A woman keeps a candle next to flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone

Every generation invents new excuses for tolerating antisemitism. Increasingly, the hatred itself is left unstated. Instead, what changes is the justification for qualifying it: the insistence that antisemitism alone must be contextualized, balanced, or explained before it can be condemned.

That was my reaction watching Jewish activist and educator Hen Mazzig respond to comedian Robby Hoffman’s recent interview with The New York Times. Asked about antisemitism, Hoffman began with a sentence requiring no qualification: “Antisemitism is bad.”

Then came the most dangerous word in the sentence: “but.”

She followed up with: “but is it the worst thing?” … adding that antisemitism is not the most pressing injustice as greater suffering in her opinion is currently going unaddressed. It is a familiar rhetorical move.

Mazzig’s response to this was devastating because it asked for something remarkably modest. Jews are not asking for exclusive sympathy. They are asking that hatred directed at them be condemned the same way hatred directed at other minorities is condemned — without an asterisk attached.

Run the comparison and the double standard becomes obvious. Few public figures would say, “Racism is bad, but…” Even fewer would insist that victims of anti-Asian hate first answer for the policies of Beijing before their safety deserves concern.

Yet Jews are routinely expected to explain their views before violence against them in places like Boulder, Sydney, Paris, London, or New York is treated as morally significant in its own right.

The second half of the sentence changes with the news cycle, but its function never does.

“Antisemitism is bad, but Israel.”

“Antisemitism is bad, but Gaza.”

“Antisemitism is bad, but Zionism.”

“Antisemitism is bad, but Palestine.”

History is remarkably consistent about what follows once societies become comfortable writing a second clause that provides a caveat for Jew-hatred.

Violence against Jews rarely begins with calls to murder Jews. It begins with arguments explaining why this specific hatred is understandable.

This pattern repeats with disturbing regularity. Every expulsion, pogrom, massacre, and genocide in history targeting Jews started with an intellectual class constructing exceptions for Jews.

The hatred stops being treated as hatred and starts being treated as understandable. Understandable soon becomes justifiable. And from there, the violence: inevitable.

Let me be precise. Criticizing the Israeli government or specific Israeli policies is not antisemitic. Israelis themselves do so constantly.

What is certainly antisemitic is making opposition to antisemitism conditional upon one’s views of Israel — transforming hatred of Jews from a self-evident moral wrong into a debate with two legitimate sides.

In Boulder, a man armed with Molotov cocktails and a homemade flamethrower attacked Jews marching in support of Israeli hostages. An 82-year-old woman later died from her injuries. Another victim was an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor. None were Israeli officials. None shaped Israeli policy. They were targeted because they were Jews. Yet Melat Kiros, the Democratic nominee for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, refuses to call the attack antisemitic.

Australia offers another sobering example. Following October 7, 2023, Sydney’s Jewish community has endured an unprecedented wave of threats, arson attacks, vandalism, and assaults targeting synagogues, schools, businesses, and communal institutions. And on December 14, 2025, 15 people celebrating the first night of Hanukkah with over 1,000 other Jews engaging in a communal celebration were murdered in the Bondi Beach Massacre. Once again, ordinary Jews became the targets.

Over the past few years, the Anti-Defamation League has documented record levels of antisemitic incidents in the United States, including hundreds involving assault and physical violence. The victims are not chosen because of policies they enacted. They are chosen because they are Jews.

Comedians do not throw Molotov cocktails, and commentators do not firebomb synagogues. Robby Hoffman bears no personal responsibility for Boulder or the ongoing assaults on visibly Jewish New Yorkers any more than any journalist bears responsibility for crimes committed by strangers.

But ideas shape moral climates — and my family did not learn this from history books.

Between 1940 and 1943, my grandmother lost virtually her entire family in the Holocaust. Some of those relatives had fought for Germany in World War I. Their patriotism did not save them. Long before they were murdered, German society had become accustomed to hearing that hatred of Jews was different—that it came with explanations. There was always a “but.”

Jews were said to be disloyal. Foreign. Collectively responsible for defeat, economic hardship, communism, capitalism. The explanations came first. Then came the violence.

The same sequence unfolded across the Middle East and North Africa between 1940 and 1965. Before nearly 900,000 Jews were dispossessed or forced to flee ancient Jewish communities that had existed for centuries, they first endured years of rhetoric explaining why they no longer belonged. Justification always precedes persecution.

Societies committed to equal justice do not wait until after funerals to examine their moral standards. They do so while there is still time to prevent the funerals.

“Antisemitism is bad” is a complete sentence.

Every society that descended into anti-Jewish violence first convinced itself that this one prejudice, unlike all the others, required a “but.” Every one of them believed it was exercising nuance rather than abandoning principle.

Every one of them was wrong. And by the time that became obvious, it was already too late for the people who had paid the price.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.