WILLIAM BENNETT: We must listen to the Founding Fathers and reject antisemitism
After the 9/11 attacks 25 years ago, many Israelis declared, "We are all Americans now." As I wrote at the time, they had it backward: Americans had become Israelis. We had experienced the horror of Islamic terrorism that they had endured for decades.
Of course, that is only the beginning of our common cause with the Jewish people. They are a wellspring of the values upon which our country was founded. That is why every American should be troubled by the hatred toward Israel and American Jews that has festered inside our country since 9/11 and has been driven to new heights by the radical socialist left.
In New York, Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called the Jewish political advocacy group AIPAC "monsters." The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), now the ascendant force in the Democratic Party, has made anti-Zionism a litmus test for membership. Hasan Piker, the streamer who has barnstormed for DSA candidates, recently said that "eventually someone’s going to come around and take action" against American Jews if they continue supporting Israel.
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Indeed, it is already happening. FBI figures show anti-Jewish hate crimes have soared and now comprise 63% of all religion-based hate crimes, despite the fact Jews are about 2% of the U.S. population. The radical left offers outrageous excuses. In March, after a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist drove a truck loaded with gasoline and fireworks into a Michigan synagogue full of sleeping preschoolers, Abdul El-Sayed, the current Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Michigan, dismissed the attack by saying that "hurt people hurt people."
American Christians face a moment of reckoning: Will we stand with our Jewish compatriots, just as they stood with us 25 years ago? Will we speak frankly in their defense?
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We must. Our efforts to combat radical Islam and defend American values depend upon it.
We often speak of the Judeo-Christian principles that shaped our country, but we should remember the order of those words.
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Christians alone did not invent the moral world from which Christianity emerged and on which America was founded. The tenets of Christianity are clearly based on the words of the prophets from the Old Testament. The God we worship is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The commandments we teach were given at Sinai. The language that shaped the American conscience was largely from the prophets of Israel.
The Hebrew Scriptures taught the principles that our Founders considered self-evident: that every human being bears the image of God, and that even the king answers to a higher moral law. These ideals reached our founding generation through Christianity, but not exclusively.
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In 1790, the members of the Hebrew congregation of Newport wrote to President George Washington to seek assurance that Jews would enjoy the full rights of citizenship in the new nation. Washington answered that this country recognizes the "inherent natural rights" of the Jewish people. The government "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Then he quoted Micah, "everyone shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall make him afraid." (Micah 4:4)
Washington was affirming that Jews are equal beneficiaries of America’s promise and protection. Their belonging does not depend, as the far-left asserts today, upon holding fashionable opinions about the Middle East. It is guaranteed in our founding documents.
The socialists are quick to assert that "anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism." They are wrong. To hold American Jews responsible for the policies of Israel is antisemitism. To target a synagogue is antisemitism. To treat "Zionism" as a sinister ethnic category is obvious antisemitism. And to warn Jews that they are in danger unless they sever an important part of their religious and cultural identity is antisemitism.
It is also anti-Americanism. There can be no embrace of American values without acknowledging and respecting the role of Judaism.
EXCLUSIVE: MEET THE MAN ISRAEL CHOSE TO BE ITS FIRST-EVER AMBASSADOR TO THE CHRISTIAN WORLD
That is why it falls to Christians to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters. We share a moral inheritance. When Jews are driven from the public square, that inheritance is driven out with them. Jews and Christians are natural partners in defending the American promise. Only by working together can we make the self-evident truths as stated by our Founders once again self-evident in our culture.
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A people that forgets its teachers will not keep its lessons. After 9/11, we experienced the sting of violence and intimidation that has followed Jews for their entire existence. We cannot allow it to follow them here.
Christians can treat the protection of our Jewish citizens as the responsibility of someone else, or we can treat it as necessary to our Judeo-Christian heritage. Only one of those is worthy of us.