Over the past few years, the rise in xenophobia and ethnonationalism across the country and around the globe has been accompanied by a shocking wave of increasingly open and all too often deadly antisemitism. As we have seen in recent months, both domestically and internationally, we still have much work to do to confront this persistent, long-standing evil.
As prejudice, division and hate continue to rear their ugly head and as Jews and other minorities endure pain and suffering as a result, J Street and our Jewish and progressive allies are firmly committed to the work of building solidarity, calling out antisemitism wherever it occurs, and standing up to the political forces and demagogues that exploit division, fear and ethnonationalism for their own selfish ends.
In the wake of the most recent escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine and very real concerns across our community about a further spike in antisemitism, we must also be clear that verbal or physical attacks on Jewish people in response to actions of the Israeli government are abhorrent, unjustified and antisemitic. Those who conflate Jewish identity with support for the actions of the Israeli government — or who seek to classify fair criticism of the Israeli government as a form of antisemitism — only divide us further and undermine the goal of freedom, security, justice and self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis.
J Street is committed to standing in solidarity across racial, political and religious lines — and within our own community — to build a future grounded in our core values of equality, freedom and justice and free from bigotry, discrimination and hate.