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<\/a>How to regulate synagogue protests? Marginalize anti-Israel blood libels<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\nJonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n When faced with a problem, the political class always knows what to do: They pass a law that, while not always useless, is usually more about dealing with appearances than substance.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the best way to understand legislation proposed <\/a>in the New York state legislature to regulate the protests outside of synagogues, which are the latest manifestation of the surge of antisemitism that has made itself felt across the nation since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n The bill<\/a>, which seeks to create a 25-foot buffer zone around houses of worship within which protesters may not enter, is the most tangible response yet to what happened last month when raging pro-Hamas demonstrators laid siege<\/a> to Park East Synagogue on Manhattan\u2019s usually quiet Upper East Side because of a Nefesh B\u2019Nefesh program<\/a> held there with information on how to go about moving to Israel. But after this week\u2019s equally shocking assault on individuals entering a pro-Israel event<\/a> at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles\u2019s Koreatown neighborhood, we may expect similar attempts to use the law to protect Jewish congregations across the country.<\/span><\/p>\n The impulse behind such efforts may be laudable, and the law may ease the plight of Jews who find themselves being accosted by antisemitic mobs in such circumstances. Nevertheless, the problem can\u2019t be fixed simply by a state regulation.<\/span><\/p>\n What needs to be recognized is that if synagogues are now as controversial and as much a focus of aggressive protest as abortion clinics once were, it\u2019s no longer possible to pretend that Jew-hatred in the United States hasn\u2019t reached a tipping point.<\/span><\/p>\n The analogy isn\u2019t arbitrary.<\/span><\/p>\n The New York bill is, in fact, an attempt to amend existing legislation that creates buffer zones around abortion clinics to make it possible for medical personnel and patients to enter and exit without harassment from pro-life protesters. Politicians aim to do the same when it comes to houses of worship.<\/span><\/p>\n But those appalled by what happened at both Park East and Wilshire Boulevard need to recognize that a law in place essentially to force police officers to do what they failed to do in those instances isn\u2019t the real problem. Yes, it may be necessary to make it harder for protesters to achieve their goal\u2014which, as one of the leaders of the mob at Park East made clear, is to make Jews \u201cscared\u201d and intimidate them into no longer hosting anything connected to the Jewish state. But even if the task of these anti-Zionists is made more difficult\u2014as the buffer zones around abortion clinics similarly impeded aggressive pro-lifers\u2014 the issue is the way that mainstream media and much of America\u2019s political class have essentially legitimized the reason why these thugs are turning out to harass Jews in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n After Oct. 7, the proverbial Overton Window of acceptable discourse has been moved to accommodate the pro-Hamas crowds. Not too long ago, support for the cause of destroying the one Jewish state on the planet was considered a sure sign not merely of hatred and bigotry, but of the sort of extremism that ought to be confined to the fever swamps of the far left or far right. These days, advocacy for such a genocidal goal is seen as a legitimate political and societal discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n This was best illustrated by mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani\u2019s reaction to the Park East incident, when he stated that he opposed demonstrations outside synagogues that aim to intimidate people but still chided the congregation, saying that \u201cthese sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law<\/a>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The reference was to the event being held there that night by the 20-plus-year-old Nefesh B\u2019Nefesh group that promotes immigration to Israel. Doing so is actually protected by international law. Later, his stand was justified in a piece published by the left-wing Forward<\/em><\/a> newspaper. It said the argument behind Mamdani\u2019s comment was an assertion based on the issue that since some Jews who make aliyah wind up in the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland in Jerusalem, or in Judea and Samaria (which Israel-bashers think ought to be Judenrein<\/em>), and are therefore \u201csettlers,\u201d the shul was essentially facilitating the creation of international criminals.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s an outrageous smear. But similar justifications were presented on behalf of the thugs who sought to disrupt the Los Angeles event because it was organized by the Israeli Consulate to discuss security strategies with a focus on AI innovations and included the Elbit Systems firm. Elbit is an Israeli technology company that is under fire because of its role in developing tools used by the Israel Defense Forces to defend the country from terrorism.<\/span><\/p>\n The \u2018genocide\u2019 blood libel<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t what Elbit or the IDF does. It\u2019s the fact that the bizarre red-green alliance of leftists and Islamists that oppose Israel\u2019s existence defines such efforts to protect Jews from the horrors of Oct. 7-style terrorist attacks\u2014incorporating rape, torture, murder and kidnappings\u2014as not merely illegitimate but \u201cgenocide.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s why the focus on the narrow issue of impeding the ability of threatening mobs\u2014who chant slogans about wiping out the Jews and their state to inspire fear in everyday citizens\u2014by making synagogues no-go zones misses the point why these outrages are happening. What those who are concerned by these incidents need to address is the way such vile arguments about \u201cgenocide,\u201d which are nothing more than modern blood libels about the Jews, have been legitimized by educators, union members, journalists and politicians who would never be seen shouting a rude remark or getting into a shoving match with a person entering a synagogue.<\/span><\/p>\n What those who want to respond to these incidents should be doing is not merely denouncing the vulgarians\u2014who are, to no small extent, succeeding in scaring American Jews\u2014for going overboard in expressing their hostility to Israel. Rather, they should stop treating the claims about \u201cgenocide\u201d and famine in Gaza and \u201capartheid\u201d inside the Jewish state as reasonable assertions any more worthy of debate than the claims of latter-day Nazis like \u201cgroyper\u201d leader Nick Fuentes about the Jews controlling banks, the weather and the world.<\/span><\/p>\n The ability of Hamas to get respectable liberal publications like The New York Times <\/em>and outlets like CNN<\/em> or MSNBC <\/em>(now known as MS NOW<\/em>) to legitimize their lies about Israeli actions has been an astonishing success. A generation of young people who get all their news from TikTok and other social-media feeds is an ideal audience for these falsehoods. They\u2019ve been convinced to believe that the exaggerated casualty figures\u2014in which all the Palestinian dead in the fighting with Israel, including terrorists, are counted as women and children\u2014are accurate. And they either don\u2019t know about or don\u2019t believe the truth about the Palestinian atrocities committed on Oct. 7 or just think the Israeli victims had it coming. They\u2019ve been conditioned by their educational experiences and what they read or hear from opinion leaders to think that Jews have no rights. They have been taught to believe that Jews are \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors, no different from the bad guys in the Jim Crow South or apartheid-era South Africa, rather than a mix of citizens from all parts of the world, including Middle Eastern countries that kicked them out long ago.<\/span><\/p>\n There are consequences when the Times<\/em> treats advocacy for the \u201cgenocide\u201d blood libel as a defensible opinion. The same is true when Democratic and Republican politicians listen to claims that the Jews are purposefully seeking to wipe out an entire people, rather than being the intended victims of Palestinian attempts at Jewish genocide. Their failure to push back against such outrageous falsehoods sends a message to the entire country that transcends any effort to regulate the most unruly protesters.<\/span><\/p>\n The willingness to normalize Mamdani is the most obvious symptom of what has gone on.<\/span><\/p>\n That a person for whom the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet is the driving force of a burgeoning political career\u2014he is, after all, 34, and the mayoralty will be his first significant political position\u2014and the organizing principle of his advocacy is an appalling turn of events. But rather than treat him as a pariah, as the chattering classes would behave if someone like Fuentes or David Duke, leader of the Ku Klux Klan, were elected to any office, he\u2019s been feted and fussed over by leaders on both sides of the aisle. That not only includes leading Democrats, but President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.<\/span><\/p>\n While they aren\u2019t wrong to praise his skill as a manipulator of the media, treating his antisemitic beliefs as merely a curious eccentricity or merely a questionable aspect of his appeal to young voters is to normalize such abhorrent views. Instead, they are treating anyone who dares to call him out as an \u201cenemy of the Jewish people\u201d<\/a>\u2014as Benjamin Tisch, the brother of New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, rightly did\u2014as the problem. That Commissioner Tisch publicly apologized for her brother\u2019s accurate comment undermines the notion that she will be an effective check on the mayor-elect\u2019s excesses. It also sends Mamdani, his Jew-hating advisers and members of the pro-Hamas mobs besieging synagogues, the message that they are legitimate actors.<\/span><\/p>\n The question isn\u2019t, as the sponsors of the New York synagogue buffer zone legislation said, how they can protect the free-speech rights of protesters without making the lives of synagogue-goers hell. Rather, it is how leading liberal opinion leaders, including many left-wing Jews who never miss an opportunity to bash the Israeli government or to bolster arguments that strip Jews of rights that no one would deny to any other people, now fail to treat antisemitism as a disqualifying character flaw. More than that, such sentiments should deem them unfit for office or a position of influence in academia or journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n We should welcome efforts to protect synagogue-goers. But what we should really be pushing back against is a cultural climate in which Israel and the expression of normative Jewish beliefs are now considered illegitimate. As long as that is true of mainstream American public discourse, the safety of worshippers or any other action of an identifiable Jew will always be in question.<\/span><\/p>\n Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em> How to regulate synagogue protests? Marginalize anti-Israel blood libels Jonathan S. Tobin If Jewish houses of worship are now as controversial as abortion clinics, then antisemitism has reached a tipping point that requires a stronger response than mere buffer zones. Security cameras hang across the street from the Park East Synagogue in New York City, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126402"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126427,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126402\/revisions\/126427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIf Jewish houses of worship are now as controversial as abortion clinics, then antisemitism has reached a tipping point that requires a stronger response than mere buffer zones.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n
![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Security-at-Park-East-Synagogue-in-New-York-1320x880.jpg\")
Security cameras hang across the street from the Park East Synagogue in New York City, which has been a target of antisemitic activity, and of late, anti-Israel protesters, , March 3, 2017. Photo by Drew Angerer\/Getty Images<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Wilshire-Boulevard-Temple-Los-Angeles-scaled.jpg\")
<\/span>Wilshire Boulevard Temple and Irmas Pavilion, June 2022. Credit: Downtowngal via Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nJustifying harassing Jews<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Zohran-Mamdani-Election-Night-4-scaled.jpg\")
<\/span>New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks on Election Night during a campaign rally in Brooklyn, N.Y., after winning the race, Nov. 4, 2025. Photo by Liri Agami\/Flash90.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nNormalizing Mamdani<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n![](\"https:\/\/me.jnsi.org\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Jonathan-S.-Tobin-480x480.png\")
<\/span>Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong> is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior<\/em> contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS \u201cThink Twice\u201d podcast, both the weekly video program and the \u201cJonathan Tobin Daily\u201d program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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