October 7 and the Battle for the West

After the events of last October 7, most of us assumed—naively as it turned out—that the brutal massacre of 1,200 innocent Israelis would trigger a great outpouring of sympathy and support for Israel. We also hoped it would lead to the definitive repudiation of the kind of hatred of Jews and Judaism that inspired Hamas’s terrible atrocities, and that before October 7 had culminated with the Holocaust.

We were wrong.

On the contrary, the reaction to October 7 entailed a frightening surge in anti-Semitism, especially from the political left. We were stunned and appalled to watch violence unleashed not just against Israel and supporters of Israel. There were actual physical attacks on Jews and Jewish students on America’s most prestigious campuses: according to Hillel International, over ten times as many anti-Semitic incidents took place on campuses between July and September 2024 than during the summer of 2023. This surge was accompanied by ostracism of anyone—no matter how liberal—the anti-Israel mob decided to label Zionist. In effect, any Jew who didn’t denounce Israel’s actions as “genocide” or justify the brutality of Israel’s enemies, including Hamas, became persona non grata on the left.