Jason R. Epstein, Esq.

Many of us are scared. Not because one party won or lost, but because the idea of another Holocaust of the Jewish people no longer feels unthinkable. Many of you will laugh. You’ll call me a drama queen. You’ll insist it isn’t that bad. You’ll offer the cold reassurance that it’s only about “the Zionists,” or repeat the talking points of “Wolverine” “Senator El Sayed—whose stated aim is sharia law—whom MSNBC platformed while he boasted, “We must separate Judaism from Zionism.” All while clueless pundits collect their checks from Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood. Every accusation is a confession. Projection is real. The same old formula of Jew-hatred is now circulating worldwide: dehumanize with blood libels of “genocide” and “apartheid,” both of them demonstrable lies; delegitimize the only Jewish state in a region formed by successive waves of Muslim conquest; and destroy your own society for no reason other than hatred of Jews. This suicidal ideology—hating a people so much that you will wreck yourself in the process—is as ancient as the empires that collapsed while possessed by it. The proof of this downward spiral isn’t abstract. It’s sitting on our television screens. In a commercial supporting Abdul El-Sayed, a couple stands in a grocery store and calmly blames the price of eggs and bananas on Israel. They must “set that money aside for killing Palestinians,” the ad says. No retraction. No apology. Just the oldest lie dressed up as economic grievance. As Jews, we have seen this exact play before. The Soviets and Arafat branded Zionism as racism so the world could hate Jews with a clean conscience. In Berlin, the most assimilated, most “enlightened” Jews insisted they were simply Germans—until the enlightened society that had once celebrated them decided they were the problem. We watched a cultured, modern nation justify scapegoating a tiny minority until people could cheer, or simply look away, while their neighbors were dehumanized and destroyed. That is happening again. Jews are being squeezed with open venom from both sides of the political aisle. And the goal is the same as it has always been; to isolate us, to strip us of legitimacy, and to destroy the one refuge our people have left—Israel. I am the child and grandchild of people who were executed, brutalized, tortured, and stripped of their humanity. October 7 did not invent this hatred. It only tore the mask off. The ashes of the crematoria did not end it. The hatred simply mutated, learned new language, and returned as the polished “antizionism” of today—smiling while it places the blame for your grocery bill on the Jewish state and waits for the rest of the world to nod along.