‘This is the time for us to come together’

The situation facing American Jews is serious, Abraham Foxman said.

Mr. Foxman, who lives in Bergen County and is the longtime, now retired head of the Anti-Defamation League, pointed to the murders of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside the Jewish Museum in Washington two weeks ago, and the firebombing attempted murder of people gathered in Boulder, Colorado, at a weekly reminder of the hostages Hamas still holds in Gaza — both done by men yelling “Free Palestine” and looking to kill anyone they thought was Jewish. He also mentioned the arsonist who torched the home of Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro on the first night of Pesach, while his family slept. “The Jewish community continues to be in trauma,” he said..

“I’m concerned about the reactions I hear. I hear the words ‘anger,’ ‘fear,’ and ‘we are alone.’ I hear that there is hatred all around us.

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“That troubles me, because I think those words signal despair, and despair is not healthy.”

First, Mr. Foxman said, “I think that anger distorts the mind. Fear paralyzes the mind from taking action. And the reality is that there isn’t hate all over. Jewish organizations report antisemitism” — certainly the one he helmed did; it’s an important part of the ADL’s mission — “but we also should concentrate on the fact that 75 to 80 percent of the American people do not hate Jews.

“All we see is the violence and all we hear is the rhetoric of hate, which overwhelms the community with a feeling of despair, and that isn’t warranted. The overwhelming majority of the American people are decent. They don’t hate us. Maybe they’re apathetic. Maybe they don’t care. But they don’t hate.”

“We have to publicize the fact that it’s not all terrible.”

Second, he continued, “when it comes to the idea that we’re all alone — when you dig, you find support.” He mentioned strong statements backing the Jewish community from Maya Wiley, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and from the Legal Defense Fund.

The Leadership Conference’s statement says, among other things, this:

“The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights was founded by a cross section of African American, Jewish, and labor leaders who came together because they knew the fight for justice would only be won in coalition. Today, as we feel this pain and join in solidarity with the Jewish community, we are reminded of that mission and of Rabbi Joachim Prinz’s words from the March on Washington: ‘Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man’s dignity and integrity.’”

It concludes with this: ““Our hearts are with the Jewish community as we join the families of Yaron and Sarah in grieving their loss. May their memories be for a blessing.”

The Legal Defense Fund says this:

“To the Jewish community: you are not alone. We will continue fighting shoulder to shoulder with you for a society where all people can live freely and peacefully, without fear that they will be violently targeted because of who they worship, who they love, or how they look. Together, we will overcome hatred with courage, unity, and unshakeable moral clarity.”

Indeed, we are not alone.

“You have to dig for these statements because they don’t fit the needs of the social networks,” Mr. Foxman said. “When you go online, you see a lot of hate. There is a lot of good stuff embracing the Jewish community and condemning the violence, telling us that we are not alone, but you don’t see it because the algorithms don’t promote it. You have to go looking for it. But it’s there.

“The Jewish community should know that there are good people speaking out.”

Mr. Foxman told an ironic truth that his wife, Golda, had mentioned to him. “In the past, American and other Diaspora Jews felt secure, because Israel was there, and it was strong and vibrant,” he said. “Now, all of a sudden, it’s reversed. Israel feels more secure militarily than it did five years ago. It’s at a high price, but in the last year and a half it is defeating Hamas, defanged Hezbollah, and removed the existential threat posed by Iran. But Israel’s hard-won victory has spilled over to undermine the reputation and position of Diaspora Jews, especially in the United States.

“American Jews feel less secure because Israel’s victories have stigmatized Zionism and the Jewish people, blaming Jews for defending themselves. So now, Diaspora Jews who have used Israel as their security blanket now feel more under attack.

“Nonetheless, we have the obligation to continue to support Israel, Zionism, and Israel’s right to be an independent sovereign Jewish state, with the right to defend itself in the way it sees fit, not necessarily in ways that the European Union approves.”

The result of all this, Mr. Foxman said with urgency, is that “I think we’re in an international Jewish emergency period now. I can’t really talk about the global Diaspora community, but we have to go into a national emergency mode. We have to come together, all of us — the old leadership, the new leadership, legacy organizations, new organizations, volunteers, businessmen — to develop a strategy. We do not have a strategy at this moment of crisis. First and foremost, we need to look to ourselves, to see what we need ourselves, before we look at the outside.”

He has some concrete suggestions; he’s not sure they’d work, Mr. Foxman said, but it’s a start. “The world around us has changed dramatically in the last 10 years,” he said. It’s lost stability, respect, truth, and decency, and we’ve become more polarized than we have been before.

“My blueprint — and remember that this is just one man’s blueprint — I think that the first thing we have to focus on is security. Security, security, security. We saw, sadly, in both Washington and Boulder, that we cannot depend on law enforcement and security guards to do it.

“If you look at the films from Colorado, you’ll see that this man was running around for half an hour” — and remember that he was shirtless and carrying bottles of clear liquid — and there was no policeman or security guard in sight.

“Security has to be our goal, whether we get federal funding for it or not.”

His second idea, Mr. Foxman continued, is that “America needs a Billings, Montana, moment.” He briefly described what happened in that town in 1993, when a white supremacist group moved in and made life in town miserable, with hatred, racism, vandalism, and the ever-present threat of violence. “Someone threw a rock into a window where there was a menorah, and the next day the newspaper printed a menorah.” Many people across Billings cut those paper menorahs from the paper and pasted it on their windows, in a communal act of love trumping hate.

“America needs decent people to stand up and march, whether on a Sunday for the hostages or another day against antisemitism. Good people have to get off their couches or away from their computers long enough to say publicly, ‘We care about ending hate, and we care about the Jews.’

“We have to find a way to get them to that moment. Jewish people have to get the message out, and the general community has to show Jews that we are not alone.”

Then Mr. Foxman came to an idea that’s been at the top of his mind for some time now. “I think that we have to redefine free speech and hate speech,” he said. “The idea that there is a difference between them has gotten lost in the last two years, particularly on campus. We have to redefine those parameters to make sure that people know and understand that you can say ‘I love Palestine,’ but ‘Kill the Jews’ is hate speech. There has to be a way for people to come together and explore the difference between free speech that’s run amok and hate speech that’s being defended as free speech.

“And we have to reestablish consequences for antisemitic behavior in this country. We lost the idea that the behavior would have consequences, and without consequences people believe that they can get away with anything. Look what’s happened on campuses. God forbid if people think that they can get away with killing Jews in America, because they will do it.”

Mr. Foxman also talked about another issue that’s worried him for years. “When the digital intifada turns lethal, we have to act on it,” he said. “We can’t just talk about it and write op-eds about how terrible it is. I think that Congress has to act.

“I believe that President Trump truly means it when he says that he wants to stop antisemitism in America. If he does mean it, he should mandate his loyalists in Congress, on an emergency basis, to come together with the other side in a nonpartisan way to develop legislation that would remove the internet from seeing social media as new media. The companies are protected, and the hate speech they publish is protected as news.

“Well, it’s not news, and I think that we need legislation now to deal with it.”

Remember, Mr. Foxman said, that “we might despair about America, but there is no other America for Jews. Look at Canada, France, the U.K., Australia — none of them are America. We can fantasize about other options, but there aren’t any. So as we continue to defend Israel, we have to bring back truth and civility to America.

“I believe that if we come together and set a priority on containing hate, then we can promote that in the greater society. Now, everyone’s talking only to themselves. I don’t see any strategy for dealing with this emergency.

“We say every year b’kol dor v’dor — in every generation. This is our generation’s challenge. We will overcome it. We say ‘gam zeh ya’avor’ — this too shall pass. The Israelis say ‘ain lanu eretz acheret’ — we have no other country. Well, we Americans also have no other country.

“Israel needs America, and American Jews need Israel. We need each other. This is the time for us to come together — the best of our brains and talents. This is about it. It is not about them. And we still are not united with one voice. We must be. We have to be able to put aside our political differences, at least for this moment.

“I don’t care if you’re left or right. The future of the Jewish people in America is at stake. It’s bad on the left. It’s bad on the right. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to come together. Politics should not dictate what the solution should be.

He summed up the community’s position as he sees it now. “We cannot afford to wallow in pity, fear or anger,” he said. “We need strategies to conquer our enemies.”