Since 7 October, commentators have been ringing the alarm that a growing protest movement in solidarity with Palestine signals not just the end of a “golden age” for American Jews – as Franklin Foer recently put it in the Atlantic – but for American liberal democracy itself.
As Foer wrote, the “surge of antisemitism is a symptom of the decay of democratic habits, a leading indicator of rising authoritarianism”. Writing before the start of the encampments, he noted that Columbia was “a graphic example of the collapse of the liberalism that had insulated American Jews: it is a microcosm of a society that has lost its capacity to express disagreements without resorting to animus”. Meanwhile, on CNN, the anchor Dana Bash invoked 1930s Europe – “and I do not say that lightly … the fear among American Jews is palpable right now”.
