Last fall I taught our eighth grade Israel class, and something had changed. Students who once wore their Jewish stars or kippot proudly now told me they hid them, or thought about hiding them, when they went into New York city. They asked questions no Jewish child should ever have to ask. Is it safe to wear my Jewish star in the city? Should I cover the sweatshirt with our school logo, or a Jewish symbol on it? These were 13-year-olds learning that it can be risky to look Jewish. It broke my heart, and months later I have seen nothing to suggest it has gotten better.

They are not imagining it. The Anti-Defamation League and the World Union of Jewish Students surveyed more than seventeen hundred Jewish students across sixty countries. Most now hide their Jewish identity on campus. Even more hide any connection to Israel, just to feel safe. My 13-year-olds were learning at a young age what older Jewish students already know.

We are told there is nothing to worry about, because none of this is about Jews. It is about Israel, and criticism of a state is not hatred of a people. So let us test that claim, the way I would teach my students to test any principle that asks to be trusted.

If the criticism is with the State of Israel and not the Jewish people, then Jews who oppose Israel’s policies should certainly be safe from it.

They are not. Scott Wiener, a state senator in San Francisco, has called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide and pledged to vote against military aid. Activists surrounded him at a Pride event and drove him out, shouting about his Israeli handlers. Other officials there, who never took his positions, were left alone. Dan Goldman, a Brooklyn congressman openly critical of the Israeli government, was banned from a coffee shop as a genocide enabler, his money waved off as probably coming from AIPAC anyway. Their actual positions bought them nothing, because their positions were never the charge.

If the criticism is with Israel, then Jews with no connection to Israel should be safe.

They are not. Last September, a shopkeeper in Flensburg, Germany hung a sign banning Jews from his store. A reporter asked why. He said it was because of what the Jews were doing in Gaza. Not Israelis. Jews. Germany’s own commissioner for Jewish life called it antisemitism in its purest form. In the Yale Youth Poll last fall, close to a third of the youngest American voters said it was appropriate to boycott Jewish American-owned businesses to protest Gaza. Not Israeli businesses. Jewish American........

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