Abe Foxman’s bleak assessment
Retired longtime ADL head looks at the Jewish community during a year of hate, polarization, stress, and shock
We should have seen it coming, Abe Foxman said.
Mr. Foxman of Bergen County is the longtime now-retired head of the Anti-Defamation League. As a child survivor of the Holocaust, he’s an even longer-time student of antisemitism (a position from which there is no retirement).
He was talking about the murder last week of two young employees of the Israeli embassy, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky; the pair was gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
“The Jewish community is in trauma now,” he said, with far more agitation than he usually allows himself. Mr. Foxman is notably calm, a self-professed optimist, most of the time, at least in public. Not so now.
“This should not have been a surprise for anybody,” he said. “We have been talking about hate hate hate hate, but the community is shocked. Shocked. Surprised that it would in fact result in violence, and the violence ultimately is the murder of Jews, just because they are Jews.
“I think that I’m not sure that we believed that it was going to happen. I think that we say words kill, but I’m not sure we truly understand the depth and the truth of that. So there is a lot of hate, a lot of intimidation, a lot of violence, a lot of Jews not being protected, but in the year and a half since October 7, nothing as tragic, as dramatic, and direct as the murder of Jews just because they are Jews happened in the United States.
“I am not surprised, but I am shocked,” he continued. We spoke on Friday. “I went to AI and I asked a question — ‘Has there been any condemnation of the murder of the two Israeli embassy workers by non-Jewish nonprofit organizations?’
“And the answer came back. No. None. So the Jewish organizations all spoke up. All are in mourning. All condemned it. And most of the political figures who you would expect do condemn it did, with a few exceptions.”
But there were exceptions, and then there were those supposed allies.
“This is very shocking,” Mr. Foxman said. After a year of threats, of intimidation, of hate speech. The political world has its own interests, but the nonprofits, and the simple good people who are out there to do good, to change the world, to be sensitive to hate and to evil — where are they?
“They’re not there for us, and that is very serious because we don’t know what will happen in the future.
“And that’s because we need people marching in our streets against hate. That support is not going to come from the politicians. It’s going to have to come from the good people. And the good people just aren’t there.”
Why?
“Why?” Mr. Foxman repeats rhetorically. “Why? They never have been there, the good people. At best, they were bystanders. Sometimes they were collaborators. They’re never there to embrace us.”
That’s not quite true, he amended. “I am here because of one lady.” That’s his nanny, Bronislawa Kurpi, who hid him in their native Poland until World War II ended. “But can you imagine if there had been 100,000 ladies like her? Imagine how many Jewish children there would have been.
“No, most of the good people have been bystanders. Silent bystanders. Everybody is against hate — how about being against hate directed at Jews?
“History doesn’t change, and the United States is not immune from the trends that we see in history,” he said.
So what do we do?
“There is a lesson for the Jewish community that I hope we learn,” Mr. Foxman said. “Security. I have always said that as the world changes, we will have to worry about our security, but we haven’t. That museum — a public Jewish institution — wasn’t secured. We didn’t learn from Europe. European Jewish institutions, for better or worse, took security seriously. It engaged security for its own institutions, and to a large extent it also engaged with the authorities.
“But we hoped that it wouldn’t happen. We were optimistic that it wouldn’t happen. We said, ‘No, this is America. It won’t happen here.’
“But we didn’t do what we need to do. We react after the fact, not before. Security has to be 24/7. Not when something happens. Before it happens.
“Yes, money might be an issue. We’re out there advocating and lobbying Congress for money. But you know what? This is a primary responsibility. Jewish life is a primary responsibility. Jewish life should be sacred, and therefore the number one priority is protecting Jewish life.
“We have some organizations that didn’t really give security the full attention, the full effort, the full funding that it deserves. Now, I hope that awareness of this tragedy doesn’t fade in two weeks. I hope that people won’t be very conscious about Jewish security — and then we’ll move on. We have to take it seriously. We have to invest time and money. We have to make sure that the authorities are more directly involved.
“I think that all this has to be a priority, because Jewish life has to be a priority.”
Although Jew-hatred has not changed over the millennia, Mr. Foxman said, at times going underground and at other times oozing and sliming to the surface, coming from both the right and the left, something else has changed. That’s social media, which has made antisemitism, along with other forms of hatred, more accessible, more widespread, and in a way more respectable.
“Social media is something we talk about, we condemn, we bemoan, but I don’t think we’ve come together to recognize it as the new danger,” Mr. Foxman said. “This is the superhighway that legitimizes hate in nanoseconds, globally and locally. We see it. We saw it last week.
“To the extent that hate is on social media, the internet reinforces it. Rodriguez” — the alleged (and caught red-handed) D.C. murderer — “was reinforced by others. Hateful words lead to violence.
“I think that we need a strategy,” Mr. Foxman said. “The American Jewish community needs to come together and put this issue, the danger to our safety and well-being on top of our agenda. We have to force Congress, politicians, and corporate leaders to do that as well. For a long time we have tried to work with them. We have task forces. Several times I was asked to be on the task force of various corporate groups. But I always refuse, because I see it as a Band-Aid. They want to show, see, we have these groups! But industry has not taken it seriously. The corporate industry of social media has not taken it seriously. The political world has not taken it seriously.
“But for us, it is a question of life and death. It’s a question of the safety and security of Jews everywhere. Therefore, we have to take it seriously. We have to make social media, after physical security, our number one social advocacy issue.
“I wrote a book about this, ‘Viral Hate,’ about 15 years ago. It was a yawn. No one took it seriously. It is very, very serious.
“I think that we have to get the best legal minds together, and we have to redefine free speech. Free speech is not hate speech. In the last 18 months, there has been a defense of hate speech as free speech. They are not the same thing. There is a difference between saying ‘Free Palestine’ and ‘Gas the Jews.’ But on the college campus, there has been no difference. All of it was defended under the rubric of free speech. Yelling against the Jews on the internet is like yelling fire in a theater, because it has a direct effect on people who act out violence against the Jewish community.
“So we have to redefine free speech. We have to have the authorities — whether it’s campus authorities or political authorities — that just as the N-word in unacceptable, there are words against Jews that are unacceptable. Today, there are no consequences to hate speech when it comes to Jews. Thank God, those consequences are applied to African-Americans. You can’t use the N-word today on a college campus or in a classroom or in a public forum. Thank God, that’s not free speech. That’s hate speech. If you say ‘lynch’ today, that’s hate speech. But somehow there is a tolerance and indifference and apathy when hate speech is directed to Jews. That has to change.”
Mr. Foxman believes that “to some extent, Donald Trump has tried to do that. But he started with a sledgehammer. He’s trying to make consequences for hate speech directed at Jews. But he’s also destroying institutions, universities, and due process.
“On the one hand he recognizes that there needs to be consequences to hate speech directed at Jews, but the sledgehammer so undermines some of the basic principles that have protected us that it can become counterproductive.”
Mr. Foxman also believes that Mr. Trump is not antisemitic, and that it is important to thank him for what he’s done to help the Jewish community. But, he also believes, the sledgehammer approach “undermines some of the basic protections that the Jewish community has had.
“Civility has served us well,” Mr. Foxman said. “Truth has served us well. Trumpism has destroyed both civility and truth. So while he condemns antisemitism and has taken actions to combat it, some of his actions undermine the basic institutions and values that have served the Jewish community throughout the years.
“Therefore, as I have said time and again, Jews have to walk and chew gum at the same time.
“We have to be able to say ‘Thank you, Mr. President, for condemning antisemitism, for making there be consequences for antisemitic behavior and antisemitic hate speech. But we also have to be able to say, ‘No thank you for trying to destroy academic institutions. No thank you for trying to dictate what those institutions should teach. No thank you for demonizing immigration and immigrants.’
“I don’t understand why Jews cannot say thank you and no thank you. We somehow feel that we have to go 100% either way. Either he’s our enemy or he’s totally our friend. The truth is that he’s a little bit of both. We should be able to say that, and we should be able to say it clearly. This we value and we appreciate and thank you, and this we don’t value and we don’t appreciate and no thank you.
“We are so polarized that it’s all or nothing, and it shouldn’t be all or nothing.”
How does Israel fit into this?
“Israel’s part of the problem of polarization,” Mr. Foxman said. “I think that the situation in Israel explains why segments of the American Jewish community aren’t willing to say yes thank you and no thank you to the American government, the way I am, because they feel that Israel needs the support of the American government, and the support of Trump, to such an extent that they’re willing to be quiet.
“But I don’t think that we can afford to be quiet on issues which, at the end of the day, will undermine the status and position of Jews and minorities in this country.
“In the future, Israel is going to need America to be a strong, stable, democratic country. America is still the only country in the world that always stands with Israel. Sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less, but it’s always been there, and Israel will continue to need it.
“So that’s part of our dilemma. Jews who feel that the threat to Israel’s safety and security as their number one priority feel an obligation to embrace Trump 100%, because of what seems to be his support for Israel.
“I’m not sure what that support is, because if Joe Biden had done some of the things that President Trump had done in his last visit to the Middle East, we would have been up in arms. The Republicans would have been up in arms.
“Why is Bibi Netanyahu surprised when Trump goes after the Houthis only when they attack America? When America negotiates with Hamas? There is a double standard, and it’s much greater today because we’re in a post October 7 world.
“Thank God for Joe Biden. We have to be able to say that time and time again. Joe Biden did in fact help save Israel in its moment of need. But the dependency is such that many American Jews feel that they have to give total loyalty and appreciation to Donald Trump, despite the things that he’s doing, which, in the long run, will undermine our safety and security.”
At this point in our conversation, Mr. Foxman’s essential optimism dug itself out and presented itself.
“Listen, though,” he said. “We’ve had tougher times. The Jewish people have experienced much tougher times. Israel has been through tougher times, and now, at least militarily, it’s in a better position than it’s been in for the last 10 years. It has removed Iran as an existential threat. For the moment, it has removed Hamas and Hezbollah and Syria as immediate threats.
“I do worry about Israel. I worry about the internal splits. The polarization in Israel is much, much deeper than it is in the United States, because there is so much more at stake there. Differences there can be a matter of life or death. Differences here, thank God, still don’t reach that level.
“But still, do you want to know what keeps me up at night? It used to be the existential threat of Iran. Now, what’s keeping me up is the relationship between the United States and Israel, plus the internal polarization in Israel.
“Israel is a country split within itself, and we know historically that our great enemy is not from without but within. It’s sinat chinam” — baseless hatred. “On October 6, Israeli pilots said they wouldn’t fly to defend the country. October 7 united the country. On October 8, everybody flew and served. So the danger from without almost overcame the danger from within.
“But as Israel becomes more secure — as it’s now starting to be, in many ways — the internal split gets more serious. We talk about unity, unity, unity, but we’re not practicing for unity. So I pray for a miracle there.
“We have had so many miracles in Israel! The one we need now is to unite the people of Israel as one.”
He concluded with an extension of his optimism. “They always say that it’s difficult to be a Jew, but they leave out the other part. It’s good to be a Jew. There’s a sense of pride, a sense of belonging, a sense of continuity. It doesn’t always come easily — but thank God we have it.”
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