Last month, for the first time in my life, many of my successful Jewish friends—names you likely know—called me, worried. They asked what they need to do to protect their families, and who will have our back if attacks on Jews keep spreading.
Ancient libels, banished from polite society after the horrors of World War II, are reentering the mainstream, shared to millions on social media and podcasts. In recent months, Tucker Carlson has suggested that the Jewish State and American “neocons” are actively targeting Christians in the Middle East and manipulating American foreign policy to start a war with Iran. They “invariably destroy ancient Christian communities, from Iraq to Gaza and in many places in between,” Carlson said. “Can this be an accident? You wonder.”
Finally, a reason to check your email.
Sign up for our free newsletter today.
Podcaster Candace Owens, whom Carlson calls a friend, has repeatedly attacked Jews and Israel, blaming “Zionists” for the chaos in Syria and downplaying the persecution of Christians by Islamist forces. “Israel is implicated in Syria,” she said. “Remember when Zionists were applauding the fall of Assad? Well, us Christians knew then that Israel-funded Islamists in the territory would start mass-murdering Christians.”
I do not know the motivations or intentions of these influencers. What I do know is that they are repeating claims that historically have led to deep suspicion and persecution of Jewish communities. And they are trying to drive Christians and Jews apart—damaging a vital relationship that must be preserved.
When I first posted about this trend, I received a flurry of disturbing replies:
“Tldr: jew crying over nothing because people are exposing them for being genocidal psychopaths”
“We literally believe in Christ. You literally believe he is boiling and [sic] hot excrement somewhere. We are pro Christ you are antichrist. We are not natural allies at all.”
“Hey Joe, who controls the economic system of the US? The US is $36 trillion in debt. Who is the country in debt to?” (This one came with an image of the Rothschilds attached.)
Some have criticized Elon Musk’s free-speech absolutism on X for enabling “hate” and coarsening discourse with “conspiracy theories.” But social media are not always representative. Hostile foreign actors may use platforms to amplify fringe views to make them seem mainstream. And blaming Musk is misguided. Musk, who calls himself “aspirationally Jewish” and philo-Semitic, wrote in response to my X post: “The Jewish people have and will play an instrumental role in saving America.”
Perhaps his free-speech approach does surface more anti-Semitism—but it also forces society to confront it. We should be glad that people have the freedom to voice their conspiracy theories. They challenge institutional narratives and can expose genuine abuses of power. When Joe Rogan asks an unconventional guest about UFOs or government secrets, he’s participating in a longstanding American tradition that can both entertain and uncover important truths.
There’s a crucial distinction, however, between a healthy skepticism of power and anti-Semitic libels, which are calculated narratives designed to mark Jews as dangerous outsiders.
There are many familiar examples. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated anti-Semitic text from 1903, falsely claimed that Jews had a secret plan to weaken Christianity for global domination. It fueled pogroms and later Nazi ideology. The text remains popular in some Islamic communities.
The blood libel—the false accusation that Jews kill Christians for ritualistic or self-serving purposes—has persisted throughout the centuries. During the fourteenth-century Black Death, Jews were accused of poisoning wells to spread the plague across Europe, leading to the slaughter of thousands of Jews across Germany and Switzerland. Many Jews were tortured into giving false confessions and burned alive.
In 1913, Tsarist secret police in Ukraine accused a Jewish factory clerk of ritually murdering a Christian boy to use his blood for Passover bread. In 1946, a false rumor that Jews had kidnapped a Christian boy in Poland led to 42 Holocaust survivors getting murdered by their neighbors.
The blood libel has led to massacres of Jews in France (1171), England (1190, 1255), Spain (1490), Syria (1840), and many other places—including the pogroms that drove my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents to flee Eastern Europe.
Anti-Semites on social media often argue that, because Jews were expelled from many countries, they must have been the problem. This narrative distorts history. Jews were expelled because, as successful minorities, they became convenient scapegoats during times of social or economic upheaval.
Lacking a nation or army, Jews survived through adaptation to their host countries—partially integrated, yet distinct—and so made an easy target when rulers sought to deflect blame. Their persecution reveals less about Jewish communities than it does about the political failures of their host societies.
Jews came to England by royal invitation after 1066 because William the Conqueror saw their economic contributions as essential. They thrived as valued partners to merchants and the aristocracy, but their success soon bred resentment. As moneylenders—filling a role Christians were then barred from practicing—they became scapegoats. That led to a great massacre of Jews in York and flight in 1190, ending finally in mass violence and Edward I’s Edict of Expulsion in 1290.
In Spain, Jews thrived as administrators and advisors but became targets when Ferdinand and Isabella sought religious and political unity. The 1492 expulsion erased centuries of Jewish influence, forcing thousands to flee or convert.
In Poland, Jews managed estates for nobility and developed trade networks, becoming essential to the economy. But during periods of war, economic hardship, or nationalist fervor, Polish Jews faced devastating pogroms, like the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648, when tens of thousands were killed.
During the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation, economic chaos bred resentment, and Jewish bankers and financiers became scapegoats for Germany’s collapse. Under the Nazis, Jewish prominence in fields like medicine, law, and finance—shaped by centuries of restrictions forcing them into such professions—was twisted into “proof” of a conspiracy against the German people.
This pattern—Jews as crucial to the economy, yet politically expendable in times of turmoil—characterized Jewish existence across European history.
That success continues to drive resentment. Jews now account for just 0.2 percent of the global population but have won 22 percent of Nobel Prizes. They have achieved disproportionate representation in elite professions.
This success owes to multiple factors: a tradition of valuing education, historical selection pressures favoring intellect that date back to Babylonian times, and medieval restrictions that channeled Jewish communities into cognitively demanding fields like finance and medicine. But what stems from deep cultural traditions is recast by anti-Semites as proof of hidden influence and control.
It’s also true that this same Jewish intellectual tradition contributed to radical movements, including Communism. Ethnic Jews like Karl Marx (born to a Jewish family that converted to Christianity) and Leon Trotsky (an atheist born to secular Jewish parents) played pivotal roles in the development and spread of Communism. Many Jews, responding to brutal persecution under regimes like Tsarist Russia’s, gravitated toward revolutionary movements that they saw as paths to equality.
This is a historical irony, given that many Jewish communities would later suffer under Marxist regimes, including Communist leaders who fell out of favor with Stalin. Today, most Jews understand why this philosophy was catastrophically wrong. We should all feel an obligation to learn from history’s lessons and oppose the radical Left.
Today’s anti-Semites also seek to set Christians against Jews. When Candace Owens repeats blood libels, she does so with the goal of breaking the strong bond that has joined Jews and Christians in America. In fact, a great strength of Western civilization emerges from the profound partnership between Jewish and Christian theology.
This relationship has found its fullest expression in America, a nation whose founding was deeply influenced by Hebrew scripture. The Liberty Bell bears an inscription from Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin proposed that the national seal depict Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea. During the Revolutionary War, when America faced financial collapse, Haym Salomon, a Polish-born Jewish immigrant, helped finance the Continental Army.
More recently, the civil rights movement was anchored in an alliance between black churches and Jewish organizations. Jewish lawyers represented civil rights activists throughout the South, with nearly half of the white civil rights attorneys being Jewish. When I asked civil rights leader Clarence Jones, a friend and top lawyer to Martin Luther King, Jr., why the black community didn’t return the favor today, it made him sad. “Jews were a critical part of what we achieved,” he told me.
In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks, many Christian communities in the U.S. and Israel rallied to support Jewish neighbors. They hosted prayer gatherings, raised funds, and provided humanitarian aid. Pastors and lay leaders alike have been some of the staunchest defenders of Jews and Israel.
Similarly, anti-Semitic critics of Israel miss its support for Christians. While Israel’s foreign policy merits debate, there’s a clear distinction between policy criticism and accusations that Israel or Jews have deliberately targeted Christians or seek to weaken Christianity. The reality is that Israel has done more to protect and shelter Christians—and maintains a faster-growing Christian population—than any other country in the Middle East, while Islamist extremists continue to slaughter Christians throughout both Africa and the Middle East.
Throughout Jewish history, there has been a tension between intellectual tradition and a warrior spirit. For centuries, diaspora Jews survived through wit and wisdom, often maintaining low profiles to avoid persecution.
Israel’s founding changed that. It required reclaiming an ancient warrior spirit. American Jews, while thriving intellectually, still often adopt the cautious European approach to confrontation. But with anti-Semitism surging—both online and in physical attacks—diaspora Jews must now channel their inner warriors and speak out boldly. We are not ashamed; we will not run or hide.
We can also look to our Christian friends for support. Scapegoating is at the heart of anti-Semitism—easing social tensions by blaming Jews for problems they didn’t cause. French Catholic philosopher and literary critic René Girard observed that societies have long united through the violent targeting of scapegoats, a cycle reflected in many ancient myths.
Christianity offered a profound break from that pattern. In Jesus—the innocent scapegoat—Girard saw an exposure of the injustice behind blame and persecution. As the Catholic side of my family would say, God reveals the evil of scapegoating rather than endorsing it. This revelation, built on Jewish wisdom, became one of Western civilization’s foundational moral insights.
Jews and Christians share a belief in human dignity that anchors the West. Now is the time to stand together, defend one another, and uphold our shared values—refusing to let destructive ideologies prevail.
Photo by Hannes P Albert/picture alliance via Getty Images
