Haaretz: Is antisemitism racism?

Contact For More Information: Steve Rabinowitz Steve@BlueLightStrategies.com The Jewish American Security Act (JASA) Senate Bill 4576 and House Bill 9211 Statement Statement Submitted to the United States Senate and House of Representatives On Behalf of the Jewish Electorate Institute Senators and Represetatives: Thank you for the opportunity to submit a statement on behalf of the Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI) regarding the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act introduced by Senators Jacky Rosen and James Lankford. The legislation represents one of the most serious and comprehensive congressional responses to antisemitism in recent memory, addressing a crisis that has become impossible to ignore in American public life. We strongly support it. The United States is confronting an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents across multiple domains of civic life: on college campuses, at houses of worship, online, and in public spaces. The statistics are sobering, but beyond the statistics lies a deeper reality felt daily by millions of Jewish Americans: a growing sense that open Jewish life in America increasingly requires vigilance, security infrastructure, and institutional self-protection in ways that many believed belonged to an earlier era. This is not simply a Jewish problem. It is an American problem. The measure of a democratic society is not whether the majority feels secure. It is whether minorities can participate fully, openly, and confidently in civic life without fear of intimidation, exclusion, or violence. Antisemitism threatens not only Jews, but the broader constitutional and civic order that depends upon pluralism, equal protection, and freedom of conscience. The Jewish American Security Act appropriately recognizes this reality by approaching antisemitism not as a symbolic or rhetorical concern, but as a concrete public-policy challenge requiring enforceable protections, institutional accountability, and strategic investment. The legislation is especially valuable because it grounds its response in concrete empirical findings rather than abstract rhetoric. Congress notes, for example, that although Jews comprise roughly two percent of the American population, anti-Jewish incidents represented approximately sixteen percent of all reported hate crimes and nearly seventy percent of religion-based hate crimes in 2024. The bill further cites over 9,500 antisemitic incidents documented by the Anti-Defamation League in 2024 alone—the highest number ever recorded by the organization and an increase of 344 percent over the prior five-year average. Importantly, the legislation recognizes the connection between online radicalization and real-world violence. The findings section explicitly references attacks in Harrisburg, Washington, Boulder, Jackson, and West Bloomfield, connecting antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories to escalating acts of intimidation and terror. These references are important because they acknowledge what Jewish communities increasingly experience directly: antisemitism is not merely a matter of offensive expression, but a genuine security threat with potentially lethal consequences. At the same time, the legislation correctly avoids treating antisemitism as a uniquely isolated pathology detached from broader democratic concerns. The bill explicitly recognizes that antisemitism “undermines democracy and threatens the safety and rights of all Americans.” That observation is historically and politically important. Antisemitism has often functioned as a warning sign of broader civic deterioration, institutional mistrust, conspiratorial thinking, and democratic fragmentation. The legislation addresses three interconnected arenas in which antisemitism has become especially acute: higher education, communal security, and online radicalization. In each area, the bill seeks to strengthen existing federal obligations while improving coordination and transparency. First, the legislation’s focus on Title VI enforcement on college campuses is both timely and necessary. American universities occupy a unique role in democratic society. They are places where intellectual disagreement must be protected and robust debate encouraged. But they are also institutions bound by civil-rights law. The distinction between protected expression and discriminatory conduct is therefore critically important. In recent years, many Jewish students have reported environments in which harassment, intimidation, exclusion, or threats were tolerated or minimized under the language of political expression. Universities have often struggled to distinguish between legitimate political advocacy and conduct that creates a hostile educational environment. Inconsistent enforcement has contributed to confusion, distrust, and escalating tensions. The legislation’s requirement that the Department of Education develop a comprehensive Title VI framework regarding antisemitism is therefore an important step toward clarity and consistency. One of the bill’s most significant contributions is its effort to regularize and professionalize Title VI enforcement within educational institutions. Rather than relying solely on ad hoc investigations after crises erupt, the legislation would require federally funded institutions to designate trained Title VI coordinators, establish formal grievance procedures, maintain records, publish reporting mechanisms prominently online, and provide annual notice of students’ civil-rights protections. These requirements are not punitive. They reflect basic institutional responsibilities already expected in other areas of civil-rights compliance. Indeed, much of the frustration surrounding campus antisemitism in recent years has stemmed not from the absence of law, but from inconsistent implementation, procedural confusion, and administrative drift. The legislation attempts to address precisely that problem. Particularly noteworthy is the bill’s requirement that the Department of Education conduct biannual reviews of unresolved antisemitism complaints and develop resolution plans for complaints pending more than 180 days. This provision recognizes that delayed enforcement can itself function as a form of institutional failure, leaving students uncertain whether their concerns are being taken seriously. The legislation also establishes a Federal Title VI Clearinghouse on Safety, Security, and Best Practices designed to consolidate and disseminate institutional best practices concerning campus safety, dialogue, and mutual understanding. This is a constructive and underappreciated feature of the bill. Universities often operate in isolation, improvising responses amid crisis conditions. A centralized clearinghouse may help institutions learn from one another while developing more coherent and transparent standards nationwide. Critically, such a framework need not—and must not—serve as a mechanism for suppressing lawful speech or unpopular political viewpoints. Universities should remain spaces of vigorous intellectual exchange, including sharp criticism of governments, ideologies, political leaders, and political movements. But civil-rights protections are not negated merely because discriminatory conduct occurs within a politically charged context. The challenge is not whether debate should occur. The challenge is whether Jewish students are afforded the same protections routinely expected for other protected groups under federal law. The answer must be yes. A properly implemented Title VI framework can help institutions distinguish more effectively between speech that is protected, speech that is offensive but lawful, and conduct that crosses into targeted harassment, intimidation, or discriminatory exclusion. Universities require clearer standards not because free inquiry is unimportant, but because ambiguity has too often produced paralysis and selective enforcement. Second, the legislation’s emphasis on communal security funding addresses an unfortunate but undeniable reality: Jewish institutions in the United States increasingly function under persistent security threat. Synagogues, schools, community centers, and cultural institutions routinely devote substantial financial resources to physical security measures that many other religious or civic communities do not require at comparable levels. Armed guards, reinforced entry systems, surveillance infrastructure, and emergency preparedness have become normalized features of Jewish communal life. This normalization itself should disturb every American. The legislation’s reforms to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program are substantive and overdue. The bill would authorize $1 billion annually from fiscal years 2027 through 2031 for nonprofit security assistance, a dramatic increase reflecting the scale of contemporary threats facing Jewish institutions. Equally important, the legislation attempts to improve administrative functionality by streamlining reimbursement timelines, increasing technical assistance, clarifying eligible costs, and ensuring that states process reimbursement requests within ninety days absent extraordinary circumstances. These procedural reforms matter because security grants are only effective if vulnerable institutions can realistically access and implement them. Importantly, these investments should not be viewed as favors to a particular community. They are part of the government’s obligation to ensure that religious freedom is meaningfully exercisable in practice, not merely protected in theory. Religious liberty does not exist solely as an abstract constitutional principle. It exists when individuals can gather openly, worship publicly, educate their children, and participate in civic life without reasonable fear of violence. The legislation also wisely includes explicit neutrality provisions prohibiting ideological or religious discrimination in the administration of security grants. That language is critical. Security assistance should be allocated according to threat assessments and public safety needs—not partisan preference or ideological fashion. The necessity of these protections has become tragically clear through repeated attacks targeting Jewish institutions and individuals in the United States over the past decade. From Pittsburgh to Poway to hostage-taking incidents in synagogues and escalating threats against schools and community centers, antisemitism has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to move from rhetoric into violence. The legislation recognizes that prevention requires not only condemnation after attacks occur, but proactive investment before they occur. Third, the bill’s attention to online antisemitism reflects an overdue recognition that digital ecosystems increasingly shape real-world radicalization and harassment. Online antisemitism is not merely offensive content appearing in isolated corners of the internet. Social media platforms now function as accelerants for conspiracy theories, extremist narratives, harassment campaigns, and ideological mobilization. Antisemitic narratives travel rapidly across ideological subcultures, often merging older prejudices with contemporary political grievances and algorithmically amplified outrage. The bill’s online transparency provisions deserve particular attention because they reflect a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary information environment. Rather than mandating viewpoint censorship, the legislation primarily requires disclosure: platforms with more than fifty million monthly users would be required to publish regular transparency reports regarding antisemitic content moderation, algorithmic amplification, bot activity, foreign-linked manipulation, and enforcement practices. This is a notably restrained and democratic approach. Transparency requirements allow researchers, policymakers, civil-society organizations, and the public to better understand how online ecosystems contribute to radicalization without placing the federal government in the position of directly regulating lawful political speech. At the same time, the bill appropriately acknowledges that online environments increasingly function as incubators for offline violence. Antisemitic harassment campaigns, conspiracy theories, and dehumanizing rhetoric rarely remain confined to digital space. They shape perceptions, intensify polarization, and can normalize acts of intimidation or violence against real people. The legislation also appropriately recognizes antisemitism as both a domestic and transnational security concern. By requiring annual joint threat assessments from the FBI, DHS, and the National Counterterrorism Center regarding antisemitic violent extremism, Congress acknowledges that antisemitic networks increasingly operate across digital and international boundaries. These assessments may prove especially valuable in identifying the interaction between foreign disinformation campaigns, algorithmic amplification, extremist subcultures, and real-world mobilization. Antisemitism today often functions as a connective ideological tissue linking otherwise disparate extremist movements, making coordinated intelligence analysis essential. Indeed, one of the central strengths of the Jewish American Security Act is its bipartisan nature. At a moment when public trust in institutions is eroding and political polarization often paralyzes Congress, bipartisan cooperation on antisemitism sends an important message: the protection of minority rights and religious liberty must remain above factional politics. This matters because antisemitism has historically thrived when political actors treated Jews instrumentally—either as symbols in broader ideological struggles or as convenient targets through which social frustrations could be channeled. The refusal to reduce antisemitism to a partisan issue is therefore itself a democratic achievement. At the same time, successful implementation of this legislation will require prudence, balance, and ongoing oversight. Any expansion of federal authority in areas touching speech, education, or online regulation must remain attentive to constitutional protections and civil liberties. Policymakers should ensure that enforcement mechanisms are transparent, viewpoint-neutral, and carefully tailored to address discriminatory conduct rather than lawful expression. Similarly, universities must avoid approaches that transform civil-rights enforcement into ideological policing. Academic freedom and intellectual pluralism remain essential democratic values. Protecting Jewish students and protecting free inquiry are not mutually exclusive goals. In fact, they are mutually reinforcing when institutions operate with clarity, consistency, and fairness. Likewise, social-media transparency requirements should focus on accountability and disclosure rather than political censorship. Democratic societies must resist both antisemitic radicalization and the temptation toward expansive state control over lawful expression. The Jewish American Security Act is strongest precisely because it largely avoids false choices. It recognizes that one can simultaneously defend civil liberties and take antisemitism seriously; support free expression and insist on equal protection; oppose political violence while preserving democratic openness. That balance is essential. Finally, it is important to understand the emotional and civic significance of this moment for American Jews themselves. For much of the postwar period, American Jews often understood the United States as exceptional among diasporic experiences: a society in which Jewish flourishing, civic participation, and national belonging were genuinely possible at scale. That confidence rested not on naïveté, but on decades of integration into a constitutional order that broadly upheld pluralism and equal citizenship. The recent resurgence of antisemitism has shaken that confidence for many American Jews, particularly younger generations. When Jewish students feel unsafe displaying visible signs of Jewish identity; when synagogues require armed protection; when conspiracy theories spread widely online; when harassment becomes normalized in civic or educational spaces—the result is not only fear, but erosion of trust in institutions themselves. Legislation alone cannot solve this problem. Antisemitism is ultimately a cultural, social, and moral challenge as much as a legal one. But law matters. Institutions matter. Public signals matter. By advancing a comprehensive bipartisan response, Congress has the opportunity to reaffirm a foundational democratic principle: that Jewish Americans are entitled to the same security, dignity, and equal participation promised to every other citizen. The Jewish American Security Act represents a meaningful step toward that goal. We, the Jewish Electorate Institute, therefore, urge Congress to move this legislation forward thoughtfully, carefully, and expeditiously. Thank you for your consideration. JEI is the foremost non-partisan resource on Jewish voter political preferences, producing the top research, studies, programming, polling, and analysis critical to understanding the Jewish electorate.

U.S. JEWS VOTING DEM IN CONGRESS MIDTERMS YET QUESTION WHAT PARTY STANDS FOR, ESP. ON ISRAEL JEWISH R ’ s MOST ID ’ d AS PRO-ISRAEL, NEW POLL SHOWS United in Support of Israel ’ s Right to Exist as Jewish Homeland But Mixed Concepts of Zionism Jews see too much Israel criticism playing into antisemitism While most Jews feel too many Israel supporters use antisemitism claims to avoid legitimate policy debate WASHINGTON – The latest Jewish Electorate Institute (JEI) poll shows American Jews are voting heavily Democratic in the midterm election for Congress. At the same time, Jews have questions about what the Democratic Party stands for, particularly on Israel. Jewish Republicans, on the other hand, are most identified as being pro-Israel, which is also one of their biggest image advantages over Democrats. Meanwhile, amid debates in the Jewish community over Israel, war in Iran and election politics, American Jews are united in support of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people. However, there are mixed signals over the concept of Zionism, with the majority seeing Zionism favorably, but only a third calling themselves Zionists. There is also concern about how antisemitism is becoming a part of the increasingly heated discussions over U.S.-Israel issues, by both sides. A large majority of U.S. Jews see too many critics of Israel using language about Jews that play into antisemitism, whether intended or not. At the same time, a majority of Jews feel too many supporters of Israel use claims of antisemitism to avoid legitimate debate over policy. These analyses are based on the final release of the findings of a national survey of 800 Jewish registered voters, with an oversample to yield 600 Jewish women. The survey was conducted for JEI by The Mellman Group using a high-quality online national panel from March 13-23, 2026. The margin of error for the sample as a whole is +/- 3.5% at the 95% level of confidence (higher for subgroups). Previous JEI analyses and releases centered on U.S. Jews’ pro-Israel identity and their criticism of the government, support for pro-Israel spending in the primaries and the popularity of AIPAC, DMFI and J Street. Also, on what American Jews would likely discuss at the Passover seder tables.