People sometimes tell me I’m brave for speaking up against antisemitism. I understand why they say it, but bravery isn’t how I experience it. I speak because I’m afraid of what happens when people recognize a danger and choose silence because speaking carries a social cost. I’m a father, and I think about what my children will inherit from the choices my generation makes now. That fear gives me a very clear reason to act.

For much of my life, I’ve been trained to recognize threats before they fully develop. As a soldier, you learn to notice the small things that don’t fit. A change in behavior, an unusual movement, a detail that would be easy to dismiss can tell you more than the obvious threat that comes later. You learn to pay attention early because certainty often arrives after the situation has already become more dangerous.

That training stays with you. I use it when I walk into a room, when I teach self-defense, and when I look at the environment around Jews today. I see hostility becoming easier to express, Jewish students being intimidated, synagogues targeted, and Jews being expected to answer personally for decisions made by the Israeli government. Any one incident can be debated on its own. When the same type of hostility keeps appearing in different places, I pay attention to the pattern.

I’ve spent more than two decades teaching people to protect themselves, and one of the most common problems I see has very little to do with physical ability. People often recognize that something is wrong before they’re willing to accept what they’re seeing. They question their instincts, worry about overreacting, and give the situation more time because they want a harmless explanation. Sometimes that extra time helps. Sometimes it allows the threat to develop.

That same hesitation appears when people talk about antisemitism. They want more proof before using the word. They want to know the attacker’s politics, the protester’s intention, the larger context, or........

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