The idea that Israel’s actions are putting Jews at risk globally is a contemptible position that would never be applied to any other minority group.
T here’s a trendy argument going around progressive circles that the actions of the government of Israel are a danger to Jews everywhere. The argument is deployed by those who obsessively attack Israel but want to be able to claim to be the ones truly acting out of concern for the survival of the Jewish people. But it’s a contemptible position that would never be applied to any other minority group under assault.
In an unhinged rant against Israel’s actions in Gaza that went viral over the summer, actor Mandy Patinkin fumed, “They are endangering not only the State of Israel, which I care deeply about and want to exist, but endangering the Jewish population all over the world.”
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman had earlier offered a column version of this, titled “The Israeli Government Is a Danger to Jews Everywhere.” He warned that “the way Israel is fighting the war in Gaza today is laying the groundwork for a fundamental recasting of how Israel and Jews will be seen the world over.”
Incredibly, he wrote that “police cars and private security at synagogues and Jewish institutions will increasingly become the norm.” To this, I can only say that I wonder — without trying to pretend that I am a perfect Jew — when the last time was that Friedman attended a synagogue. In reality, an active police presence was already the norm at shuls and identifiably Jewish buildings well before October 7, 2023.
Now, to be clear, I believe that Israel’s actions to defeat Hamas, which massacred over 1,200 people, raped women, and took 251 hostages, are righteous. But let’s just tease out the argument made by Friedman and Patinkin, and echoed by others, and assume that Israel’s actions in Gaza are making a lot of people very angry. In any other case, the left would strenuously oppose anybody who lashed out at all members of a group for actions taken by some members of the group. Yet when it comes to Jews, this somehow no longer applies.
As an example, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, there was a huge emphasis on the idea that people should not take out their anger on Arabs and Muslims. This wasn’t even a sentiment confined to Democrats. With the rubble still smoldering at Ground Zero and search and rescue efforts still underway, Rudy Giuliani warned against engaging in group blame against Arab communities in New York City; George W. Bush talked about Islam as a “religion of peace.”
Similarly, after October 7, progressives weren’t screaming that Hamas’s actions put a target on the back of Muslims everywhere. They were, instead, blaming Israel for creating the conditions that led to the Hamas attacks, or trying to restrain Israel from responding. Had American Jews started harassing Muslims leaving mosques in the wake of the attacks, the left-wing outrage would have been against the Jews, not against Hamas.
Yet when it comes to Israel, and to violent criminals venting their anger by carrying out attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions all over the world, the left is directing its ire at Israel rather than on the actual perpetrators.
The reality is that a lot of people in the world want to do harm to Jews, and while the excuses may change, this has been the case for thousands of years. Does the left really need a refresher on how secure world Jewry was in the years prior to the founding of Israel in 1948? Are we to believe that its first 75 years of existence did not inflame antisemitism everywhere, and that this started to become a danger only after its response to October 7?
Well, in the decade prior to the October 7 attacks and the subsequent Israeli incursion into Gaza, more than 40,000 Jews fled France for Israel because they no longer felt safe practicing Judaism in their native country. Between October 2023 and the end of 2024, 35,000 Jews from all over the world immigrated to Israel. Normally, people flee from war zones. Think about what it says about the status of Jews globally that so many would prefer to leave their home countries and emigrate to a war zone. The Times of Israel quoted one Jewish woman considering leaving France who said, “October 7 changed everything. I would never have imagined thinking of leaving France for Israel. It may seem paradoxical given the situation in Israel, but at least there we will not have to hide.”
When people happen to use their opposition to Israeli actions as their current excuse to target Jews, the ire should be directed at them, not at Israel.
The irony is that if the idea that Israel’s military actions are endangering Jews everywhere takes hold, it will only provide more motivation for Hamas and its supporters to target Jews and Jewish institutions globally. Because the radicals will conclude that targeting Jews is another lever they could use to drive a wedge between Israel and the Jewish diaspora.