MORNING GLORY: Antisemitism is shameful and evil. None of us should ever be neutral on such hate
An attack on any Jew in America is an attack on every Jew in America.
It does not matter if the victim of the intended violence was murdered, maimed or escaped unharmed.
It does not matter in the least if the targeted Jew was an American, an American-Israeli, a Jew from a third country, or a gentile mistaken for a Jew or an Israeli, or a supporter of either the Jewish people or the state of Israel.
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The perpetrators of the violence are all evil. Deeply evil. Diseased in mind and soul.
Their accomplices, whether in the display of action or via expressed or unexpressed sympathy —and including the apologists thereof attempting to explain motives — all are evil.
As a Catholic Christian, I believe in Hell. Those who indulge antisemitism in act or word or in the silence of their mind are headed to Hell absent genuine repentance. For antisemitism is the exact opposite of Christian beliefs and practice.
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The "Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love," stated the document, "Nostra Aetate of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, "decries hatred, persecutions, displays of antisemitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone." So, let’s hear this in some homilies this Sunday and from the pulpits of Protestant churches.
The Catholic Church’s doctrine was unequivocal in its condemnation of antisemitism: "At any time." By "anyone."
Including, of course, the attacks on Jews in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, 2025, the murder of two Israeli diplomats in Washington, D.C. on May 21, 2025, outside the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, and the firebombing of the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on April 13, 2025.
Antisemitism extends far back in the U.S. to the numerous attacks against Jews on American campuses and streets since October 7, 2023, and to the long trail of antisemitic violence before that horrific massacre which came primarily from the far right, including the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, on October 27, 2018, and the attack on April 27, 2019, at Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California.
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The "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August of 2017, like its predecessor proposed march of the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, in 1976, are more recent examples. (The march in Skokie never happened but was moved to Chicago after extensive litigation upholding the right of the antisemites to march.)
Those are just incidents in my memory. American antisemitism has a long and shameful history.
But so too does non-Jewish opposition to antisemitism have a distinguished pedigree which includes, most famously, President George Washington’s 1790 letter to the Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island.
The "father of our country" wrote then that the new nation he was helping build would give "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." President Donald Trump’s condemnations of the violence directed at Jews has been equally unequivocal.
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Good. There has always been clarity on this issue. Too many, however, dodge the horror. Where is the non-Jewish chattering class today? Mostly silent or mumbling or posting attempts to link the criminals to Trump, or Elon Musk or a dozen different excuses. "But, but, but" is the first refuge of the Jew hater afraid to go public.
There are some notable exceptions to the quiet or the equivocal. "The Editors" podcast from National Review of June 2, titled "Horror in Colorado," set an excellent bar of condemnation, but it has far too few equivalents in either the conservative or legacy press. Indeed, there are many accomplices to the ancient evil online and in print.
Silence is indeed complicity right now, and outright complicity in knowingly platforming antisemitism is especially repugnant at a moment when diseased minds seem poised to follow the examples of the criminals in D.C. and Boulder. Match meet gasoline.
Who and where, exactly, is today’s equivalent of the French journalist and novelist Émile Zola played a key role in defending Alfred Dreyfus through his famous "J'accuse" open letter, published in the newspaper L'Aurore in January 1898. (If you’d like to learn the outline of the Dreyfus affair, try the excellent 2013 novel by Robert Harris, "An Officer and a Spy." The complicated persecution of Dreyfus can be difficult to trace more than 125 years after the fact, but Harris does it for the reader in an excellent example of the good that historical fiction can do to repair the damage done by the collapse of elementary and secondary education in world history in the U.S.)
There are columnists and platforms of note. Have they filed yet? There are athletes and musicians and actors who are quick to rally to popular causes which trigger cascades of virtue signaling. Have they posted? I have yet to see a hashtag or open letter demanding the shaming and shunning of antisemitism in America. Perhaps such a statement is circulating now and about to appear. Perhaps a "We Are the World" is even now being rehearsed, recorded and set for release that will condemn this latest American variant of the ancient evil.
Thus far, though, the silence is deafening. Singer-songwriter John Ondrasik of "Five for Fighting" has set the example. Will anyone else from the vast community of media join him?
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor, and host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show" heard weekday afternoons 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/tv show today.
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