This summer, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani described American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American pro-Israel advocacy organization, as "monsters." More than 850 members of the Jewish clergy have signed an open letter calling on him to apologize. I sympathize with the impulse behind the letter but believe it was counterproductive.

Mamdani's pronouncement was what tech folks call a feature, not a bug. His refusal to retract the characterization only enhanced his political standing among his acolytes and potential followers by demonstrating his willingness to stand up to alleged malefactors. He seemed perfectly happy to portray AIPAC's lobbying and political advocacy, themselves protected by the First Amendment, as something sinister.

Less than two days after Mamdani posted a video viewed tens of millions of times that branded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was stabbed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The suspect allegedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he fled and has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime. Hours after the attack, Rabbi Benjamin Spratt of the nearby Congregation Rodeph Sholom wrote: "Leaders bear responsibility for the climate their words create. Words do not wield the knife, but they make a target imaginable and violence justifiable."

Sen. Bernie Sanders is both Jewish and an icon for progressives. He first accused Israel of genocide in September 2025. Joel Rubin, a former Sanders campaign staffer, says his former boss has been able to "shove into our system the most categorically anti-Israel, antisemitic candidates that we've seen in a generation ... and it's by design."

Other so-called progressives recklessly hurl accusations that Israel is "genocidal" and "settler colonial," failing to mention that Israel's population is over 20% Arab and that it has been the homeland of Jews for 3,000 years. Even if the accusations are ahistorical and false, they fan the flames of antisemitism.

The rhetoric of the progressive left has coincided with a series of deadly and near-deadly attacks targeting Jews and Jewish institutions. This past March, in what the FBI called a "Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism purposely targeting the Jewish community," a man rammed a truck into a Michigan synagogue and opened fire. Last year in Boulder, Colorado, a man who wanted to kill "all Zionist people," hurled Molotov cocktails that led to the death of 82-year-old Karen Diamond. In an attack last May that resulted in federal hate-crime and terrorism-related charges, two attendees at an event at the Capital Jewish Museum were murdered. Also last year, a man angry over the Gaza war firebombed the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, pleading guilty to attempting to murder Shapiro while his family and other guests were inside.

When American Jews see murderous attacks in this country and slogans threatening their very survival, how can they not feel threatened? The threats are only magnified when marchers advocate for Hamas, whose 1988 charter called not only for the elimination of Israel but for the murder of Jews. Who can blame American Jews for feeling targeted?

Like Bernie Sanders, some Jewish politicians have embraced accusations that Israel is committing genocide. State Sen. Scott Wiener, who is running for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat in San Francisco, did just that, but it was not enough. He was still accosted at the San Francisco Trans March, where one participant was heard yelling, "It breaks my heart that someone who wrote good legislation for queers is so f****** terrible on Gaza." Wiener said he left the rally after being "harassed, threatened, and physically intimidated." Democratic congressional nominee Brad Lander, who'd accused Israel of genocide during his campaign, was heckled as a Zionist at a protest outside New York's Madison Square Garden in August. While some participants welcomed him, protesters were caught on video screaming, "We don't want no Zionists here" and calling him a "Zionist ballsack."

Several leading Democratic presidential hopefuls have pledged to reject AIPAC-linked donations, which commentator Bill Maher asserts "gives permission to actual antisemites to say, see? We're right about Israel." Democratic Rep. Adam Smith reports that amid efforts to pressure him to cut off aid to Israel, activists vandalized his home, set a fire in his driveway and physically assaulted a staff member.

I've heard Jewish acquaintances explain away the rise in Jew hatred by pointing to policies of the Israeli government. That's even though the definition of antisemitism used by the United States and over 40 other countries cites "holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel" as conduct that can constitute antisemitism.

It's not that Israel's government cannot be criticized. Shame on Netanyahu for not stopping violence committed by thuggish Israeli civilians against West Bank Arabs. I fervently wish there'd been fewer deaths among noncombatants in Gaza.

I am writing, though, as a patriotic American speaking out against antisemitism in the United States. The fight for what this country can and should stand for — religious freedom, equality, opportunity and truth — is far from over.

Way back when, I wrote my graduate thesis on British foreign policy just prior to World War II. Here's what I learned: appeasement doesn't work. It didn't work against the Nazis in 1938, and it won't work against American progressives who embrace antisemitism today.

Appeasement, equivocation and silence in the face of antisemitism endanger all Americans. As Samantha Power, the non-Jewish former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has observed: "Rising antisemitism ... is often the canary in the coal mine for the degradation of human rights more broadly."

Martin Luther King Jr. put it this way in his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail": "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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