For years, a dangerous myth has taken root in progressive discourse that the worst excesses of antisemitism were a problem of the far right. As philosopher and author Sam Harris asserted on a recent episode of his Making Sense podcast, “If you’re talking about antisemites who actually want to kill the Jews now, you’re not talking about the far left.”
Current events have shattered that illusion.
On May 21, two Israeli diplomats were murdered in Washington, D.C., in the name of progressive justice. They were targeted explicitly for being representatives of the Jewish state. They were killed not by neo-Nazis or far-right extremists, but by one whose ideology claimed solidarity with “the oppressed” in service of “human rights,” and who chanted “Free, free Palestine as he was taken away by authorities.”
What we are witnessing is yet another violent mutation of Jew-hatred, metastasizing within the very circles that once prided themselves on moral clarity and opposition to bigotry. The violent left, once considered a fringe, is growing bolder, more aggressive and more lethal. It is fueled by an ever-radicalizing demonization of Israel that has now reached a fever pitch.
This isn’t mere criticism of government policy. This is hatred—raw, racialized and totalizing. Israel is portrayed not as a nation with flaws, but as a uniquely malevolent entity, the world’s singular colonial project, the root of oppression itself. Zionism is cast as a form of white supremacy, Israelis as settler-colonialists and Jewish self-determination as inherently illegitimate. Thus, “anti-Zionist” rhetoric is always couched in the idealistic language of human rights but is, in reality, merely the latest manifestation of millennia of antisemitism. This has now found lethal expression in the murder of two supporters of Israel.
Such a worldview does not leave room for nuance or peace. And it certainly doesn’t leave room for Jews.
Worse still, this demonization has found legitimization at the highest levels of international discourse. The United Nations has passed more resolutions condemning Israel than any other country, including Syria, North Korea and Iran. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have labeled Israel an “apartheid state,” using that word not as a legal classification, but as a political cudgel.
One day before the D.C. murders, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs chief Tom Fletcher stated that Israel was ready to deliberately allow 14,000 babies to starve to death in the next 48 hours. That was a shameless and dangerous blood libel.
These accusations aren’t just inaccurate; they are inflammatory. As Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said, in a clear reference to Fletcher: “There is a direct line connecting antisemitic and anti-Israel incitement to these murders.”
Respectable humanitarian organizations are helping the global propaganda drive to frame appropriate Israeli war objectives—freeing the remaining 58 hostages and removing Hamas from power—into an existential war of good versus evil.
The implications are profound. When leading human-rights institutions echo the language of annihilationists, when universities platform speakers call Oct. 7 “resistance,” when progressive coalitions openly chant “Globalize the intifada,” what message does that send? It sends the message that Jewish lives are not only expendable, but that their deaths are morally justified.
Violence follows words. First came slogans, then campus riots and now killings. What we are seeing is not spontaneous outrage but the result of years of ideological conditioning where antisemitic tropes have been repackaged as anti-Zionism, and where “resistance” includes murder.
It is well past time to drop the pretense that antisemitism only comes from those stomping in jackboots. The ideology that killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim did not come from the far right, although they, of course, welcome the results. It came from the radicalized college campuses, from social-media influencers with Palestinian flags in their bios, from NGO reports and speakers from the United Nations who believe that if you wrap hatred in the language of justice, it becomes righteous.
We are long past the point where this can be downplayed by the mainstream left, like Harris did just days before the horrific murders. Unless the progressive movement reckons with and roots out the unhinged anti-Israelism that clearly thrives in its midst, more Jews and Israelis will be killed. The left was supposed to stand against racism and dehumanization. It must hold itself to that standard again.
