Anti-Semitism Unleashed

President Trump’s decision to launch Operation Epic Fury against the Islamic Republic of Iran was an act of extraordinary courage and strategic genius—eliminating, in a matter of days, the world’s greatest state sponsor of terror, a regime racing toward nuclear capability, which every American president over the past twenty years promised to confront and none did.

What I did not expect was what came next. Not from Tehran. Not from the predictable chorus of European hand-wringers or United Nations bureaucrats. What came next came from within. Within hours of the strikes, my inbox filled with messages—not from leftists, not from progressives, not from the usual anti-war crowd—but from people who identify as conservatives. The messages were filled with profanity, threats, and hatred. They accused Trump of being a puppet of Israel, a pawn of Zionists, a tool of globalist Jewish financiers who pull the strings of American foreign policy. Some told me that Jews and Israel control the world and should be eliminated. Others said that any American who supports Israel is a traitor to his own country.

Days ago, two Israeli-American men—Lior Zeevi, forty-seven, and Daniel Levy, forty-eight, both originally from Haifa—were waiting for a table outside a restaurant at Santana Row in San Jose, California. They were speaking Hebrew to one another. Three men approached, and without provocation, began beating them. One of the attackers shouted a slur during the assault. A witness reported hearing them say “Don’t mess with Iran.” This was not an argument that escalated. This was a targeted attack on two men whose only offense was speaking their native language in an American shopping center. This is what emboldened hatred looks like. This is what happens when anti-Semitism is given permission to speak out loud.