Don’t let America become a UK-style antisemitic hell-hole

The terrorist attack outside a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur left two people dead and the United Kingdom shaken. 

Yet it wasn’t an isolated act of madness. but rather the culmination of decades of moral decline in that country.

Jewish life has now retreated behind walls; families are quietly applying for second passports. 

A land that once prided itself on tolerance now feels unrecognizable to many of its Jews.

The United States is not there yet — but we’re heading in the same direction. 

Whether we become an unwelcome country for Jews depends on how our generation responds to the same rising antisemitism that has been essentially unchecked across the Atlantic. 

It’s really a test of whether our democracy still has a conscience — and a future.

Jew-hatred has surged in both the UK and US since Hamas’ massacre two years ago, when more than 1,200 Israeli civilians were brutally murdered and raped and hundreds were kidnapped into Gaza. 

Instead of uniting in condemnation, too many voices in Western academia, politics and media twisted the moment to fit their agendas — rationalizing and even celebrating terrorism as “resistance.” 

In this warped narrative, the slaughter of innocents became “bravery,” while Israel’s defense of its citizens was smeared as “genocide.”

And when elites excuse terrorism abroad, they normalize hatred at home. 

It has become abundantly clear that turning Israelis into villains pushes people to see Jews as oppressors and human-right violators. 

The result is a reversal of the lines between victims and perpetrators that fuel division, resentment and in time, violence toward Jews. 

In the United States, this same moral inversion is now rising on the left, as well as from radical Islamists — and it is a mortal threat to the pluralism on which the American experiment depends.

These groups share a conviction that America and the West are illegitimate systems that must be torn down.

They advance that agenda by branding Israel and the United States as colonial oppressors and sowing division from within.

This country is built on the promise that every citizen can live openly without fear. Antisemitism strikes at the heart of that promise. 

When hatred of Jews is tolerated, intolerance becomes permissible in public life.

And once accepted against one group, it spreads to others, until the entire body politic is convulsed with hatred, division and violence.

It is no exaggeration to say that saving the United States’ future depends on defeating antisemitism, just as it has worked to stamp out racism.

Americans must confront antisemitism wherever it appears, including within our own political camps.

Silence in the face of hatred gives it license to grow.

Yet outrage is not the proper response, either — at least, not by itself. 

We must turn our anger into action, exposing those who spread antisemitism, tracing their funding, demanding accountability from universities and media institutions and strengthening laws to protect the innocent.

The United Kingdom refused to do this.

For years, police refused to enforce hate-crime laws.

Universities tolerated mobs chanting for Israel’s destruction.

Politicians equivocated in the name of “balance.” 

The result is visible today: Jews living behind fences, a public desensitized to hate and a moral compass that no longer points north.

Alas, the same antisemitic currents that hollowed out British courage long before Oct. 7, 2023, have also been flowing through American institutions, especially academia and media, where hatred is often repackaged as “justice.” 

What began as the demonization of Israel is quickly becoming the dehumanization of Jews.

If allowed to spread further, this hatred will destroy America from within.

For centuries, Jews endured persecution at the mercy of rulers and mobs who could turn against them overnight.

America was different. 

Jewish immigrants arrived with little but built one of the most successful, civic-minded communities in the nation. 

The United States offered something new and urgently needed in Jewish history: protection under a democratic system grounded in liberty and equal rights.

Now that promise is being tested. 

The American idea — liberty, pluralism, equality under law — cannot survive if hatred of one group becomes acceptable.

The hatred we see on our campuses and in our city squares is not merely about political protests.

It is a stress test of our nation’s moral core. 

We can either accept antisemitism and the decline that follows, or we can prove that America still believes in itself.

Adam Milstein is managing partner of Hager Pacific Properties and co-founder and former chairman of the Israeli-American Council.