Jewish people are being stabbed in Brooklyn. The incoming New York City mayor openly questions Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish homeland while surrounding himself with transition advisers who have trafficked in antisemitic rhetoric. Prominent cultural figures use their platforms to denigrate Jews, and long-dormant conspiracy theories are once again treated as acceptable public discourse. American Jews have every reason to feel unsettled. Antisemitism is no longer a fringe phenomenon; Israel is increasingly cast as a moral outlier; and institutions on all sides of the political spectrum, many that once projected stability, now appear ambivalent or openly hostile. Jewish advocacy has responded with urgency, volume, and exhaustive documentation of the threat. It has not consistently done what is most needed: persuade the country.

The problem is not that American Jews are wrong. The problem is that we are too often arguing inside a framework that resonates primarily with ourselves.

Antisemitism matters. It should alarm every decent person. Still, most Americans do not organize their political or moral lives around Jewish vulnerability. They organize them around America itself: its values, security, moral confidence, and future. Advocacy that fails to meet Americans where they actually live will continue to sound narrow, even when it is correct.

The crisis unfolding on American campuses illustrates this failure clearly. The explosion of anti-Israel activism is frequently described as a Jewish emergency, because it so often sounds targeted at Jews and at Israel. Surprisingly, that description understates both the scale and the danger of what is happening. This is not merely a........

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