American antisemitism is ever more violent – from the left as well as the right

Asked about lessons from this attack, Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, told me, “First, like it or not, we, as American Jews serve as ‘the Israelis’ that Israel-haters in America can reach. The nuance that American Jews are not actually Israelis is lost on Israel-haters and this is right in line with what we’ve seen in campus since 10/7 – Jewish students targeted for Israel’s actions. Secondly, anti-Zionism really does – in the real world – equal antisemitism,” given the close connection between Shapiro’s Judaism, the Seder-night attack, and his “attacker’s anti-Israel views.”

This is the post-10/7 reality. The anti-Israel movement was widely electrified by Hamas’ attack on 10/7. The movement has continued chanting “Zionists out of” left-wing spaces and supporting the elimination of Jews “from the river to the sea.” It glamorises terrorists and paints “Zionists” as legitimate targets. So, some number of supporters who believe its slanders may try to harm Jews.

California Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman rightly offered condemnation. Sherman tweeted, “the domestic terrorist who tried to murder @GovernorShapiro and his family on the first night of Passover was motivated by hateful anti-Zionist beliefs. Since #Oct7, this ideology has fuelled violent antisemitic attacks against Jews across the United States.”

The question is why more people haven’t noticed the pattern. Yes, right-wing antisemitism can be lethal, as the 2018 attack on Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue showed, but anti-Zionist antisemitism, which unites the Left and Islamists in the US, can be violent and lethal too. Sam Westrop, Director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch program, told me “anti-Israel activism in America is funded and organised by an array of far-leftist networks, and attended and partially supported by Islamists largely drawn from Muslim Brotherhood networks.”

The anti-Israel movement powers Jew-hatred in left-wing institutions and jurisdictions. Relatedly, anti-Zionists have engaged in harassment, intimidation, and physical harm of Jews and other Americans. Consider, in October 2023, a Jewish Tulane University student who was punched and hit with a megaphone, resulting in a broken nose. A week later, JNS reported that 69-year-old Californian Paul Kessler, who was Jewish, died “after an anti-Israel protestor struck him in the head with a megaphone.”

In March 2024, a 50-something Jewish man told Chicago’s Eyewitness News he was swung and thrown “‘into a parked car’” and punched in the head by “six or seven” people, while attending a 10/7 documentary screening. At Columbia University, “a mob of violent anti-Israel protesters stormed Hamilton Hall” last April, breaking glass, blocking entrances, carrying “zip ties and chains,” and leaving four janitors “trapped inside and afraid,” the New York Post reported. Last June, an eyewitness described an Israeli real estate fair turning violent in The Free Press: “around 100 pro-Hamas activists attacked, bear-sprayed, harassed, and brawled with Jews” in Los Angeles. And last November, two Jewish students were attacked while publicly supporting Israel at Chicago’s DePaul University; one suffered a broken wrist and the other a concussion.

Jew-hatred outside the Right may be socially palatable, but it’s not harmless. As the Shapiros’ Passover experience underscores, resurgent Jew-hatred is an active threat to American Jews, and the Haggadah’s apolitical warning about Jewish safety remains all too timely