Trenton’s City Hall in the state capital of New Jersey. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

After 16 months of delays, Jewish community leaders from across New Jersey traveled to Trenton last week, prepared to testify before the Assembly Community Development and Women’s Affairs Committee about why Jews need a definition of hate that protects them.

Instead, Democratic Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter opened the hearing by canceling the scheduled vote and announcing it would be “discussion only.”

Her reason? “These issues are complex.”

Antisemitism is not complex. It’s hate. It’s direct. It’s deliberate. It’s deadly.

Imagine arriving at your own state capital, prepared to speak your truth, only to be told that the threats you face and the harassment you endure for being Jewish, are somehow too difficult to confront, and that your safety is debatable.

In the stunned silence that followed, Democratic Assemblyman Gary Schaer, the bill’s primary sponsor, and Jason Shames, CEO of the Federation of Northern New Jersey, described the sudden decision as “deeply hurtful, disturbing, and disappointing to the more than 600,000 Jews who call New Jersey home. We will return when there’s a vote.”

With quiet dignity, they and those who had come prepared to speak left the room in protest.

Then came the testimony.

The hearing began with Sadaf Jaffer, former Assemblywoman (D) and Princeton researcher, launching into a tirade accusing Israel of murdering New Jerseyans and children abroad. At the 17:16 mark of the official hearing audio, she stated: “The goal of the silencing campaign is for Israel to be able to kill them and say they enjoyed it.”

It was a modern blood libel, grotesque and public, delivered in opposition to a bill meant to protect Jews from hate. She made no distinction between the Israeli government and Jews supporting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, and that was her point.

She has the right to say it, and we have the right to call it what it is: dangerous hate. The kind that echoes medieval tropes used to justify centuries of violence against Jews.

Words matter, and those words, those accusations are soaked in centuries of Jewish blood. She didn’t stop there. Jaffer went on to falsely frame IHRA as a weapon to silence dissent.

But its origins are Holocaust scholars. It is supported by leaders across the political spectrum. Its purpose is to name and protect against rising antisemitism.

You can’t protect people from hate if you refuse to name it.

Speaker after speaker rose not to oppose hate against Jews, but to accuse Jews of causing it. Jewish existence itself became the target. The committee had front row seats to a masterclass in antisemitism, delivered as testimony against the very definition meant to expose it.

Our right to self-determination? Genocide.
Our connection to Israel? Colonialism.
Our identity? White supremacy.

One speaker said, “Zionism weaponizes Jewish fear and pain to commit the same types of atrocities that have been committed against the Jewish people.”

Another went further, saying, “It’s painful for us while the Zionists are using our suffering during the Holocaust to justify these crimes.”

Jewish Voice for Peace declared, “The real Jews are anti-Zionist.”

Then someone said the quiet part out loud: “This will label every single one of us Muslims, non-Muslims, Latinos, Blacks as antisemitic.”

They wanted Jews isolated and defenseless.

What happened in Trenton wasn’t a discussion. It was erasure. A systematic assault designed to replace the global Jewish consensus that Zionism is central to Jewish identity with fringe theology serving as a fig leaf for ancient hatred.

Trenton shattered the promise: Never again.

There is no definition of antisemitism that will survive this kind of betrayal if leaders lack the courage to clearly and publicly say, “Jews are being targeted, and it matters.”

They denied Jews the right to define hatred against us.
They framed Jewish safety as everyone else’s oppression.
They glorified anyone who condemns the Jewish State, and demonized the rest.
They turned our grief into a weapon against us.
When they say Zionist, they mean Jew.

This bill doesn’t silence anyone. It draws a moral boundary between free speech and hate. Free speech means you can say what you want, but it doesn’t mean others can’t name it for what it is. Just as racist slurs are legal but recognizable as hate, the same must be true for antisemitism. That’s what IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism ensures.

The post-October 7 surge of antisemitism has emboldened our neighbors to persecute Jews without consequence. Jewish students are being harassed out of schools. Synagogues are being vandalized. Jews are being told to “Go Back to Auschwitz.”

Apparently, even naming that is now too much to ask.

Jewish pain, dignity, and safety are not up for debate.

And the committee said “thank you.”

The author is a Councilwoman of Teaneck, NJ, and author of Teaneck’s resolution condemning Hamas and “Every Jewish Mother is Shiri Bibas.”