The Thin Line Disappears

For decades, people who opposed the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East have claimed they are anti-Zionist, not antisemitic; they hate Israel, not Jews. However, Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and the aftermath make it clear that whatever thin line may have separated anti-Zionism from antisemitism is gone.

That day, an Arab terrorist called his parents to brag about slaughtering Jews at Kibbutz Mefalsim: “Your son killed Jews!” he shouted jubilantly into the phone. “Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone! I killed her, and I killed her husband! I killed ten people with my own hands!”¹

Hamas has made it plain that its enemy is not only Israel; it is the Jewish people. The Hamas Charter states, “The Day of Judgement [sic] will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”²

Antisemitism from Hamas was expected. What was not expected was the massive celebrations of the attacks and the unabashed antisemitism on display throughout the world—including in the United States—as hordes flooded the streets to profess their Jew-hatred.

They are people like Patrick Dai, a 21-year-old Cornell University student in Ithaca, New York. He posted the following in an online public forum:

if i see another jew on campus . . . if i see a pig male jew i will stab you and slit your throat. . . . if i see another pig baby jew i will behead you in front of your parents. if i see another synagogue another [sic] rally for the zionist globalist genocidal apartheid dictatorial entity known as “israel”, i will bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews. . . . From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!³

And they are like Sarah Chowdhury, an attorney in the Illinois State Comptroller’s office, who sent this Instagram message to someone Jewish: “Vermin should have all been killed decades ago. . . . All zionists [sic] should pay.” She also said, “I’d rather put you in a gas chamber,” and “Hitler should have eradicated all of you.”⁴ She was fired.

In Russia on October 28, a mob stormed the Flamingo Hotel in Khasavyurt, looking for Jewish guests to lynch. The next day, “Death to the Jews” appeared on the wall of a Jewish cultural center under construction in Nalchik, and the center was set on fire.

That evening, a flight from Tel Aviv landed in Makhachkala.

A mob stormed the airport, surrounded the plane, and searched for Jewish passengers to attack. A mob also descended on a shopping mall, kicking in doors and hunting down Jews.

These people make no distinction between Jews and the Jewish State of Israel. They spew their antisemitic vitriol at both.

The gloves are off. The mask has been removed. And what we have long known is out in the open: Anti-Zionism is pure, unadulterated Jew-hatred.

In his powerful imprecatory psalm against Israel’s enemies, Asaph showed the inseparable connection between the Jewish people and the Jewish nation:

Your enemies make a tumult; and those who hate You have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, and consulted together against Your sheltered ones. They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more” (Ps. 83:2–4).

He pleaded with God:

Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Your name, O LORD. Let them be confounded and dismayed forever; yes, let them be put to shame and perish, that they may know that You, whose name alone is the LORD, are the Most High over all the earth (vv. 16–18).

Whatever they call themselves, antisemites are cursed (Gen. 12:3). Our prayer should be both for their defeat and for their salvation.

ENDNOTES

1. 1. “A Conversation Between a Terrorist and His Family” (youtube.com/watch?v=bACNYtaLBQI).
   2. “The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement,” August 18, 1988 (avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp).
   3. Jonathan Mong and Julia Senzon, The Cornell Daily Sun, “Posts Online Threaten Jewish Students and Center for Jewish Living,” October 29, 2023 (tinyurl.com/CORNELLantiS).
   4. Melissa Koenig, “Illinois comptroller’s office attorney fired for antisemitic ‘gas chamber’ comments,” The New York Post, October 20, 2023 (tinyurl.com/ATTYgenAntiS).
   

   Ty Perry is the assistant to the director of North American Ministries for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, a Bible teacher, and the host of Gesher podcast.