign policy from City Hall, even though he has no authority to do so.

Arresting the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was one of his campaign promises. The opening of the General Assembly for the United Nations this past week provided the perfect opportunity to make good on that pledge.

He called Netanyahu a war criminal, even though no such legal determination has ever been made. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has a warrant for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest—the only democratic leader ever to find himself wanted by this body. Israel, and the United States, are not signatories to the statute that created the ICC and do not recognize its jurisdiction. Netanyahu may be many things, but he’s not a war criminal.

Mamdani accused Netanyahu of orchestrating a genocidal campaign against the Gazan people, all the while neglecting to mention that Israel was at war with Hamas (and the “civilians” who aided and abetted them) — a war that Hamas started on October 7, 2023 with otherworldly savagery.

A mayor should not stand before his constituents with his facts so wrong, or maliciously omitted.

When his legal department counseled the Jew-hating mayor that he has no authority to arrest a head of state, and that a federal statute makes it a crime to assist the ICC in its dubious indictments, he delivered a formal address replete with libels against Israel. His stewardship of the Big Apple went unmentioned.

He then challenged New Yorkers to take to the streets outside the United Nations to protest the Israeli leader’s presence in their city, to make it known that he was not welcome here.

Yes, the mayor of New York City was setting the stage for a riot.

It is fair to ask whether Mamdani suffers from an acute case of Israel Derangement Syndrome (IDS). Given his history of pro-Hamas hysteria and anti-Israel rhetoric, in all seriousness: Is the mayor a mole, a foreign agent for Islamic extremists?

It is fair to ask whether Mamdani suffers from an acute case of Israel Derangement Syndrome (IDS).

Such rabid activism against another nation—a trusted democratic ally of the United States—we have never seen from a local leader. The “dignitaries” of Iran, North Korea, Nigeria, Sudan, China, Myanmar—all hotbeds of persecution and human rights abuse—are all welcome here, but the prime minister of Israel is not?

Right from the inaugural jump, he revoked executive orders that benefitted the Jewish state. He refused to participate in the Israel Day Parade. And we have come to learn that his implacable hatred is alarmingly exceeded by his antisemitic wife.

The mayor expressed no concerns about protesters heckling and blocking Jews from entering and exiting synagogues. He vetoed a City Council bill that would have required buffer zones around houses of religious worship. He didn’t want to impede the rights of pro-Hamas fanboys screaming into the faces of Jews. The mayor castigated AIPAC, the Jewish lobbying organization, as an anti-American “monster.”

Such dangerous rhetoric comes with costs. There are causes and effects to shouting “genocide!” repeatedly. The mayor of America’s largest city is insistently giving aid, comfort and legitimacy to those who need little prompting in resorting to antisemitic violence.

On Friday a man shouting “Allahu Akbar!” stabbed two men in an unprovoked attack. One of the victims was Chinese; the other was a Jew leaving synagogue on a Jewish holiday. The police, at first, hesitated to charge the assailant with a hate crime.

All of Europe is laughing as we stumble about paying homage to political correctness. Do we not yet realize that “Allahu Akbar!” is never a message of good tidings or warm feelings of hospitality? It is simply and unequivocally a prelude to Islamic violence against Jews and infidels.

Could you imagine the same thing happening to a Baptist church in Mississippi with African-American congregants and an assailant who was a Klansman? The country would lose its collective mind. Yet, when it comes to targeting Jews, “Allahu Akbar!” is treated like a permission slip, a justified attack that all Jews deserve—no matter where they are or what they believe.

No one even questions the logic of it all — the exemption from common decency, how norms are being nullified as applied to Jews.

There was a time when the Jewish people suffered from far less indifference and showed more self-respect. In ghettos, shtetls, and tenements, they seemed to possess a better grasp in distinguishing friends from foes.

One of Hollywood’s leading Jew-haters, Mark Ruffalo, announced this week that he no longer speaks with Jewish actors who support Israel—some of whom may have once been among his friends. Given his longstanding antagonism toward the Jewish state and complete lack of sympathy for Jewish lives lost to Palestinian terrorism, why are Jewish actors and industry types still talking to and doing business with him?

His open hostility to Israel should have resulted in Jews boycotting him!

But Jews have clearly lost their way—and their will. It’s a beguiling thing, social acceptance, while moral courage is difficult to muster. Jews are reverting to the era of sha shtil vulnerability. Either they see what is happening and wish it away, or are simply too obtuse to draw any connections between what is happening on the streets and what may soon enter their homes.

It doesn’t help that there is a dearth of Jewish leadership—whether in the form of elected officials or legacy organizations. Jewish politicians are largely Democrats who fear losing their seats to Squad members or newfangled jet-set socialists.

So, an open revolt for Jewish rights and protections is going to have to come from elsewhere—from Jews finally making demands and fighting back—or not at all.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is a contributing writer for White Rose magazine. His most recent book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”