https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/09/what-jonathan-chait-gets-wrong-about-the-threats-facing-american-jews/?utm_source=recirc-
EXCERPT:
He writes, “No recent development in American life has done more” than the GOP’s playing footsie with antisemites “to throw American Jews’ safety and civic equality into doubt.” That Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk represent the biggest threat to American Jews’ safety is nonsense; that they represent the biggest threat to our civic equality is nonsense on stilts.
As the New York Times reported in April, Orthodox Jews have borne the brunt of a new wave of antisemitic attacks, particularly concentrated in American cities. “We had Jews beaten and brutalized in broad daylight in Midtown Manhattan, in Brooklyn, in the Diamond District,” Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt told the Times. “What was remarkable about it was people acted with impunity. These were Jewish people wearing a kipa or who were visibly Orthodox being assaulted for being Jews, and that is brand-new.”
These vicious assaults, which constitute a large portion of the violent incidents perpetrated against Jews, are not committed by people taking their cues from Republicans. They are mostly the work of habitual offenders who’ve cycled in and out of state custody and often have histories of drug abuse or mental illness. What precisely motivates someone to punch a Hasidic yeshiva student on his way to synagogue is unclear, but it is safe to say that Trumpy conspiracy theorists have little to do with it.
Jews have also suffered as anti-Israel sentiment has boiled over into violence, with notable incidents occurring this past spring in New York and Los Angeles. While progressives continue to insist that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism — and to elect to Congress anti-Zionists who have trafficked in antisemitic conspiracies — anti-Zionists continue to have trouble with the distinction.