If anyone is listening: Antisemitism and Islamophobia are not remotely the same.

Equating antisemitism with Islamophobia is a tactic designed to conflate the victims and perpetrators of racism and reduce antisemitism to just another form of bigotry.

A Holocaust survivor’s sign at a recent pro-Israel rally in Australia (photo: DJ Paine/Unsplash)

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This is an essay written by Joshua Hoffman and Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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There is a giant Siberian woolly mammoth in the room that no one wants to talk about when it comes to antisemitism and Islamophobia.

In the West, most attacks on Jews come from Muslims, while most attacks on Muslims come from the far-Right (i.e. non-Jews).

Since the Iran- and Hamas-led October 7th attacks, mealy-mouthed political leaders have refused to talk about antisemitism as a distinct phenomenon and insisted on lumping it together with Islamophobia.

Consider these intensely irritating quotes, such as one from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who said: “Violence, hate, antisemitism, Islamophobia ,and scenes such as the ones we saw in Concordia University or shots fired at Jewish schools overnight — all of that is unacceptable.”

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong asserted: “There is no place for violence, no place for antisemitism, and no place for Islamophobia in Australia.”

And London Mayor Sadiq Khan professed: “We have zero-tolerance for racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, or any form of hate, and we pride ourselves on being open, diverse, and welcoming of all faiths and backgrounds.”

These comments sound like the epitome of decency, but they are a transparent attempt to downplay the worst rise in antisemitism since the Second World War as if it is just another kind of racism. This is antisemitic in itself. Even worse, these phrases are crafted to make it appear that the major perpetrators of antisemitic attacks — extremist Muslims — are (in some weird and warped way) the victims of racism.

Western leaders have looked at wild mobs carrying flags of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Palestinians, chanting for Jihad, calling for the destruction of Israel, and for violence against Jews, and somehow concluded that “Islamophobia” is part of the problem. That is some serious intellectual and moral derangement.

“Islamophobia” is a stupid term. Hating someone for being Muslim is revolting, but it is entirely rational to fear hundreds of thousands of people calling for Jihad and the destruction of Israel in the self-proclaimed words of so many so-called “pro-Palestinians” — you know, “by any means necessary.”

Thus, there is no equivalence between antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Let us begin with the history. Hatred against Muslims is real and despicable, but it does not have a 2,000-year history; it is not the product of too many religious commandments like those in the Quran; Muslims were not exterminated in camps on an industrial scale; and there are not blood libels and entire categories of tropes, lies, and conspiracy theories, designed to dehumanize Muslims, the way there are for Jews.

Then there is a difference in rhetoric. Far-Right thugs chanting “Muslims go home” are detestable, but we should not pretend that this is equivalent to calling for the genocide of Jews — as antisemites routinely do.

Grouping antisemitism and “Islamophobia” together creates the illusion that they are connected, especially as they seem to spike in sync. Correlation does not equal causation.

Antisemitism spikes when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict flares up because the entire dispute is rooted in the Palestinians’ Islam-inspired refusal to live with Jews. Antisemitism is the cause of the conflict, not the product of it.

The entire dispute — the rejection of Jews having the right to sovereignty in their indigenous homeland — is antisemitic. Those who think it is a territorial dispute have no idea what they are talking about and are advertising that fact.

Anti-Muslim sentiment, by contrast, surges when people get worried about huge rallies calling for Jihad, genocide, and annihilation of, say, Israel and the West. It is a reaction to this extremism, and sometimes those reacting are just another kind of reprobate extremist.

Finally, the Jews are not the ones behind “Islamophobia” and attacks on Muslims, while Muslims make up most of the antisemitic attacks. Antisemitism is preached from many mosques, but you do not find the equivalent coming from rabbis and cantors in synagogues.

This difference has been evident from the protests. While the Islamists and their far-Left allies have called for blood and incited terror, Jewish protests have been focused on demanding the release of the hostages, not to mention these protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful. It reflects a deep cultural difference — the kind of observation that can get you branded as “Islamophobic,” but awkward and confronting facts are still facts.

Political leaders’ refusal to recognize that antisemitism is a unique, distinct, and pernicious form of racism — and one that must be tackled as such — has contributed to Jew-hatred becoming normalized across the West, less than 80 years removed from the end of the Holocaust.

Current U.S. Vice President and recent nominee to lead the Democratic Party in America’s upcoming presidential election, Kamala Harris, is a prime example of politicians’ incompetence about addressing antisemitism and its cross-societal effects. And, please, spare us with the fact that Harris’ husband is Jew-ish (on paper). Many Jews are also incompetent about addressing antisemitism, especially those who live in ivory towers like her hubby.

Harris herself is most definitely not an antisemite (at least not in intention), but now she represents the Democratic Party which multiple Democratic insiders have said has been infested with antisemitism. One of them, CNN’s Van Jones, recently said that “antisemitism has become marbled into the Democratic Party.”¹

As such, many have speculated that Harris sidestepped popular Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to be her running mate — at least in part — because he is Jewish. Shapiro was widely viewed as a top vice presidential candidate for the Harris campaign precisely because he could help Harris carry Pennsylvania, a must-win state for her campaign. Instead, she chose a running mate from a state that was already in the Democrats’ bag.

As American author Dan Senor pointed out, Harris has every right to pick or not pick who she wants to be her vice presidential nominee, but it was her duty to respond to the obviously antisemitic campaign leveled against Shapiro by far-Left members of the Democratic Party in the recent weeks leading up to Harris’ announcement about her running mate.

She has not made such a response, and she probably will not. Because, if Harris has to address antisemitism, she will feel compelled to somehow equate or at least group it with “Islamaphobia.” Indeed, back in November, amid soaring antisemitism in the U.S. against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah war, Harris spiritlessly unveil the White House’s “anti-Islamophobia” strategy — just one day after the FBI director told senators that antisemitism is reaching “historic levels” across the U.S.

One of the reasons for this sudden antisemitism-Islamophobia equivalence — which historically never existed in the United States, and for good reason (because there is no valid equivalence) — is that many Muslim and Arabs have a zero-sum mentality.

Hence, there has not been a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because the Muslim-Arab side wants all of the land, and the Israeli side (which already relinquished a mass of land in Sinai and Gaza) does not agree to have their country destroyed by antisemitic, genocidal Jihadists.

Now that Muslims and Arabs are represented in decent (and growing) numbers in places like the United States, many of these Muslim and Arab Americans effectively force politicians to choose between them and the Jews.

In other words, they consider even a mention of antisemitism as “support” for American Jews and thus a betrayal of the Muslim and Arab American communities, even though one group has absolutely nothing to do with the other. Nor are they even remotely mutually exclusive.

U.S. politicians and other types of leaders should be able to justifiably worry about antisemitism and Jewish American communities, while also attending to whatever needs and wants Muslim and Arab Americans request, so long as they are reasonable and not of the zero-sum-game variety.

And the fact that the Democratic Party — like other leftist factions in other parts of the West — have wholeheartedly wrapped their arms around Muslims and Arabs is mind-boggling. Many of these Muslims and Arabs are as anti-Western as you can get, and they essentially want a judenrein West.

Judenrein is German, meaning “from which Jewish people are excluded” (originally with reference to organizations in Nazi Germany). Zionists, do these Muslims and Arabs mean? Some 90 percent of Jews worldwide are Zionists. If these so-called “pro-Palestinian” Muslims and Arabs’ main problem is with “Zionists,” what they are really telling us is: They hate the Jewish People and make an exception for roughly 10 percent of Jews who agree with their “destroy the Jewish state” ideology.

Many Jews outside of Israel are not stupid. They know that the Jewish state’s destruction would immediately render unsafe virtually all Jews in the Diaspora, since a Jewish state ensures that other countries afford their Jews the same treatment that all other citizens receive.

At the same time, many — most — Diaspora Jews are perfectly fine with sharing their homes in the West among others, including Muslim and Arabs. To be more frank, the vast majority of Diaspora Jews are not playing this zero-sum game in any way, shape, or form.

And yet, when you call out many Muslims and Arabs for who they are and what they believe (whether or not they publicly voice it), you are instinctually labeled “Islamophobic.” The reality is that it makes perfect sense to be frightened by people who want to destroy your homeland (Israel), turn the West into the second coming of Nazi Germany, and enslave the Western world on their way to obliterating it.

While expressing anti-Muslim sentiment will rightly get you pilloried, antisemitism has been allowed to run rampant through Western streets, universities, governments, media oulets, and social media. It is even fashionable in some circles.

These are facts.

Politicians hate facts; nothing scares them more. What politicians like are votes and political donations, and there are more Muslim than Jewish ones in both capacities — which is why no one will even attempt to remove the giant Siberian woolly mammoth from the room.

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1. “Yen Carry Trade, Recession odds grow, Buffett cash pile, Google ruled monopoly, Kamala picks Walz.” All-In Podcast.