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Following Charlie Kirk’s Death, Jews Should Be at the Forefront of Defending Free Speech

Jonathan Sacerdoti

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A memorial is held for Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in Utah, at the Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Sept. 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara

There was a time, not long ago, when disagreement was something that Americans believed in. Not just tolerated, not just endured, but believed in. Debate was seen as the crucible of truth. A clash of ideas, a testing of convictions, a sign of a free people confident enough to confront each other with words. That time is receding fast. What is rising in its place is something far more dangerous.

Three events. Three different places. Three separate incidents of death.

On a university stage in Utah, Charlie Kirk is shot in the neck while speaking. On the steps of a Jewish museum in Washington, DC, two young diplomats are gunned down after a reception. On a pedestrian mall in Boulder, Colorado, a group of elderly Jews are attacked with fire while marching for hostages. They come from different places, but they belong to the same pattern: violence aimed not only at people but also at the ideas they represent. Together, they form a portrait of a society fraying at its edges, where ideological rage no longer waits for permission to act.

As of this writing, no suspect has yet been identified in Kirk’s killing, and no motive has been confirmed. But what cannot be denied is that a political figure was assassinated mid-conversation, on an American campus, in front of an audience, most likely for expressing mainstream views. This is not simply a personal loss or a moment of partisan outrage. It marks a rupture in the civic fabric — a killing carried out in the middle of a public forum, aimed not just at a man but at the act of speaking itself. It challenges the very assumption that we are still living in a society where speech, even if heated, is protected by something more than law, but by convention, by principle, by shared civic belief.

In Washington, the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, reportedly shouted “Free Palestine” as he opened fire on a young Israeli couple walking home from a diplomatic event. In Boulder, suspect Mohamed Soliman allegedly hurled homemade Molotov cocktails at Jewish activists, setting them alight while yelling the same phrase. These slogans are ideological claims made through violence and are attempts not to argue but to silence.

The American left and right are bitterly divided over many things. But this is not about left or right. It is about something deeper: whether one believes that speech is violence, or whether one still believes that speech is how violence is restrained; whether one thinks disagreement is dangerous, or essential; whether one can look at a speaker on stage and say: “I oppose everything he stands for, but he must be allowed to speak.” Like many of my contemporaries and friends who speak publicly on campuses, TV screens, and even in town squares, who write internationally on political and social issues, and who debate daily with those we disagree with, I know the importance of listening to others and protecting their safety even when their views and ideas are at odds with mine.

Charlie Kirk was many things: bold, intelligent, ideological. He was also a man who invited his opponents to challenge him, live, unfiltered, in public. He believed in the premise that truth emerges when ideas are contested openly. That belief cost him his life, and his murder cost us all something of our human civility.

When we are told that certain views are so harmful they cannot be spoken, that some identities are so vulnerable they cannot be criticized, that public speech must be constrained in order to protect public “safety,” we are being fed a logic that inverts liberty. And when taken to its limit, as it was on that stage in Utah, it replaces conversation with bloodshed and fear.

Jews, perhaps more than anyone, understand this pattern. It is one we have seen too many times before. The weaponization of ideology, the demonization of speech, the targeting of people for their beliefs. When Jewish people are firebombed in broad daylight in an American city for showing solidarity with those brutally kidnapped and tortured in captivity, something vital has already broken. When diplomats are murdered on American soil for the simple fact of being Israeli, that line is not being tested. It has already been crossed.

And when a public figure is murdered — possibly for his ideas, his religion, his support of Israel, or simply his refusal to remain silent — the connections become harder to ignore. The principle is the same: the belief that violence is a legitimate answer to speech, that murder is a form of rebuttal. This mindset is not formed in a vacuum. When university students chant for “intifada” and endorse “resistance by any means,” they help cultivate a culture in which violent responses to speech are seen as justifiable. The issues may differ, but the logic is the same: disagreement becomes a pretext for force.

This is not only a fight for Jews. But Jews have been among the first to suffer, and they know too well the pain that Charlie Kirk’s wife, children, fans, and followers are feeling. All decent people feel that pain now, not because they knew him, but because they see the absurdity of killing a man dedicated to the idea of open debate, free thinking, and listening to each other’s opinions.

The rest of us cannot respond with fear of speaking up. That is how terror and violence win. Charlie’s voice may have been silenced, but his message and his ethos must not be killed as well. While we cannot be parents to Charlie’s children, nor his wife’s partner and support, we can and must redouble our dedication to debate, discussion, and civility, to become the manifestation of his belief in reason, analysis, and discussion. Let us insist that America remains a place where people may speak, protest, argue, offend, and yes, even be wrong, without fearing that the price will be death.

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Jonathan Sacerdoti, a writer and broadcaster, is now a contributor to The Algemeiner.

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