The Michigan House of Representatives has declared October 2026 as Combating Antisemitism Month, citing a rise in antisemitic incidents and several attacks against Jewish communities and institutions.
House Resolution 361, sponsored by Democratic state representative Noah Arbit, was adopted on Sept. 23. The resolution defines antisemitism as including “the singular denial of Jewish self-determination,” as well as conspiracy theories, discrimination, harassment, vandalism, violence, terrorism and distortion of Jewish history and the Holocaust.
Speaking on the floor of the state House in support of the resolution, Arbit, who is Jewish, said that antisemitism is the “world’s oldest hatred,” citing author Dara Horn’s theories on the nature and history of Jew-hatred.
“I’m a Zionist. I have been all my life,” he said. “Now I am told by people I once considered friends and ideological allies that my Zionism, embracing my heritage, my faith, my history, makes me a traitor to human rights, a traitor to progressivism, to liberalism.”
“When Zionism itself is distorted as an inherently evil ideology, because the vast majority of the world’s 15 million Jews are Zionists, it becomes all too easy for anti-Zionism to become a justification for any and all forms of social, economic and political exclusion of Jews,” Arbit said. “Even worse, the logical leap to justifying violence against Israelis and all Jews becomes so tiny as to be invisible.”
The resolution cites the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018, and the Yom Kippur War, which began with a surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria on Oct. 6, 1973. It also cites Anti-Defamation League data recording 156 antisemitic incidents in Michigan in 2025.
The resolution also highlights the March 12 attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., where an assailant rammed a vehicle into the synagogue and opened fire while more than 100 children and more than 30 teachers and staff members were inside the early childhood center. The FBI later determined that the attack was a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism targeting the Jewish community.
Arbit, founder of the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, was also among 17 Jewish Democratic elected officials, party leaders and activists who joined the Nonnegotiable Michigan campaign on Tuesday, calling on Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed to affirm commitments concerning Jewish safety, Jewish self-definition, Jewish sovereignty in Israel, full Jewish participation in American political life and a positive vision for the Middle East.
“Jewish safety, including the safety of Zionist Jews, is nonnegotiable,” the campaign states. It describes itself as “not an ultimatum, but an invitation” and says it is not endorsing either El-Sayed or his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
