Congress and the Antisemitism Crisis

An indifference that allows Jew-hate to grow in the dark.

by Hugh Fitzgerald | July 4, 2025

The civil rights scholar Kenneth Marcus has just appeared before a Congressional committee hearing on “America’s Battle Against Antisemitic Terror.” His testimony on the seemingly inexorable rise of violent antisemitism across the land is blood-curdling. More about Marcus, and his plea for congressional action, together with chilling examples of antisemitism, can be found here: “Jewish Civil Rights Scholar Urges US Congress to Respond to Antisemitism Crisis,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, June 27, 2025:

Civil rights scholar Kenneth Marcus on Tuesday implored US lawmakers to recognize rising antisemitic violence as the civil rights issue of this era and enact a robust policy response to it before the country is irreparably harmed.

Marcus, who is chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the George W. Bush administration’s Education Department, made the remarks during a US House hearing titled “Rising Threat: America’s Battle Against Antisemitic Terror.” Joined by other prominent Jewish civil rights activists, including Debra Cooper of the End Jew Hatred nonprofit, he stressed the urgency of what has become an unprecedented crisis.

“In 2025, Jewish Americans are under attack in our schools, places of work, health care settings, and on the streets of our major cities,” Marcus wrote in testimony shared with The Algemeiner. “In April, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence was set ablaze on the first night of Passover, targeted for being both Jewish and a vocal supporter of Israel. Here in DC, two Israeli Embassy staffers were brutally gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum by a man shouting, ‘Free Palestine.’”

He continued, “This violence is not occurring a vacuum. It is the product of a dangerous convergence of anti-Zionist extremism, support for designated foreign terrorist groups such as Hamas, and institutional complacency across key sectors of American life.”…

In Boston last week, anti-Israel activists targeted Israeli consulate staff by distributing a threatening flyer which included their pictures and names. One of the targeted officials, Consul General Benjamin Sharoni, issued a statement, saying that the flyer “is bullying, it is an intimidation, and a call to hostile action.” Meanwhile, the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said “it is deeply troubling in the current climate, where anti-Israel incitement has directly led to the brutal murder of two Israeli embassy staff members.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the American Jewish community has been battered by antisemitic hate incidents throughout the country, forcing law enforcement to stay hot on the trails of those who perpetrate them amid a wave of recent outrages.

Last Tuesday, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland announced that it charged Florida native Jackson Traylor, 26, with sending baleful antisemitic messages which alluded to Nazism and the Holocaust. If convicted of the crimes, he could spend up to two years in federal prison.

“Go burn in an oven like your ancestors,” Traylor allegedly texted his victim. “Burn in a god damn oven … Stupid Jew … Hey, Jew, been a while since we spoke. Let me burn you alive like your ancestors Hail Hitler.”…

Only two years? For invoking Hitler and threatening a new Holocaust? The law punishing this level of antisemitic hate speech obviously needs to be strengthened.

Marcus said on Tuesday that Congress must act to make a difference.

“Congress should consider additional measures to address this crisis,” he said. “Congress should, for example, require that courts and agencies consider whether an institution has stated its compliance with applicable federal laws and executive orders, including especially President [Donald] Trump’s Executive Order 13899 when determining whether their responses to anti-Semitism constitute ‘deliberate indifference’ to discrimination and harassment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”

Kenneth Marcus’ suggestions are sensible. It is not the full-throated embrace of antisemitism of some, but rather, the “deliberate indifference” of the many to that peculiar pathology that allows it to “grow in the dark” and to be ignored until it threatens to undo the social fabric. We are not there yet, says Marcus, but only if Congress now acts. Let facts be submitted to a candid world, about every aspect of antisemitism in our country, including especially the role of Muslim migrants in its spread, and of foreign governments, with Qatar at their head as the owner of the antisemitic channel Al Jazeera, that has been allowed to spread its venom from sea to shining sea unopposed.