As a wave of anti-Semitic attacks swept America Democratic politicians were generally silent, with the noble exception of Congressman Ritchie Torres of the Bronx. And then, suddenly, progressive Democratic politicians began issuing near-identical statements condemning anti-Semitism alongside, as Bernie Sanders put it, “a troubling rise in Islamophobia.” (The exception was Ilhan Omar, who couldn’t bring herself to use the term “anti-Semitism.) Christine Rosen observes:

The only problem with this strategy of lumping together anti-Semitism and Islamophobia? There is no rise in Islamophobia in the country. According to the most recent FBI hate crime statistics, of the 1,715 victims of religiously motivated hate crimes in 2019, 60.2 percent of the victims were Jews while 13.2 percent were Muslim. The most recent wave of attacks has targeted Jews or people who were perceived to be Jews almost exclusively.

Perhaps Democratic party leaders realized that its members tweeting out genocidal slogans (such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”) and reprehensible lies (such as that Israel is an “apartheid” state) wasn’t great for the party’s image. At least, not while Americans watched footage of Jews being hunted down and beaten on American streets by Palestinian flag-waving gangs. But they also couldn’t countenance an unequivocal denunciation of anti-Semitism. Why not?

One reason: the left will only call out anti-Semitism when committed by people they can denounce as white supremacists, thus keeping their narrative about race intact. . . . Another reason? The linking of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as equivalent risks is part of a larger attempt by the progressive left to craft a narrative wherein support for Israel (Zionism) is itself viewed as a form of Islamophobia.

It’s not a coincidence that the members of Congress who are most eager to peddle misinformation about Israel and promote anti-Semitism are also the ones most enthusiastic about equating the current round of violent attacks on Jews with Islamophobia. It gives them cover from having to take responsibility for the ways in which their own rhetoric has encouraged anti-Semitic attacks.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.