In a video message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that Western governments act to oppose antisemitism and ensure safety for Jews. (Credit: @IsraeliPM via X)

There has been a more-or-less constant but relatively small level of antisemitism in the post-World War II United States, but it was widely shunned and those who gave voice to it were marginalized. Opposition to antisemitism was part of the "American Consensus" after the war and the Holocaust. Along with the breakthrough in race relations that accompanied the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the turn against antisemitism was sharp, sustained and broadly shared.

Although relations between the United States and Israel rose and fell, the acceptability of Jew hatred plummeted to near zero in the U.S., and from the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, American support for the State of Israel has been high and steady. 

Israel has become one of America’s most important strategic allies — a nuclear and intelligence superpower with the will to project hard power when necessary in its own national interest, which usually coincides with America’s. Prior to Hamas’ invasion of Israel and the massacre and kidnapping that followed in the Jewish State on October 7, 2023, attacks on Jewish synagogues and centers in the U.S. had been infrequent, though sometimes tragically deadly. 

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From the shooting on March 23, 1960, at the Congregation Beth Israel in Gadsden, Alabama, when a White supremacist wounded two of the congregants, to the deadliest antisemitic attack in the country’s history at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October 2018 in which 11 victims were murdered and six more wounded – attacks on Jewish gatherings were rare. 

When another murder and wounding happened at Chabad of Poway in Poway, California, six months later, concerns rose dramatically, but the United States did not thereafter witness more deadly attacks on Jews, and the concern focused on White supremacist hate groups. 

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman greets Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey at the Commemoration Ceremony on the fifth anniversary of the Tree of Life synagogue attack on October 27, 2023, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The shooting, the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, left 11 dead after a gunman stormed a synagogue in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood. (Getty)

Compared to the vast ocean of antisemitism in Europe and especially the Middle East, American Jews lived in peace and security — though with an awareness of the need for vigilance against the deranged.

That has changed since the atrocities of Oct. 7.

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