Like so many others, I grew up with a set of ironclad rules. Some were, of course, innocuous. “Throw out solids in the garbage and liquids in the sink.” “Smell the milk before you drink it.” “Don’t talk back to your mother.”
Others, however, were less so. “Never let your passport expire.” “Always have something you can sell, so you can flee the country if necessary.” “Never get too comfortable where you are.”
At the age of six, I carefully picked out a hiding spot in my attic, where I thought I would be safe from the Nazis who still haunted my great-grandmother’s stories and eyes. At the age of 13, someone let me know that I should “go back to the ovens” and that “it was a shame that Hitler hadn’t succeeded in finishing the job.” At the age of 16, I watched a campaign video in my hometown where the local Republican Party candidate warned that “if they win, we lose.” The “they” in this case referred to the local Orthodox Jewish community, of which I was a part of. At the age of 17, my Uber driver shook her rosary in my face in an attempt to exorcise me once she realized I was Jewish. Whatever my other identities may be — queer, female, progressive — there is one identity that will always be at the forefront — I am a Jew. And to be a Jew, especially right now, is to be terrified.
The Israel-Hamas war is at the forefront of many minds right now — mine included. I have been in a constant state of mourning since Oct. 7, along with so many others. Palestinians and Israelis alike have been through the unimaginable in the last few weeks. But the terror and loss don’t stop inside the region, unfortunately. Muslims and Jews outside of the Levant have been struggling with a shocking surge of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, all while mourning and fearing for their families and friends within Israel and Gaza. It is something that is impossible to put words to if you are not forced into the position of living it. I am neither Palestinian, nor Muslim, and I will therefore never be able to do justice to what they are living through right now. But I do have the qualifications to explain the current Jewish experience, which is one of abject fear. Throughout all of the chaos and grief, Jews worldwide have been faced with a cold, hard truth that we’ve heard a million times from our grandparents, but that we never wanted to accept.
We are not safe.
In the United States alone, where Jews have long enjoyed a feeling of safety, anti-Semitic hate crimes have skyrocketed almost 400 percent since the conflict began. Jews around the world have been glued to our phones — not only to watch the war worsen by the day, but also to watch with sickening recognition as many of our peers turn on us and a familiar anti-Semitic vitriol floods the world. In Dagestan, Russia, a violent mob stormed the Makhachkala Uytash Airport (MCX), stopping random passengers to demand their passports as proof that they weren’t Jewish. The reason? They had heard news that there was a flight from Tel Aviv landing in the airport that day. Of course, advocating for the dignity, safety and freedom of Palestinians is not anti-Semitic. Every single person deserves to live in peace and safety, regardless of what side of the border they were born on. But mobbing an airport in an attempt to attack Jews? To conflate standing up for innocent Palestinians with inciting violence against innocent Jews is both anti-Semitic and Islamaphobic and achieves nothing other than to utterly derail the movement.
But in what is perhaps the most terrifying trend of all, college campuses have quickly transformed into places where anti-Semitic violence and rhetoric have been able to flourish since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. At Stanford University, a professor downplayed the Holocaust, justified Hamas’ slaughter of more than 1,300 innocent Israeli civilians and forced their Jewish students to identify themselves and subsequently move to the corner of the classroom. At The Cooper Union, a group of Jewish students had to be locked in the campus library for their own protection while an anti-Semitic mob attempted to physically batter the doors down. A discussion board from Cornell University has recently gone viral for its vile anti-Semitic threats toward the Jewish students (8). “Watch out Jews,” posted one user. “…Nowhere is safe. Your synagogues will become graveyards. Your women will be raped and your children will be beheaded.” Other posts echoed these sentiments, describing in graphic detail how they wanted to stab and rape the Jewish students on campus.
Of course, some of the anti-Semitic incidents unfolding on college campuses can be easily misconstrued as activism. For example, in universities worldwide, students have been filmed ripping down posters of the kidnapped Israelis — innocent men, women and babies. To these people, I only ask — does the massacre of Jews and the kidnapping of their children further the cause of a free Palestine? Or is it misappropriating a movement that doesn’t deserve to be attached to such vile anti-Semitism and therefore derailing and delegitimizing it in the eyes of millions? To everyone reading, I implore you — please stand up for us. Condemn the murder of Jews and the assaults on our community worldwide. Listen to us when we say that something is anti-Semitic, and that it scares us. Stand up for everyone — nobody should have to live in fear.
Because right now, your silence is deafening, and your Jewish friends are hearing it all too well.
Sarah Ash is a sophomore majoring in English.