{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-op-ed-antisemitism-is-a-horrible-evil-that-we-must-fight/", "Young op-ed: Antisemitism is a horrible evil that we must fight", "2023-12-15", "2023", "2023-12", "Republican", "Senate", "IN", "Todd Young", "Y000064", "www.young.senate.gov", "toddyoung", "https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "The following opinion column was originally published on FoxNews.com on December 15, 2023.\n\nBy Todd Young\n\nIn 1818, former president Thomas Jefferson wrote that though antisemitism was widespread and ancient, there was a hope against it: America.\n\nOur nation, in his words, was \u201cthe only antidote to this vice.\u201d Our Constitution protects religious freedoms and places every citizen, no matter their faith, on \u201cequal footing.\u201d Throughout America\u2019s history, millions of Jews have found a home and flourished in our country.\n\nToday, though, this historic bond is facing its strongest test since the Greatest Generation defeated Nazi Germany. Antisemitism is rising at rates unseen in living memory, posing a threat to the tolerance and pluralism that define America and make it exceptional.\n\nAntisemitism most assuredly cannot merely be stopped but its lies disproven and its adherents defeated.\n\nHamas\u2019 murder of 1,200 Israelis and the Jewish state\u2019s determination to defend itself did not so much unleash a wave of antisemitism, but provided a moment for its believers to bring their hatred into the open.\n\nSince that terrible day, antisemitic incidents have increased by nearly 400%, according to the Anti-Defamation League. In October congressional testimony, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray confirmed that threats to Jewish citizens have reached \u201chistoric levels.\u201d\n\nFor sobering context, Jewish Americans constitute just over 2% of our population but are the target for over 60% of religious hate crimes nationwide.\n\nIn recent weeks, we\u2019ve seen:\n\nSwastikas spray-painted on Jewish headstones in Ohio.\n\nSynagogues vandalized in New Jersey and New York.\n\nOsama bin Laden\u2019s antisemitic rants trending on TikTok.\n\nThwarted attacks on Jews in California, Texas and Michigan.\n\nPro-Israel protesters beaten, and one even killed.\n\nJewish college students targeted, intimidated and assaulted, forced to shelter behind a locked door in New York City\u2019s Cooper Union while protesters banged at the windows chanting \u201cglobalize the intifada.\u201d\n\nAnd in Indiana, a woman purposely drove her car through a building she wrongly believed housed a Jewish school.\n\nIn an age when we are so quick to decry injustices, where is the outrage over these acts of discrimination?\n\nInstead of anger, those who make a vocation of demonstrating their own righteousness have gone quiet, indulged in reprehensible moral equivalency regarding October 7, or worse, applauded Hamas\u2019 barbarity.\n\nCommentators have sought to contextualize the massacre of Jewish men, women and children, or claimed that we are all complicit in their deaths. Educators have been too slow to condemn antisemitism, downgrading it in some sort of hierarchy of offenses, cloaking mass murder in social justice doublespeak. All while a few irresponsible politicians have mouthed genocidal slogans and repeated lies about Israel.\n\nAs technology evolves and our understanding of so many natural phenomena increases, it is comforting to hope that our morality inevitably evolves as well. History proves otherwise.\n\nTragically, old hatreds remain ingrained. We are clearly susceptible to the same prejudices Jefferson lamented over two centuries ago. But we still have a uniquely American means of fighting intolerance at our disposal.\n\nJefferson and his peers designed and left us a republic. Our citizenship in it comes with responsibilities. Participation in a democratic society presupposes discernment, judgment against a certain standard of public comportment. And these judgments cannot be limited to Election Day. We have to make judgments every day about what is right and wrong, virtuous and unvirtuous.\n\nNow is such a moment.\n\nConfronted with the largest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust and a wave of antisemitism, Jewish Americans are fighting back. Students are shunning universities that tolerate antisemitism or have refused to condemn Hamas\u2019 killing spree, such as Cornell, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, while some alumni have ended their donations to these same schools.\n\nYoung and old have marched in support of Israel and against antisemitism, most beautifully evidenced by the peaceful gathering on the National Mall in November.\n\nAmericans, regardless of their faith, should emulate this resolve.\n\nGovernment cannot change what lives in the hearts of its citizens. Clearly, the classroom is no safeguard against hate. And in America, everyone is free to speak their mind, no matter how abhorrent the thoughts.\n\nBut in return, we are called upon to judge that speech harshly, to forcefully refute false equivalency between terrorists and their victims. We should not hesitate to condemn those who espouse antisemitic rhetoric and the institutions that harbor them.\n\nNor should we indulge in superficial slogans such as \u201cwho am I to judge?\u201d or \u201cboth sides are guilty\u201d or forget that evil can never be excused \u2014 and that includes the evil of violence and discrimination against Muslim Americans.\n\nBiting our tongue in the face of evil may save citizens the hassle and discomfort of subjecting our own views to neighborly scrutiny. But when we fail to defend what is true and right, especially when it is difficult to do so, we are left with an impaired public discourse.\n\nInstead of anger, those who make a vocation of demonstrating their own righteousness have gone quiet, indulged in reprehensible moral equivalency regarding October 7, or worse, applauded Hamas\u2019 barbarity.\n\nSadly, over time, our penchant for silence enables an increasingly nihilistic political culture \u2014 one, like today, in which morally abhorrent concepts like genocide are able to take root, grow and become normalized as accepted or even acceptable.\n\nLastly, let there be no doubt: our fight against antisemitism requires continued support of Israel in its just war against Hamas.\n\nHistory teaches that, when democratic peoples are seduced into silence in the presence of evil, horrors follow that they later vow to never let happen again. Now, in the aftermath of an attempted genocide in Israel \u2013 and in the face of increasing antisemitism at home \u2013 we must not remain silent or abdicate our responsibility as citizens, as Americans.\n\nIf we fail to do so, generations from now, history\u2019s judgment will be upon us all.\n\nRepublican Todd Young represents Indiana in the United States Senate.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T18:56:20Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.young.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/young-op-ed-antisemitism-is-a-horrible-evil-that-we-must-fight/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.6309928614646196, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}