Since its founding, the United States has seen itself as a “shining city upon a hill” – a nation with a moral and democratic mission meant to illuminate the world.

Over 250 years of American independence, that self-image has been translated into an inspiring reality: not only economic, military, and scientific preeminence, but also a source of values – a bastion of freedom and progress. This milestone birthday for the American nation is also an appropriate moment to examine the relationship between America and the Jewish people. There is no doubt that this shining beacon has cast abundant light on the State of Israel and Jews around the world. Without it, the Jewish story would have looked very different – and far bleaker.

The bond between America and the Jewish people deepened in the 19th and 20th centuries, when the United States opened its gates to some 2.5 million Jewish immigrants from Europe, most of them destitute. As a result of this immigration – one of the largest in our history – by 1910, there were more Jews in New York than in any other city in the world. In this way, many Jews and their descendants were spared the fate of the six million who perished in Europe during the Holocaust.

President Harry Truman recognized the State of Israel 11 minutes after it declared independence and later spoke of Israel in uniquely moving terms: “I believe that Israel has a glorious future before it – not just as another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

These words would echo again and again from the mouths of every American president who followed him. Relations between the two countries rested on bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans alike.

They stood on two firm pillars: a partnership of values – as Republican president Ronald Reagan put it, “In Israel, free men and women demonstrate every day the power of courage and faith;” and a partnership of interests – as Democratic president Bill Clinton said, “When people ask me what the greatest achievement of our foreign policy has been… I think of the partnership between America and Israel.”

Between these two pillars stands North American Jewry, the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel, with a central and highly influential voice in American public life and in relations with the State of Israel.

FOR MANY years, an exceptionally important triangular relationship has existed among Washington, Jerusalem, and American Jewry. Over the past several decades, all three sides of this triangle have benefited greatly.

The United States has benefited from its connection to the other two sides of the triangle. Israel serves as a values-based and security outpost in a turbulent Middle East, helping to defend shared Western interests.

The US has also been blessed by the immense contribution of Jewish immigrants who became leaders in science, culture, technology, banking, and many other fields. It is not fanciful to say that America’s rise was strengthened, in part, by the extraordinary talent, energy, and ambition brought by Jewish immigration across the Atlantic.

American Jewry, too, flourished because of its ties to both of the triangle’s other sides. Israel served as a central focus of Jewish identity and a source of pride, while America provided a safe home that opened its doors and enabled a degree of prosperity unique in Jewish history. The same is true of Israel: its reliance on America’s many-sided support and on the flourishing Jewish community of North America has been a blessing that scarcely needs description.

The weakening relationship with the US, Israel, and American Jews

But strength does not last forever. A sober look at this triangular relationship shows that each of its sides has weakened in recent years. On the Washington-Jerusalem axis, American public support for Israel has declined significantly and worryingly.

Significant parts of the Democratic Party now voice sharply critical positions toward Israel, while even among younger Republicans, the once-instinctive warmth toward Israel can no longer be assumed.

On the Washington-American Jewry axis, changes are also evident. Waves of antisemitism from the fringes of both the American right and left have raised the fear that the golden age of American Jewry may be coming to an end. Finally, on the Jerusalem-American Jewry axis, cracks are visible as Israeli governments have failed to invest sufficiently in cultivating the vital ties between the two branches of the family.

The gaps between an American Jewish public that tends toward liberalism and an Israeli society that tends toward conservatism are growing wider. The unfortunate facts are clear: Israel’s position as a central anchor of identity for North American Jewry is no longer what it once was. The government formed after the elections will need to think anew about how to strengthen each side of this triangle.

This will require renewed investment in bipartisan support in Washington, serious engagement with younger Americans across the political spectrum, and a deliberate rebuilding of trust between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

The resilience of “we, the Jewish people” depends on the success of this effort.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post America at 250: The triangular relationship between US, Israel, and Jews is at risk first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

The post Podcast: zionism and Americanism first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Apple:

Spotify:

Just days after Israel and Lebanon reached a framework agreement to begin the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of southern Lebanon, Tamar Ish Shalom sits down with one of the key figures behind the negotiations: Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter.

In this wide-ranging conversation with host Tamar and Ambassador Leiter discuss the strategic implications of the Lebanon agreement, the continuing challenge posed by Iran, and the evolving relationship between Jerusalem and Washington. They also explore the global rise of antizionism and disinformation, the future of Israel–Diaspora relations, and the difficult questions surrounding religious pluralism, Jewish identity, and the boundaries of the Jewish community.

The post Tamar Ish Shalom in conversation with Amb. Yechiel Leiter first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

For the full episode (in Hebrew) click here.

The post Podcast: The United States Celebrates 250 Years of Independence first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

The Iranian regime has for now survived. Its missile production infrastructure remains largely intact, and whatever agreement ultimately emerges from the current negotiations will almost certainly leave Tehran with the ability – whether in 15 or 20 years – to resume uranium enrichment on an industrial scale.

Yes, Iran was weakened. Its nuclear program has been set back, and its military capabilities suffered significant damage. But while the threat has been degraded, it has not been eliminated. This does not mean that the war was a mistake. Israel had an opportunity to deepen its military partnership with the United States and strike at a regime that has spent nearly five decades funding terrorism, destabilizing the region, and openly working towards Israel’s destruction.

The campaign may not have achieved its most important objective – toppling the ayatollahs – but it demonstrated an unprecedented level of operational cooperation between Israel and the United States and inflicted meaningful damage on Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

Yet – and this is the source of the disappointment – when Israel embarked on this war at the end of February, it did so with a vision of fundamentally changing the reality posed by Iran. The agreement now taking shape does not deliver that outcome. Part of this has led to reactions by prominent Israelis that can only be described as ridiculously immature. Some are portraying President Donald Trump as a traitor, a flip-flopper, and a man who abandoned Israel. One news magazine put a headline on its front page with the title: “No longer a friend.” Journalists aligned with the Right who proudly posted photos of themselves interviewing Trump in the past are now putting Xs over those pictures.

Unfortunately, these people misunderstood how relations work with the United States.

Trump went to war expecting a certain outcome, and when that outcome did not materialize, he made a decision to cut his losses and do what he believes serves America’s interests: to end the war now, under terms that many of us wish were stronger and more favorable. We can disagree with the deal and think it’s deeply flawed – I definitely do – but Trump’s decision was never about Israel’s interests alone. It was about America’s interests.

What these Israelis are also failing to recognize is that now is not the time to grieve and just think about what we failed to achieve, but rather to use this moment to try and benefit from the strategic opportunities that emerge from this new reality. One way to do that is to stop focusing on the US-Iran MoU and to instead get working on a new US-Israel MoU. To some extent, this is a similar situation to what happened after US president Barack Obama concluded his landmark nuclear agreement with Iran in 2015.

Netanyahu takes advantage of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waged an unprecedented campaign against the deal, culminating in his controversial speech before Congress. He invested enormous political capital in trying to stop it, and even though he failed, once the agreement was signed, he quickly pivoted.

Rather than stay stuck on the failure to stop the deal, Netanyahu understood that he had an opportunity to bolster Israel’s military capabilities and the alliance with the United States. The result was the largest MoU in the history of the US-Israel relationship – a $38 billion military assistance package spread out over 10 years.

Netanyahu was able to tell Israelis that although he had failed to stop the nuclear deal, he had secured the largest military aid package in the country’s history. Obama was able to reassure Americans that despite disagreements with Israel over Iran, the United States remained fully committed to Israel’s security. Both sides benefited, and the episode demonstrated that even when Washington and Jerusalem disagree on Iran, they can still find ways to strengthen the broader strategic relationship. Today, as another Iran agreement takes shape – one that Israelis are deeply concerned about – there is an opportunity to replicate that model. Technically, the Obama-era MoU expires next year, and if a new package is to be negotiated, discussions need to already be underway.

Nevertheless, simply negotiating a larger version of the existing arrangement – under which Washington provides funding that Israel uses to purchase American weapons – would be a missed opportunity. The last two-and-a-half years have transformed the region and exposed new strategic realities, allowing for a more ambitious vision.

One possibility, for example, would be to explore the possibility of the Americans opening a base in Israel either instead of, or in addition to, the major military installations the US already has throughout the Middle East. Israel has a good case to make. It is a stable democracy, shares similar values as the US, is a proven military power, and, as the recent war has shown, is America’s most capable partner. It is true that an American base would raise questions about Israeli operational freedom, but this might be outweighed by the level of deterrence a US presence in Israel would provide.

An adversary would know that an attack on Israel would be risking a direct confrontation with the United States. This is something no aid package, no matter how generous, would be able to provide.

If permanent basing proves unrealistic, there are other options such as America deploying F-22 Raptor fighter jets or the strategic B-2 bombers in Israel, or even a framework that would allow Israel access to such platforms under certain circumstances. These are just some ideas being thrown around within the defense establishment. Whatever the government decides to ask for, it will do so with the recognition that the war with Iran, the regional upheaval that has followed October 7, and the prospect of a new nuclear agreement have together created a rare strategic moment.

Israel may not get everything it wanted from the war, and it may not get everything it wants from the negotiations that will now begin. But just as Netanyahu turned the disappointment of 2015 into a major strategic achievement, Israel has an opportunity to do so again.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Iran deal is Israel’s chance to reshape its own MoU with the US first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

“I can’t fight the shadows all the time.”

That was the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’s response on X/Twitter to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar after reports that she had likened Israel’s policies to apartheid South Africa during a closed-door diplomatic meeting.

The phrase did not calm the dispute. It deepened it.

According to reports from Jerusalem, some Israeli officials interpreted the remark as a veiled political message directed at Germany, and as further evidence that Kallas had come under growing French influence within the EU. Israel’s objection was understandable. If the EU’s top diplomat compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, Israel had every right to reject the accusation forcefully. That is not the issue.

The issue is what came next.

The more revealing aspect of the exchange may not be what Kallas intended, but how quickly her unusual choice of words was interpreted primarily through a political lens. The controversy reveals a larger diplomatic problem: too often, unfamiliar language is treated as strategy before it is examined as culture. Diplomacy begins with language. Yet language is never merely vocabulary. Every language carries its own history, literature, symbols, and collective memory. Words rarely travel alone. They arrive shaped by the culture that produced them. When diplomats forget this, they risk misunderstanding not only individual expressions but also the intentions behind them.

To a native English speaker, “I can’t fight the shadows” sounds unusual. English reaches more naturally for expressions such as “I can’t fight ghosts,” “I can’t chase every rumor,” or “I won’t respond to every allegation.” Kallas chose none of them.

One possible explanation lies in her own cultural background.

Readers familiar with Estonian literature may recognize the recurring presence of forests, silence, darkness, memory, and shadows. These are more than descriptions of nature. They often serve as images through which writers explore identity, survival, fear, historical trauma, and the unseen forces that shape individual and collective life.

This symbolic language reflects Estonia’s history. Centuries of foreign domination, followed by Soviet occupation, censorship, and the struggle to preserve language and national identity, encouraged writers to communicate through metaphor as much as through direct political speech. Within that tradition, shadows often evoke realities that are present yet difficult to grasp or confront directly. In Estonian cultural memory, nature often becomes a language for history: forest as refuge, silence as survival, darkness as danger, and shadows as the presence of realities difficult to grasp or confront directly.

Against this backdrop, an expression such as voidelda varjudega, literally “to fight with shadows,” sounds entirely natural in a literary Estonian register, even though it is not a fixed idiom.

Whether Kallas, former prime minister of Estonia, consciously carried such imagery into English is impossible to know. Nor can anyone say with confidence that this was her intended meaning in her exchange with Sa’ar. That uncertainty, however, is precisely the point. Diplomacy rarely offers certainty. It demands the discipline of weighing competing interpretations before determining motive.

Anyone familiar with Estonian language and literature would at least recognize Kallas’s wording as a plausible cultural metaphor, not necessarily a concealed strategic message. That possibility alone should have encouraged greater caution before a hidden meaning was assigned to an unfamiliar phrase.

The first duty of diplomacy is curiosity, not certainty.

Whether the Israeli interpretation ultimately proves correct is therefore almost beside the point. One can hold Kallas fully accountable for her reported remarks while still asking whether her language was interpreted with sufficient cultural awareness. Those are separate questions.

Nor is this uniquely an Israeli challenge. Diplomatic history is full of misunderstandings born not of bad intentions but of cultural assumptions. American diplomats have misread indirect communication in Asia. Europeans have misjudged rhetorical traditions in the Middle East. Cross-cultural misunderstanding is among diplomacy’s oldest hazards.

Information without cultural interpretation

The recent exchange between Jerusalem and Brussels simply offers an unusually vivid example. Diplomats are typically trained in international law, political science, economics, security studies, negotiation, conflict resolution, and public administration. These disciplines remain indispensable.

Yet foreign relations are conducted not only through legal texts and policy papers, but through people whose thinking has been shaped by literature, history, religion, folklore, and national memory. Understanding Estonia requires more than reading European Council conclusions. It requires appreciating a society whose modern identity was secured by preserving its language under foreign rule.

It requires recognizing that Estonian literature developed a symbolic vocabulary in which nature frequently became a language for history itself. Forests, silence, darkness, and shadows are not decorative images. Together they form a cultural vocabulary through which public life is understood.

The same principle applies far beyond Estonia. Every European society speaks through its own historical experience. French political language reflects republican universalism. German public discourse remains deeply shaped by 20th-century historical responsibility. Polish political debate repeatedly invokes national resistance and martyrdom. Successful diplomacy requires understanding not only institutions but also these cultural languages.

Too often, however, foreign ministries continue to treat cultural knowledge as secondary, something appropriate for universities but peripheral to statecraft. History suggests otherwise.

Many of history’s finest diplomats were not only lawyers or politicians. They were historians, linguists, writers, classicists, and scholars of civilization. They understood that political communication rarely operates on the literal level alone. People speak through metaphor, inherited memory, and cultural references that no intelligence report or briefing paper can fully capture.

Israel has invested enormous resources in intelligence gathering and has become exceptionally skilled at collecting information. Yet information without cultural interpretation remains incomplete. Knowing exactly what someone said is fundamentally different from understanding why those particular words were chosen.

Israel has invested heavily in intelligence. It should invest just as seriously in cultural literacy. If Israel wishes to deepen its engagement with Europe, it should broaden the education of its future diplomats. Political science remains essential. International law remains indispensable. But they are not enough. This need not mean turning diplomats into literary scholars. It means making cultural interpretation a formal part of diplomatic training: language study, literary briefings, historical memory seminars, and country-specific cultural mentoring before postings.

Those who represent Israel abroad should learn not only how nations negotiate but also how nations remember, how metaphors travel across languages, and how culture quietly shapes diplomacy long before negotiations begin. Diplomacy is often described as the art of choosing the right words. It is equally the art of understanding the words others choose.

Sometimes diplomatic success or failure depends on understanding a metaphor before assigning it a motive. Or, as Kaja Kallas might say, learning to see the shadows.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post When diplomats can’t read the shadows first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Few countries occupy as much space in the European Union diplomatic imagination as Israel. EU institutions devote extraordinary attention to Israeli policies, actions, and conflicts, often placing them at the centre of diplomatic discussions in a way that is difficult to explain by Israel’s size, power, or formal relationship with the Union.

This disproportionate focus raises important questions. Does the EU apply its diplomatic scrutiny consistently across different countries and conflicts? And if not, what are the consequences for its credibility and influence in the Middle East? At the same time, Israel’s growing tendency to dismiss the EU as strategically irrelevant may be creating problems of its own. A new study by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) sheds empirical light on these questions. Researchers analysed more than 24,000 official statements, press releases, and diplomatic communications issued by the European External Action Service (EEAS) between 2017 and April 2026. Of these, 895 dealt directly with Israel. The study also examined how Israel was portrayed in EU diplomatic discourse.

The findings are striking and serve as a warning to both Brussels and Jerusalem. Israel occupies an unusually prominent place in the Union’s diplomatic imagination. It accounted for approximately 4% of all official EEAS diplomatic statements during the period examined. That level of attention is not explained by Israel’s formal relationship with the Union – Israel is neither an EU member nor a candidate, and is not among the world’s major powers. Yet it commands attention from Brussels far beyond what its size and formal status would suggest.

The tone of that attention is equally revealing. Across the entire period, 38% of EEAS statements concerning Israel were negative, 49% were neutral, and only 13% were positive. Following the October 7 massacre, the balance shifted even further: negative statements rose from 29% before the attack to nearly 46% afterwards; positive statements fell from almost 20% to just 8%. Criticism of Israel is neither illegitimate nor surprising. Democracies are scrutinised because they are expected to uphold democratic values, and Israel should not be beyond examination. The question is not whether Israel should be criticised. The question is whether similar standards are applied consistently across the international system.

The comparative findings raise serious doubts. Iran received the most negative treatment among the countries examined, largely because of its military cooperation with Russia and its broader role in regional instability. Turkey presents a different case. Despite years of democratic erosion, restrictions on freedom of expression, and mounting tensions with European capitals, roughly three-quarters of official EEAS statements concerning Turkey were neutral, mostly focused on technical matters connected to its candidacy for EU membership.

The most revealing comparison is Qatar, for which more than two-thirds of European statements were positive; negative references were almost nonexistent. This is despite the “Qatargate affair,” which raised serious questions about foreign influence within the European Parliament. That controversy barely registered in the official rhetoric examined by the researchers.

The contrast is difficult to ignore: a democratic state fighting a war triggered by the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust receives sustained scrutiny and intensifying criticism, while authoritarian actors are often treated with conspicuous caution or leniency. This inconsistency is not merely a public relations problem. It undermines the EU’s ability to present itself as a credible and impartial actor in the Middle East. For decades, European leaders have sought a central role in efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet influence depends on trust, and trust depends on consistency. By applying visibly different standards to different actors, the EU weakens its own claim to be an indispensable diplomatic broker in the region.

The JPPI study also reveals a widening intellectual gap between Brussels and Jerusalem. More than half of all EEAS statements concerning Israel included references to the two-state solution or the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The problem is not that the EU continues to support a two-state outcome; many serious people still regard it as the only viable long-term framework. The problem is that EU diplomacy often invokes it as if October 7 did not fundamentally alter Israeli threat perceptions. A formula that does not address these perceptions will not persuade the Israeli public, whatever its diplomatic pedigree.

Yet the study’s most important conclusion may not be that the EU talks too much about Israel. It may be that Israel talks too little to Europe. While the EU remains intensely focused on Israel, Israel has largely stopped paying attention to Europe. Since October 7, Israeli diplomacy has concentrated, understandably, on Washington, regional security challenges, and the expansion of the Abraham Accords.

These are legitimate priorities. But they have come at the expense of sustained engagement with EU institutions, European governments, media, universities, and policy communities. This neglect carries risks. The EU remains Israel’s largest trading partner. Approximately one-third of Israel’s trade in goods is conducted with EU member states. The EU is also Israel’s most important partner in research, innovation, and higher education. No alternative partner offers Israel access to a comparable ecosystem of research funding, academic collaboration, and technological networks.

At a time when economic competitiveness depends increasingly on scientific excellence and technological innovation, relations with the EU are not a diplomatic luxury. They are a strategic asset. But many Israelis have come to regard Europe as a lost cause, assuming that European attitudes are fixed, EU institutions are irreversibly hostile, and investment in the relationship is unlikely to yield results. This is not realism; it is resignation.

Foreign policy is not about engaging only with those who already agree with you. It is about shaping debates, building coalitions, and defending national interests even in difficult environments. When Israel withdraws from the European arena, others fill the vacuum. When it stops trying to influence European discourse, it should not be surprised when that discourse evolves without Israeli input.

The EU should ask why Israel occupies so much space in its diplomatic imagination and whether that hyper focus reflects balanced diplomacy or an entrenched double standard. Israel should ask why the Union occupies so little space in its own strategic thinking and whether it can afford to neglect its most important economic, scientific, and technological partner.

Neither Brussels nor Jerusalem benefits from the current trajectory. The EU risks its credibility as a diplomatic actor. Israel risks its influence, its economic interests, and its scientific future in a relationship it cannot afford to neglect. Both outcomes are avoidable, but only if both Israel and the EU begin treating this relationship with the seriousness it deserves.

Published in Euractiv

The post Europe’s obsession with Israel first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

For nearly three years, I have lived in a state of suspended breath. My son has spent the last three months in southern Lebanon, defending our northern borders from Hezbollah. Last Shabbat, one of my students died of his wounds; a drone fragment took his life.

These are not statistics to me. They are the people I love, the people I teach, and the people whose absence leaves a void that can never be filled.

I am one mother and one educator among many who have been carrying the weight of this war on our shoulders. We – the public that serves in the military, drives the economy, and sustains our communities – know that the future of Israel rests on shared commitment. We are a shrinking share of the public, yet we continue to give until we have nothing left to give.

When this war began, there was a brief, powerful moment of unity. We believed that the existential threat would finally force a consensus: that every capable citizen must stand up and contribute to the defense of the state.

But as the war dragged on, it became agonizingly clear that too much of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) political leadership has fought to preserve a reality separate from the one borne by the families who serve. Their political priority has not been the manpower crisis at the borders, but the preservation of an exemption system that allows one community to remain detached from the most fundamental civic and military duties, while still benefiting from public funding and state support.

Now, with the advancement of Basic Law: Torah Study, the government is attempting to give constitutional force to this detachment. The proposal would elevate Torah study as a form of national service, using lofty, sacred language to justify an exemption that feels like a slap in the face to those of us who bury our dead. This is not an argument against Torah study, nor against the haredi public. It is an argument against a political arrangement that uses Torah to absolve one part of Israeli society from obligations borne, in blood, by another.

As someone who has dedicated my life to the study and teaching of Torah, Jewish philosophy, and Zionist thought, I reject this legislation not despite my love of Torah but because of it. I teach students, secular and religious, men and women, that Torah study is meant to be a light that informs our actions in the world, not a shield to hide behind. I have never taught that Torah and civic duty are in conflict. They are meant to be the twin pillars of a functioning Jewish society.

Our Sages taught that derech eretz (social and ethical conduct) precedes the Torah. Our Sages warn us: “If there is no Torah, there is no derech eretz; and if there is no derech eretz, there is no Torah” (Ethics of the Fathers 3:17).

These are not two separate domains that can be uncoupled at the convenience of politicians. They are a single moral ecosystem. By pushing this law, the Knesset risks severing the two. It transforms the Torah into an empty vessel, a political tool used to evade the most basic obligation of a citizen: to share the burden of survival. How can Zionist parties, who ask our children to risk their lives on the front lines, support a law that so blatantly disregards the sacrifice of the serving public?

The advancement of this law is not a religious triumph. It is a profound moral abdication. By turning Torah learning into a legal exemption for civic evasion, our leaders are committing a violent divorce between the holiness of our tradition and the fundamental duty of derech eretz. They are signaling that, for some, the preservation of a separate civic arrangement outweighs shared responsibility for the survival of the Jewish state. For those of us on the front lines, burying our students and waiting for our children’s return, the message is clear: While we fight to ensure the state of Israel has a future, our government is dismantling the shared covenant that makes that future worth fighting for.

We are not only losing our youth to the battlefield. We are losing our moral language to a politics that dares to call exemption “service.”

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Derech eretz lost – Why the proposed Basic Law betrays our sacred covenant first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.

Trained to avoid rushing to judgment, we historians know there will be far more to learn about Monday’s Montreal bloodbath, wherein a terrorist killed one police officer and one civilian.

The police claim the terrorist was not antisemitic and that the resulting murder of a beloved Jew in the Jewish neighborhood attacked is coincidental.

Assuming that conclusion holds, Canadians and their leaders must admit that even if antisemitism didn’t trigger this crime, the lynch-mob mentality against Jews, Zionism, and Israel drove it as well as other acts of political violence. The same argument holds when terrorists attack areas with no Jews at all. It’s essential to recognize that by tolerating so much antisemitism and “Zionophobia” – hostility toward Zionists – many Canadians helped foster an atmosphere of political totalitarianism breeding extremism, zealotry, and violence.

Silence often speaks volumes. Those who keep quiet while others harass Jews, Israelis, and Zionists broaden the zone of tolerance for all forms of brutality. In healthy democracies, there are no innocent bystanders; when fellow citizens are besieged, silence is complicity.

Lack of public reaction to antisemitism

Jesse Brown opens his March 2026 Atlantic essay, “Canada’s Polite Pogrom,” with a devastating line. Describing how the University of British Columbia’s Ed Rosenberg quit teaching geriatric medicine after 30 years, Brown explains that the antisemitic bile students and colleagues at the University of British Columbia posted after October 7 was bad enough. Nevertheless: “He did not resign because of the messages…; he resigned because the university wouldn’t do anything about them.”

Antisemites around him could be dismissed – it’s hard to feel betrayed by twisted people who celebrated such perversions. But Rosenberg and so many others have felt betrayed by so-called “innocent bystanders” and supposedly responsible administrators who did nothing.

The insult is compounded by a cancel culture and DEI bureaucracy exaggerating the slightest slips into massive grievances – when it comes to other groups. Selective silence is equally painful, double-crossing the targeted – and emboldening aggressors. On June 1, Prime Minister Mark Carney modeled the kind of political cherry-picking that justifies using the cliché “doing more harm than good.”

Carney’s 2600-word speech about antisemitism never used the Z-word, Zionism, and only mentioned Israel once. That’s like denouncing Southern racism without defining it as an obsessive bigotry against blacks.

Linking anti-Zionism with antisemitism is not some Jewish delusion; it’s a conscious stance wired deeply into the Palestinian national movement’s DNA. Palestinians and their enablers yell “Death to the Jews” and target Jewish schools, synagogues and individuals when they’re enraged by Israel.

Palestinians and their enablers recycle old Jewish stereotypes and dip their anti-Zionism in the toxic reservoir of anti-Semitic slurs. And it’s Palestinians and their enablers who have fed a spike of Jew-hatred since October 7, because the antisemitic anti-Zionism of Hamas and other Gazans on that bloody day inspired them. Carney’s omission was particularly glaring because he o so earnestly, speaking in French, invoked the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor to explain Canada’s “celebration of differences.”

That acceptance reflects Taylor’s notion of “recognition,” Carney explained, which “is more than mere tolerance…. To be recognised is to be received as who you are.” How ironic that in this speech Canada’s prime minister refused to recognize or receive how Zionists are – or admit how much they have been pursued.

These full and partial silences help amplify today’s shouters, who continue to believe they run the conversation. They dominate the airwaves, the headlines, and social media. Today’s loud, often foul-mouthed, hotheads view everything through a partisan lens – which paves the road to totalitarianism.

Reducing our complex world to a series of all-or-nothing political propositions oversimplifies and inflames discourse simultaneously. Extremists thrive in this highly charged atmosphere. They make politics tribal – us versus them. And they escalate identity into zealotry.

Belonging is no longer enough. Bullying the other becomes expected, fundamental – first, most easily, in Tweets, then in words to strangers, then in breakups over politics with friends and relatives. Once that happens, once you’ve demonized and objectified the other, it’s easy for unstable maniacs to turn violent. After all, everyone else has convinced them that if you dare disagree with me – you’re an existential threat to me and our democracy.

Canada’s turn from Canada the decent and delightfully boring, to Canada the indecent and menacing, reflects this evil logic’s spellbinding power. Of course, not every terrorist or partisan firebrand is a Jew-hater or an anti-Zionist. But Jew-hating and Israel-bashing green-lighted a culture of political fervor and abuse.

We now live in a world – in democracies – where healthy functioning adults – not just lunatics – act crazy. They shun colleagues and friends, harass shopkeepers or customers, hit little kids, shoot their schools, and assault their places of worship, proudly, while earning high-fives in return.

For decades we’ve known in theory – it starts with the Jews, but never ends with the Jews. The words were mouthed – and are mouthed whenever Jews are targeted. We need more than words. The twin evil genies of Jew-hatred and political violence, which have long been intertwined, have been unleashed, and Jews aren’t responsible for returning either foul force into its bottle.

Jews should focus on defending themselves just enough to feel free to double down on being Zionist, doing Jewish, and celebrating Israel. It’s the much larger non-Jewish world that must remember two long-lasting lessons. Jew-hatred is the disease of the non-Jew, not the Jew.

And citizens in healthy democracies must defeat the totalitarian, conspiratorial, violence-breeding evil of antisemitism, doing it, not for the Jews’ sake, but for the sake of their own societies, and their own souls.

Published in the Jerusalem Post

The post Jew-hatred drove the Montreal violence, even if it didn’t trigger it first appeared on The Jewish People Policy Institute.