EDITOR’S NOTE:
Working with Maayan Hoffman has been deeply rewarding. The effort and thought she has put into this piece is extraordinary. There are not many high-profile Jewish industry leaders who are prepared to delve into the very deep and complex issues facing the American diaspora community today. Maayan does that in this piece, so deftly. Her deep research is evident. She also spoke with key community leaders in special interviews for this article, to ensure that their important voices in the American Jewish diaspora are understood and represented. It is beyond trite to state that all Jewish communities, and Israel, are contending with epochal challenges. Existential challenges. And the question that so many ask but most dare not do so out loud, is: “Why?” How on earth did we allow ourselves to stumble into such peril? Is it as bad as it seems?
Maayan asks the tough questions in conversations with Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America; William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Global Social Action Director at the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Danny Dayan, Chairman of Yad Vashem, and more. And they are candid in sharing their deep concern regarding this moment in Jewish history and how we might manage our way through. As William Daroff said when speaking with Maayan:
"We will need to assess, evaluate and retool based on our experience of the last months and beyond," Daroff said, noting that one of the lessons the community needs to learn is that "we should not normalize Jew-hatred or antisemitism at all. When we see it rear its ugly head, we should not excuse it, rationalize it or turn a blind eye but engage quickly and forcefully."
He admitted that over the last many years, the realpolitik of the situation has been one where, all too often, "we did not want to embarrass" friends or make a fuss. "Those days are over.”
Maayan’s work is also very important. Whereas she focuses only on the American Jewish diaspora in this brilliant investigative and analytical essay, I suggest that the observations should be heeded carefully by all. America’s Jewish community is bigger, but the experience is not unlike what we are seeing in Canada, Australia, the U.K. and throughout the world. We must ask the difficult questions and Maayan does just that.
Please note that as with all our work, we offer an introductory peek but the entire piece is available only to paying subscribers. I do hope that you become one soon so that you may enjoy all of our work, without limitation.
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I. Is It Over Yet?
Chaos. Destruction. Violence.
These three words have been used repeatedly to describe the ferocious anti-Israel protests that erupted on college campuses across the United States in the wake of October 7th. At times, Jewish students were afraid to leave their dorms and go to class. Sometimes, classes were canceled. Campuses were shut down. Police squads were called in.
The recent protests may have subsided, somewhat – or at least become less prevalent in the news – yet their effects on the American Jewish community will be deep and enduring. They were not isolated incidents but rather a manifestation of decades of increasing antisemitism, an erosion of Jewish identity in the Diaspora, and a widening gap in terms of how Israelis and Americans identify as Jews.
Large parts of the organized Jewish community have become sclerotic, defined almost exclusively by a post-Holocaust narrative and connection to Judaism. The general American diaspora relationship with Israel flows from the pride of statehood and the ability to self-defend, exemplified by the 1967 and 1973 wars. At the time, these conflicts were perceived within Israel and abroad as victories; having extracted a terribly high cost, but achieved tremendous results. These “triumphs” blinded the community to the ever precarious nature of Jewish life for millenia. The general view was that we were safe. Fine. Secure.
Organized community life is funded by donors, who tend to also influence and comprise leadership. The values of major donors also shape community priorities from the top down, meaning that the broad and diverse community values may not be well represented. Or aligned. As the values and issues that resonate with American Jews have been dynamic and changing, community responses have tended to be ossified – very stuck and rooted in the past.
October 7th, in America, was preceded by complacency, affluence and hubris. And then, suddenly, there were outbursts of violence – physical and verbal. Jewish communities were shocked. Their sense of security was shattered. Everyone – including community leaders – seemed to be caught off-guard.
II. Antisemitism by the Numbers
In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented the highest number of antisemitic incidents in the United States since it started tracking them in 1979: 8,873 compared to 3,697 the previous year. This included increased assaults from 111 in 2022 to 161 in 2023, and vandalism incidents surged from 1,288 to 2,106.
In New York City, there was an unprecedented increase of nearly 25% in anti-Jewish hate crimes from 2022 to 2023, with 325 incidents last year. Keep in mind that many such incidents are never reported.
This is despite the investment in recent decades of hundreds of millions of dollars to combat antisemitism and the dedicated efforts of numerous U.S. organizations.
"In recent years, unprecedented efforts were invested in fighting antisemitism," said Prof. Uriya Shavit, head of the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute at Tel Aviv University. "The bottom line is one: The efforts have failed."
The alarming rise in antisemitism and the dangerous rallies, riots, and encampments in the United States bear unsettling similarities to the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel.
The underlying intent is remarkably similar: to eradicate Jewish life. Period.
Contemporaneously, the Jewish communities in America, and leadership in the state of Israel, seemed to adhere to a similar tendency to look away. They were both convinced, it seems, of their own invincibility.
III. “It could not happen here.”
Following the Hamas attack on Israel, evidence emerged suggesting that the October 7th operation had been in preparation for several years. In the months leading up to the attack, young female surveillance soldiers monitoring the Gaza border raised alarms that senior commanders ignored repeatedly. Additionally, a report by The New York Times revealed that Israeli officials had acquired Hamas' detailed plans for the October 7th terrorist attack more than one year before it became reality. However, the Israeli military and intelligence brass dismissed these plans as overly ambitious, doubting Hamas's capability to execute such a complex operation.
Some high-ranking officials were so confident that they referred to Hamas as "punks."
In at least one instance, a senior officer under the command of Major General Aharon Haliva, the former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate for the IDF (he took responsibility for his massive professional failure and resigned from his position on April 22, 2024), threatened to court-martial a persistent female officer if she continued to voice her concerns about Hamas.
Meanwhile, in America, the organized Jewish community knew that antisemitism was growing. It was documented. The most visibly Jewish members of the community – the ultra-Orthodox – were the most frequent targets. Yet, the data was generally reported and then put on a shelf until the next report.
The latest Annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report, published jointly this month by Tel Aviv University and the ADL, highlighted the prevalence of hate speech targeting Jews even before Israel's actions in Gaza, including on prominent university campuses.
The ADL pointed to an increase from 2,697 incidents between January and September 2022 to 3,547 in the same period in 2023 – before the war. Moreover, 2022 had already set a new record for antisemitic incidents in the United States. Additionally, the ADL reported 3,697 incidents in 2022, a 36% increase from the 2,717 incidents recorded in 2021. It was the highest number since the ADL began monitoring such events in 1979.
Many members of the American Jewish community dismissed the ADL’s reports and, therefore, these increasing numbers, sometimes claiming not to align with the ADL’s criteria for a hate crime and sometimes in part due to hostility towards the organization. The ADL was criticized for being overtly partisan, with its CEO being called "a tool of the Democratic Party." (We raise this point only because it is important for readers to understand the quite pitched context and divisions within the organized community, but take no position on these matters.)
Moreover, despite widespread discussions about the increase in antisemitism, there was minimal, if any, action in response. This was likely because "we thought it could not happen in America, so there is no reason to be too aggressive or worried about it," said Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem.
The American Jewish community was also fully aware of Qatar's activities in the U.S., including significant financial contributions to American universities and think tanks. As Qatar openly supports Islamist groups – like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – the country tended to invest in ways that supported its interests. Incredibly, there seems to have been little, if any, concern with this ongoing and deepening Qatari financing of American academic life.
For example, according to an Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism (ISGAP) report, Cornell University has received $1.95 billion from Qatar for its campus at Doha Education City and $7.9 billion to Sidra Hospital in Doha, which is partly operated by Cornell. In addition, Georgetown University received $750 million for a school of government, ISGAP showed in January. The report documents additional Qatari contributions to academic institutions in the U.S.
Additionally, the report by various media outlets in 2014 that the top tier Brookings Institute had accepted a $14.8-million donation from Qatar was big and controversial news. The vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program (and former two-time American Ambassador to Israel) of Brookings at the time was Martin Indyk. Today, it seems that Brookings no longer receives financial support from Qatar. Its website states that Qatari financial support ceased in 2017.
The list goes on.
Since 2012, the ISGAP has investigated undisclosed funding from foreign governments, foundations, and corporations to U.S. universities. These foreign financiers often support anti-democratic and antisemitic ideologies and have links to terrorism and terror financing. ISGAP's initial findings, presented to the State Department in 2019, revealed significant funding from Middle Eastern sources, primarily Qatar, that had not been disclosed to the Department of Education, as ISGAP said is mandated by law. This research exposed billions of dollars in unreported funds.
“Qatar is operating a war-chest with between $500 Billion – $1 trillion USD of assets and growing, to develop and leverage “soft power” in the west – including the U.S.’ prestigious universities,” ISGAP writes on its website, highlighting Qatari impact on the hospitality, real estate, energy, food and beverage, media and education industries.
In a related matter, ISGAP released a detailed report in 2019 titled "The Contextualization of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP)." This report uncovered the antisemitic origins of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and its apparent ties to the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood movement (with which Hamas, Hizballah, al Qaeda and the Houthis are allied). Beyond establishing these connections, the report delved into SJP's affiliations with groups that have endorsed or engaged in violence and terrorism, yet SJP continued to operate mainly without repercussions, ISGAP said.
It was only after October 7 and the mass riots, however, that people started to pay attention. "A lot of the pieces started to fall into place," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of the Global Social Action Agenda for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "It was like, if you will, a perfect storm."
IV. Israel Turning a Blind Eye
One of the reasons Hamas was able to infiltrate Israel stems from a degree of complacency within Israel towards the terrorist organization on its border.
For nearly two decades, Hamas engaged in brilliant deception, concealing its military plans and affecting a lack of interest in conflict. Israel – revered for its sharp intelligence capabilities – chose to believe that Hamas leadership prioritized peace and prosperity over its abiding ideological goal of destroying Israel and murdering Jews.
This intelligence assessment became the foundation for the so-called “containment” strategy championed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He stated repeatedly that Israel was literally purchasing peace and quiet by allowing Qatari money to flow freely to Hamas coffers. For many years, the Qatari government has been sending tens of millions of dollars monthly to the Gaza Strip with the approval of Israel, which hoped that a steady flow of funds would maintain short-term peace in Gaza. Israeli intelligence officers even escorted a Qatari official into Gaza to distribute those dollars from suitcases. This money either strengthened Hamas's military or allowed Hamas to allocate its own funds to military operations, contributing to the October 7th attack.
At the same time, 165,000 Palestinians from Gaza and Areas A and B worked in Israel and the Jewish settlements in the West Bank before the war, according to a March report by the Institute of National Security Studies. Between 17,000 and 20,000 of those workers were from Gaza. Many worked in the southern kibbutzim and were able to gather information to help Hamas, such as where security officers lived and where community weapons were stored.
So too, Israeli intelligence was heavily invested in the theory that the major threats to the country were from Hezbollah and Iran, not Hamas. Yet, in the 18 months leading up to October 7th, there were numerous escalations involving Hamas. Israel treated these as isolated incidents or failed to link them directly to the terrorist group.
In January, 2023 Hamas killed seven people and injured three others in a shooting outside the Ateret Avraham Synagogue in Jerusalem's Neveh Ya'acov neighborhood. During Passover the same year, a Palestinian terrorist fatally shot Lucy, Maia, and Rina Dee, as they were driving near Hamra Junction on Route 57 in the Jordan Valley.
Less than six months before October 7, in response to the launch of numerous rockets by Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, Israel initiated Operation Shield and Arrow, maintaining that Hamas was not involved in this particular escalation. The operation only lasted from May 9 to 13, 2023. More Islamic Jihad terrorists were killed by their own misfired rockets than by Israel.
V. American Jewish Leadership Turning a Blind Eye
Similarly, before the recent riots in the U.S., there were numerous instances of threats against Jewish students. One of the most disturbing was in 2020, when Rose Ritch was compelled to step down from her role as vice president of the University of Southern California student government due to harassment and false accusations of racism stemming from her support for Israel.
"I have been accused by a group of students of being unsuitable as a student leader," she wrote in an open letter following the decision. "I have been told that my support for Israel has made me complicit in racism and that, by association, I am racist."
She wrote that stepping down was "the only sustainable choice I can make to protect my physical safety on campus and my mental health."
According to Wiesenthal’s Rabbi Cooper, some Jewish activists and even board members attempted to intervene and exert pressure on the chancellor at the time. However, the community advocates ultimately settled for an agreement that included providing antisemitism training and Holocaust educational programs for kids on campus. Cooper described this resolution as "not dealing with what was going on head-on."
"When those incidents took place, and there were many all over the U.S., the enemy was looking at the kind of meek, weak or divided response," he continued, adding that this empowered the antisemites. "Your appetite grows exponentially [and you believe] that you can do more and more."
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director of the Global Social Action Agenda for the Simon Wiesenthal Center
VI. Deadly Disunity
Hamas targeted Israel during a period of domestic weakness, marked by significant disunity due to debates over proposed judicial reforms, ultra-Orthodox enlistment and more.
Before October 7, there was also significant disunity among the Jewish diaspora regarding support for or solidarity with Israel. Surveys consistently reflected a decline in support for Israel, with a significant portion of assimilated youth questioning the priority of the state in their lives.
A 2020 Pew Research Center survey found that Jews over the age of 50 were much more attached to Israel than younger Jews, and fewer than half of American Jews said that caring about Israel was "essential" to their Jewish lives.
Although the exact reason for the shift in American Jewish attitudes remains unclear, most Jewish organizations were aware of it and attempted to address it – at least in words. However, their efforts were often too limited because their institutions and systems had become rigid and resistant to change. Over decades of increasing affluence, community organizations also developed large operations with significant fixed expenses. They became bureaucratic and all that entails.
Within the Jewish community it was often easier to ally with partners - like women’s and LGBTQ groups - that putatively shared their liberal values. But the veneer of unity was thin. As but one of many examples, we saw the organizers of the massive women’s march and movement - an outgrowth of #MeToo - declare that zionists could not be feminists.
That hostility was, we now see, deeply embedded in many sectors of liberal society, which have been silent, at best. But so many have turned against the Jewish community, ferociously, since October 7.
William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations of North America, characterized the events following October 7 as a "double punch in the gut." He explained that American Jews first witnessed the hatred, killings, and devastation inflicted on their brothers and sisters in Israel and then faced a noticeable absence of supportive allies in the U.S.
"We looked to our left and our right, to our erstwhile allies [in the Black, LGBT-Q, women’s rights and other communities] who we had been marching with and who we had been allied with, and after October 7, they were not there," Daroff said. "They were silent, excusing, rationalizing and minimizing the suffering of the Jewish people.”
William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations of North America
To be fair, while some partnerships faltered, others proved effective. For example, in many instances, local police forces successfully coordinated and safeguarded Jewish community members. This was due, in part, to the efforts of the Jewish Federations of North America's Secure Community Network (SCN). Established in 2004 as the official safety and security organization for the Jewish community in North America, SCN collaborates closely with Homeland Security and local security agencies to ensure a swift response to escalations.
According to Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) President and CEO Eric Fingerhut, the Jewish Federation system has worked tirelessly to establish and nurture strong connections between the Jewish community and civil and governmental leaders. One important example is New York City Mayor Eric Adams who promptly denounced antisemitism on campus and reached out to the Jewish community to better understand their needs. Also in New York City, the NYPD – likely due to Mayor Adams’ strong leadership – responded quickly and effectively to do their best.
When we spoke recently, Fingerhut agreed that in spite of the investment of the Federation of tens of millions of dollars to combat antisemitism, the scourge is very much on the rise. He offered several examples of investment from a $10 million center to combat antisemitism in Palm Beach, Florida, to a coalition formed by the Los Angeles Federation together with local legislators and other Jewish organizations to fight antisemitism in Los Angeles schools.
"A fair grade is that in those areas that we had built strong and successful capabilities, we have shown that we have been able to successfully defend the Jewish community and the state of Israel," Fingerhut said. "However, there are areas that are new and powerful forces that we have not yet developed a strategy for, and this crisis has made it apparent that it will require new strategies and approaches for the future."
Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA)
In other words, while established strategies have proven effective, emerging threats demanded novel approaches that were not taken, and antisemitism continued to rise.
VII. What Next?
Eli Tsives is a University of California, Los Angeles student. He wore a Star of David necklace and recorded himself on video on April 29 as he attempted to pass through a barrier of masked anti-Israel protesters.
"I'm a UCLA student. I deserve to go here. We pay tuition. This is our school, and they are not letting me walk in," he asserted.
Despite being blocked and forced to find an alternate route, his protest video quickly went viral on social media – a win for Jewish chutzpah.
There are dozens of other examples of these students at Columbia University and on additional campuses. In recent days, we have seen commencement addresses at prestigious colleges throughout the United States be used as platforms to express anti-Zionist (which we believe is antisemitic) violence and hate speech.
There is a disturbing similarity between October 7 in Israel and its aftermath in America; and it is clear that both countries must self-examine. Urgently.
"We will need to assess, evaluate and retool based on our experience of the last months and beyond," Daroff said, noting that one of the lessons the community needs to learn is that "we should not normalize Jew-hatred or antisemitism at all. When we see it rear its ugly head, we should not excuse it, rationalize it or turn a blind eye but engage quickly and forcefully."
He admitted that over the last many years, the realpolitik of the situation has been one where, all too often, "we did not want to embarrass" friends or make a fuss. "Those days are over," Daroff added.
Rabbi Cooper called on the American Jewish community to unify and expand efforts to train its young people – not necessarily to replace the current leadership but to identify the next generation of Jewish leaders and groom them to assume responsibility or their communities.
"Never again is an aspiration; it is not a fact," said Yad Vashem’s Dayan. "We cannot say for sure [a Holocaust] will not happen again. Never again is a call to act."
Now is not the time to retreat or withdraw into the shadows.
Sweeping, oblique statements about unity and perseverance are not sufficient any longer. To truly address the disconnect between organized community efforts and the realities on the ground, we need concrete actions. Our leaders and organizations must assess the current situation and develop effective strategies for community cohesion and empowerment without delay.
The time for retooling and reflection has passed; we need immediate, actionable plans to ensure our safety and strengthen the American Jewish community in the face of rising antisemitism.
Maayan Hoffman is editor-in-chief of ILTV. She is the former Deputy CEO of Strategy and Innovation for The Jerusalem Post. Working with the Post for five-and-a-half years, she also served as the company's news editor and senior health analyst. In her roles she launched the Post's Health & Wellness, Business & Innovation, and Christian World portals.