The Week the Myth That Antisemitism Is Worse on the Right Died
It’s time to put to bed the myth that the Right is where antisemitism flourishes.
A week ago, a Lebanese immigrant named Ayman Muhammad Ghazali drove a car full of explosives into a synagogue in Michigan where 140 Jewish American preschoolers were playing. By the grace of God, the explosives did not detonate. After a shootout with a brave security guard, the terrorist took his own life.
At no point before we learned the identity of this terrorist did I—or I’d wager, did any of you—think for a minute that the terrorist might be a White Supremacist.
That’s because antisemitic violence, like most political violence in America, now comes from the Left.
Indeed, as soon as the identity of this would be murderer of 140 innocent babies was revealed, the Left rushed to explain and excuse away Ghazali’s actions. His family members were killed by an Israeli strike in Lebanon, we were told by CNN and the New York Times and NPR, all of which failed to mention in their headlines that his family members were also terrorists; Ayman’s brother Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali managed weapons operations for the Badr Unit of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Instead, our vaunted media described Ghazali as a “quiet restaurant worker” who, rather than a would be murderer of 140 Jewish American babies, was the real victim here.
Why was the Left explaining away antisemitic terrorism?
Because anti-Zionism has become as central a component of the Left as climate activism; indeed, celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg herself now does more for the Palestinian cause than the climate, appearing everywhere ensconced in a keffiyeh. The majority of Democrats now sympathize much more with the Palestinians than with Israel in a shocking reversal that took place over less than a decade.
New polling shows that just 17% of Dems sympathize with Israel more than the Palestinians. Other polls have it as low as 13%.
Yet on the other side of the aisle, the trend is the reverse: The number of Republicans who sympathize with Israel is actually growing, while just 13% sympathize more with the Palestinians, albeit up from 8% in 2013. This, too, makes sense; who among us doesn’t sympathize with a people so utterly abandoned by those who claim to represent them?
It’s time to put to bed the myth that the Right is where antisemitism flourishes in this country.
Of course, this is not to deny that characters like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson aren’t doing everything in their power to turn Americans against their Jewish neighbors. They are, daily pumping out insidious content designed to suggest Jews are a fifth column. But everywhere on the Right, you see massive pushback against these efforts—from Congresspeople, Senators, and religious figures. The vast majority of conservatives in this country utterly, utterly reject the anti-Jewish narratives spewed by this cohort, as poll after poll after poll has found. They have no constituency on the Right—though they have found “strange new respect” from Leftists enamored of this anti-Israel content.
The latest poll found that just 6%—6%!—of Republicans agree with Tucker Carlson on foreign policy.
Meanwhile, how many Democrats have you seen denounce New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife for choosing to illustrate a book written by a woman who called Jews cockroaches?
Thank you Batya for delineating what so many of us on the right know. The mainstream media would love to have everyone think the right is fracturing because of the Tuckers and the Candaces of the podcast universe. I don’t believe it for a second. The vast majority of us know how precious the vital relationship with Israel is in our mutual defense of the West.
Thank you, Batya. I read your book. I have been watching you on NewsNation for a long time, including your Saturday show. Keep up the great work.