May 24, 2025

Dear Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Sanders,

The tragic murder of a young Jewish couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum last week is a stark reminder of the consequences of unchecked and irresponsible extremist rhetoric and the failure to address rising antisemitism. As public servants, you have a duty to foster a climate of safety and civility for all constituents, including Jewish Americans. You have more than failed in that responsibility.

For years both of you have knowingly stoked the embers of anti-Jewish hostility—dismissing warnings, ignoring data, and doubling-down on rhetoric that demonizes Zionists and dehumanizes Jews. This week’s cold-blooded killing did not materialize in a vacuum; it is the foreseeable result of the climate you helped create. So please spare us the public hand-wringing and, at the very least, step aside while others try to clean up some of the damage.

To you and all of your friends who insist that anti-Zionism is somehow hermetically sealed off from antisemitism, and therefore rail against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition of antisemitism for daring to note their overlap, this moment ought to be a searing indictment of your beliefs. Since Oct. 7, antisemitic incidents in the United States have surged more than 400 percent. Synagogues, JCCs, kosher restaurants, Jewish-owned businesses, and visibly Jewish individuals have been vandalized, threatened or attacked. On campuses across the country, Jewish students weave through mobs chanting for a “global intifada,” scrub swastikas from dorm doors, and field death threats between classes. Studies have shown that the campus environment translates directly into county level antisemitic incidents, including hate crimes. Under even the thinnest scrutiny, the façade of “merely anti-Zionist” protests collapses into unapologetic Jew-hatred.

The data is clear that when you demonize Zionists as a proxy for Jews, it creates a permissive environment for unlawful targeting. And the social-science literature only confirms what Jewish history teaches: Sustained hateful extremist rhetoric targeting minority communities escalates into actual violence and even murder. Study after study tracks the correlation between antisemitic incitement and real-world violence, but you could also just look at the more obvious data points: During the last war in Gaza there was also a 400% uptick in antisemitic incidents  and the same thing happened during the war before that. There is no clearer demonstration than recent events as to why we need the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and why the IHRA definition includes examples of problematic anti-Zionism, such as “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

If anti-Zionism were truly unrelated to antisemitism, why would Jews from Los Angeles to London be assaulted whenever Hamas decides to fire a rocket or kill a child?

Which brings us back to you. You have not merely been passive observers; you have poured accelerant on a growing fire. Your oft-repeated tales of “billionaire donors buying our democracy”—invariably illustrated with Jewish names and organizations—could have been lifted straight from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. When demonstrators in your districts chant to “Globalize the intifada,” you supply photo-ops and statements of support, not condemnation. You have done this for years, seen what it causes, and continued to act with reckless indifference to the damage you were inflicting. At some point, when it all became just a little too much, and a little too clear, when people noticed a correlation between your words and the rise in antisemitic violence, even you, Senator, had to admit that you needed to “tone down the rhetoric.” That did not last long, however, because you never really cared. Recently, you have even sabotaged efforts to protect us. Rep. AOC, you voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act, while Senator Sanders went even further and sought to gut it by inserting actual Hamas talking points into the text itself.

The issue of antisemitism should not be related to partisan gamesmanship; it is a matter of basic civil rights and there are clearly lives at stake. Thank God there is a wide roster of elected officials across the aisles who understand that protecting American Jews from violence is a constitutional obligation. Law enforcement cannot do that without a clear, operational definition of antisemitism—which necessarily covers anti-Zionist double standards that hold every Jew on earth responsible for Israeli policy.

No one is suggesting criminalizing speech. Label it accurately and let Americans debate it in the open. What must be criminalized—and already is—is the harassment, vandalism and violence now sweeping the country under the banner of “liberation.” For too long, conflation of speech with conduct, and antisemitism with criticism of Israel, has allowed antisemites to do what they want and then claim they were merely expressing political views. Like shooting a young couple, then screaming “Free Palestine” to justify the murder. Even then, the New York Times reported that some were having difficulty finding a motive. Laws like the AAA and the Define to Defeat Act are designed precisely for those who profess such confusion.

So here is the modest request for you both: just stop. Stop amplifying conspiracies. Stop legitimizing chants that call for Jewish death or expulsion. And stop torpedoing legislation meant to keep your Jewish constituents safe. If you cannot bring yourselves to defend them, at least refrain from making them targets.

Get out of the way—and let those committed to protecting every American, including Jews, do the work you refuse to do.

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Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. is director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. Follow him @markgoldfeder on X/

The deranged and depraved pro-Hamas constituencies on Ivy League campuses have taken many liberties with their “higher” education over the past 20 months. What tops the list is a twisted misreading of the First Amendment. The fact that constitutional law professors never bothered to set them straight says a lot about the failed integrity of the custodians of our laws.

Remember when the three university presidents from Harvard, Pennsylvania and MIT testified before Congress in response to the alarming spike in antisemitic agitation on their campuses? Negligently advised by counsel and terrified of Jew-hating students (many of whom came from Middle Eastern countries where antisemitism is baked right into the pita bread), they were unable to say with certainty that calling for the genocide of Jews violates their policies on bullying and harassment.

It was a question with an obviously simple answer: Such threats are neither protected by principles of free speech nor academic freedom. But this unholy trinity had, as their first order of business, the avoidance of no-confidence votes at home. After all, their many antisemitic colleagues—incubated in “Humanities” departments flush with Qatari money and obsessed with anti-colonial fixations that depended on the demonization of Jews—would never forgive them had they conceded in the Congressional Record that calling for the destruction of Israel, and blaming Jewish students for a nonexistent genocide in Gaza, were both morally wrong and outside the scope of a university education.

Instead, they comported themselves as smugly superior to congressional representatives (although ironically, their fiercest interrogator, Elise Stefanik, was a Harvard graduate). The three presidents cagily replied that the answer depended on the “context.”

Wait a minute: There’s a context in which calling for the mass murder of Jews is permissible? Does the same situational loophole exist for the nostalgic lynching of African-Americans?

Advocating for the death of a people standing ten feet away from you is most assuredly not constitutionally protected. There is no “context” in which murderous threats are immune from governmental and university regulation.

Advocating for the death of a people standing ten feet away from you is most assuredly notconstitutionally protected. There is no “context” in which murderous threats are immune from governmental and university regulation.

And, yet, chants like “Globalize the Intifada!” somehow continued unabated after October 7, 2023—on both campuses and city streets.

Now we have witnessed the dangers inherent in casually downplaying the felonious loose lips of terrorist fanboys: Two Israeli Embassy employees expected soon to be engaged were shot dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. The gunman was apparently all hopped up on anti-American, anti-Israel animus. His social media postings were replete with “death to America,” “death to Israel,” and “I voted for Hamas.”

Unhinged, yes, but still to be taken seriously.

These tragic murders, and hundreds of lesser harassments, could have been avoided had we not allowed antisemites to make a mockery of the First Amendment. The more “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” “Glory to the Martyrs,” and the unrelenting slander “Genocide!” got repeated, the more such bloody passions were likely to be acted upon.

These tragic murders, and hundreds of lesser harassments, could have been avoided had we not allowed antisemites to make a mockery of the First Amendment.

These are the tragic consequences of living in a time of moral inversion. Hateful Muslims, self-hating Jews, malicious professors, Marxist elected officials, and pink-haired Queers for Palestine paraded their delusions on the campus green and public square. Thunderous gaslighting language eventually lit the match that materialized into senseless murder outside a Jewish museum.

The louder one cheers for terrorists, the more likely one will become inured to the meaning of those chants and chart his or her own lethal course.

America is far more permissive of free speech guarantees than other liberal democracies. For instance, the Supreme Court has upheld flag and cross-burnings, the use of vulgar language to express a political viewpoint, the disruption of military funerals, even marching neo-Nazis in a community of Holocaust survivors, as falling within the contours of free speech.

Ideas expressed offensively or insultingly do not forfeit First Amendment protections. But offensive and hurtful is not the same as threatening speech. The Supreme Court has held that “true threats” and “fighting words” do not receive free speech guarantees. Similarly, speech that “incites imminent lawlessness” loses all First Amendment safeguards.

Those proscribed categories of speech all occurred on campus to Jewish students and professors.

The First Amendment was ratified to disseminate ideas, not calls for murder. Universities spent the past 19 months conning America into believing that incitements such as “Globalize the Intifada!” are nothing but harmless expressions of public and moral support for Palestinians. In the truncated world of X, they are tantamount to political speech.

Did the encampments on campuses, with keffiyeh-shrouded hordes whipping each other into frenzies, barricading Jewish students from access to classrooms and libraries, in any way resemble the Lincoln-Douglas Debates? Did disruptions of Christmas tree lighting and commencement ceremonies have anything in common with tuxedo-clad debaters at the Oxford Union?

All throughout history those with wicked intentions insisted that words otherwise plainly calling for violence and mayhem meant something else entirely. Just look underneath all that shouting and spittle and you’ll discover a sanguine message of human virtue.

“The Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” anyone?

A self-motivated lunatic looking to burnish his name as a human rights crusader murdered a young couple: Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim. Soon after leaving his victims lying in their own blood, he removed his keffiyeh and shouted, “Free, free Palestine.” He was then heard to say, “I did this for Gaza.”

By all accounts he was no Islamist, but an American-born Hispanic socialist who took all that incessant chanting to heart. He apparently believed he had been given marching orders to bring the intifada to the streets of Washinton, D.C. There was no hidden meaning to globalizing the intifada: Wherever Jews are  on the globe, strike them down.

And that’s precisely what he “did for Gaza”—murdered two people without knowing whether they were Jews, or that they worked for the Embassy, or whether they worried about the plight of the Palestinians. (They happened to be all three, although Lischinsky, the product of a mixed marriage, was a practicing Christian and an avowed Zionist.)

Such added information was unnecessary because he was told to perform his tasks “by any means necessary.” That, too, was plainly understood: Vanquishing Israel demanded that this young couple be killed, just like it was “necessary” to torch Israeli infants, behead Israeli adults, and gangrape and mutilate Israeli teenagers on October 7.

These licenses to speak freely until fully absorbed into action is what Jew-haters were given under the false pretenses of the First Amendment. The only question we can already begin to presage is how long it will take before this latest assassin of Jewish dreams becomes a folk hero to antisemites everywhere.

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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 the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His latest book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”

Most call it last Thursday. Jews call it Erev Lag Ba’omer – which in Israel is campfire night. And I call that Thursday: another day in our rollercoaster paradise.

It started with my Republican friends feeling betrayed by Donald Trump’s “turn against Israel,” and my Democratic friends seeming more thrilled that they were vindicated than worried about the Jewish State. I kept saying “take a breath,” waiting to see how things play out, exhausted by the injection of theological language into politics – good/evil, faith/betrayal. No politician is perfect – and very, very, few are perfectly evil. And while I never shared my right-wing friends’ delighted delusions about Trump, I remember the alternative was named “Kamala Harris.”

I’m glad I gave myself that advice – I needed to keep breathing deeply as the day unfolded.

That evening we drove to Kibbutz Kvutzat Yavneh for the opening of this beautiful bar, hangout space, and fire-pit in memory of our 22-year-old friend Ben Mizrachi who fought terrorists instead of running away at the Nova festival — until they murdered him. “We” wasn’t all of us in the Troy family who loved Ben, one of our sons is deployed again, approaching his 350^th day of miluim.

The evening was remarkably upbeat, with hundreds of people enjoying this magical space, which is what Ben was and his parents wanted. After the short, moving, ceremony, we were talking to his amazing parents in front of the crowded, lively, outdoor bar they built – quite literally, the dad and his best friend with their own hands! Some kids sang yom huledet sameach — Happy Birthday to you – boisterously, to a friend. I said to Ben’s father, “you see, your vision just came alive.”  Itsik responded:  “There’s a party! It makes me expect Ben to come right through the door”: it breaks your heart and lifts your spirit absolutely at once.  Of course, amid all the love and pain and fun and pride and longing, Ben’s mom admitted, “machar nitrasek,” tomorrow we fall apart.

For context:  on the way, I checked in by WhatsApp with a young neighbor, Yoni, father of three kids under four-years-old, just to send him love on his umpteenth day of miluim, reserves. He wrote:  “my unit killed nine terrorists today so it’s important we are here” – he wouldn’t say where is “here.” I presume it’s Gaza and morale there and mission clarity is not what you read in Ha’aretz.

And speaking of Ha’aretz, I read yet another column on its website accusing Israel of committing “genocide,” which means “systematic destruction of a nation” not “fighting a difficult war of self-defense under horrific urban warfare conditions, as the enemy including ‘civilians’ holds dozens of your people hostage.” I had the reaction every democratic patriot should have when your own newspapers libel you. An impulse to sue them for libel for defaming all our heroic kids overwhelmed me – until to be checked by pride at living in a democracy with a free, if infuriating, press.

Meanwhile, during the Ben evening, sirens warbled throughout the country, once again, terrifying tens of thousands of kids who were out in the fields, enjoying their medurot – campfires – ahem, carefully controlled, Israel style, of course!

Finally, we scrambled home early because another son was called back to base for an emergency week of reserves. He and his buddies will be helping to hunt down the killers of Tzeela Gez, the thirty-year-old pregnant mother of three whose murder Hamas celebrated as an “heroic act.” My politically correct autocorrect warns me against the word “hunt” – but what else is appropriate for human-born beasts who proudly committed such a heinous act?

And the whole country is wondering how Tzeela’s husband Hananel bounces back, having flipped in a millisecond from rushing his wife to the delivery room to seeing her murdered in front of his own eyes. It reminds us, yet again, of flipping in another deadly millisecond from kite-making for peace or partying at Nova to being slaughtered – or fighting back — on October 7. But, Hananel reassured his family, “I’m obviously shattered, but I thank God that I’m alive and promise to stay strong. They will never break us.”

By 7:30 AM, Friday – Lag Ba’omer — about ten hours after they all got the call, these teachers-high tech executives-Hebrew U students turned democratic warriors were all on base. They had put their classes, exams, business meetings, vacations, families on hold for yet another week, at the drop of a dime, once again. Still, they were smiling, chatting, unloading gear, loading weapons.  It felt more like camp reunion than combat briefing.

These everyday superheroes in green uniforms carry the burden of defending us, of protecting Western civilization against bloodthirsty barbarians, with an ease, a lightness, you actually have to see and absorb, to believe. And because they will be doing whatever it is they, my neighbor Yoni, and tens of thousands of others need to do, this Friday morning, the rest of us are shopping, hanging out, working, and preparing for a Shabbat Shalom, a peaceful – and safe – Sabbath.

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Professor Gil Troy, a Senior Fellow in Zionist Thought at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute, the Global ThinkTank of the Jewish People, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath” were just published.