When free speech turns violent

The normalization of anti-Jewish rhetoric undermines universal principles of equality and human dignity.

Sarah N. Stern | June 5, 2025

A Rubicon has been crossed. As so often has happened to the Jewish people throughout history, the hateful words that have been delivered in academia, on the media and in town halls by certain politicians have resulted in violent atrocities on Jews in Washington, D.C., and in Boulder, Colo.

Somehow, the words “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free” have become an acceptable part of the American lexicon.

Does anyone even stop to understand the meaning of those words? “Free” of whom? Of Jews? Of the entire State of Israel?

This past Sunday, Mohamad Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian citizen on a visa that ran out, orchestrated a premeditated attack on a group of Jews peacefully drawing awareness of the 58 hostages who have been held captive by Hamas in Gaza for more than 600 days. Twelve people were seriously burned from his arsenal of Molotov cocktails, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

This is the second violent attack in a few weeks, including the fatal attack on Israeli embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim, 26, and Yaron Lischinsky, 30, whose entire lives were in front of them. They were targeted as Jews, visiting a Jewish museum for an event focused on diplomacy.

When will this horrific abuse of our First Amendment Rights end? On college campuses and in kindergarten through 12th-grade educational institutions, it’s forbidden to use incendiary rhetoric against blacks, Hispanics, Asians, the LGBTQ community or the handicapped. Why are Jews alone fair game?

Are people in the United States aware of the incident involving Tzeela Gez, 30, who was on her way to the hospital to deliver her fourth son when she was fatally attacked by a Palestinian terrorist? Doctors worked valiantly to try to save her baby’s life. Unfortunately, the infant, Ravid Chaim Gez, succumbed to his wounds and was buried last week next to his mother. Does anyone reading the American press even recognize this name?

This is simply a version of the hate imbued genocidal intention that was very much a part of the Third Reich. As Jeffrey Herf, a professor at the University of Maryland, has painstakingly documented, the Nazis planned to extend their “Final Solution” throughout the Middle East.

As Herf writes, “First, the distinctly genocidal and most dangerous aspect of Nazi Germany’s antisemitism did not lie in reprehensible racial biology that has understandably received so much attention. Rather, it lay in its paranoid, political accusation that a historical actor called ‘international Jewry’ had become the central driving force of modern history and Germany’s main enemy. Attacking and murdering Jews everywhere was the absurdly logical corollary of this assumption.”

How different is this from the Iranian- and Hamas-instilled propaganda that has penetrated throughout the Middle East and is now so prevalent on Western college campuses? Why are other forms of racism met with disgust, but the tenacity and resilience of Jew-hatred remain?

Iranian-controlled Press TV promotes the conspiracy that a secretive, shadowy and powerful Jewish network, referred to as “the Zionist movement,” acts behind the scenes to influence world affairs, which has been a central tenet of antisemitic tropes.

The selective outrage and silence surrounding antisemitism demand urgent attention. Included in this should be the immediate passage of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. It is not simply a question of moral inconsistency but a reflection of deep ruptures within American society. The normalization of anti-Jewish rhetoric undermines the universal principles of equality and human dignity. It transcends cultural and national boundaries; it is a global malignancy that festers wherever prejudice is tolerated.

Yet these lessons seem perilously forgotten, particularly when antisemitic ideologies are cloaked in political dissent or masked as criticism of governmental policies.

Addressing this issue requires more than condemnation; it demands revamping our entire educational system, renewing a commitment to political advocacy, and a real and genuine commitment to eradicating hatred in all its forms. Institutions must take active roles in fostering environments that reject antisemitism unequivocally, ensuring that this ancient hatred does not linger and metastasize in silence but is met with vehement opposition. Only then can we hope to create a society, at least in the West, that values humanity above divisive ideologies.

Sarah N. Stern is the founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a think tank that specializes in the Middle East. She is the author of Saudi Arabia and the Global Terrorist Network (2011).