By Judd Dunning
As we head into 2026, under Trump and a renewed America, moral clarity matters again.
This modern brand of fashionable, bandwagon antisemitism is rooted in a dull haze of dangerous historical stupidity and anti-meritocratic delusion.
Studied people, some of the world’s wisest, rose in the world due to a perfect mixture of intelligence backed by moral codes, and they shined. For that, they have always been hated. They challenged everything and suffered greatly.
That is not a crime. If it were, America too would be guilty of that very same “crime”, the crime of shining bright. It is not a crime.
“Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:15–16
“I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.” Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, 1989
October 7 didn’t create this sickness. It exposed it. October 7 wasn’t “complicated.”
The case against Israel is always delivered like a conclusion, not an argument. Israel is the aggressor. Israel is uniquely evil. Israel is apartheid. Israel “brought it on itself.” Then you’re handed a flood of images and a demand to stop thinking.
This is a legal argument: facts first, then the verdict.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a mass-casualty terror attack in Israel that killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages. That is not “resistance.” That is civilian slaughter and hostage-taking on purpose.
Israel did not wake up one day and decide it wanted Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas later seized control and built a war state inside civilian space. The war being watched is not a mystery. It is what happens when a terror regime embeds itself in dense civilian life, builds tunnels and launch sites under neighborhoods, and then uses civilian suffering as a strategic weapon.
The IDF has stated that more than 19,000 rockets have been launched at Israel since October 7. That is sustained attempted mass-casualty violence aimed at population centers. It is not a “cycle.” It is intent.
Israel’s National Insurance Institute has recorded 5,229 civilians murdered in hostile terror actions since 1851, including 934 since October 7 (as of its 2025 Memorial Day press release). A nation has one primary duty: keep its people alive. When deterrence collapses, the range of humane options collapses with it.
War is hell. Death is horrific. Gaza’s death toll is real, and even reputable reporting notes the scale of the carnage while also citing Hamas’ October 7 trigger and ongoing rocket fire. That is why just-war reasoning exists. It’s not to celebrate war. It’s to prevent moral collapse when evil forces the question.
The principle is stated plainly in 13½ Reasons Why NOT to Be a Liberal: “Even the most just wars (conflicts and wars that are morally or theologically justifiable after all non-violent options are exhausted first) are hell.”
One of the central smears is “Israel is apartheid.” Apartheid was a legal architecture of racial supremacy. The Israel-equals-apartheid line is usually an attempt to end the conversation, not to win it. 13½ Reasons Why NOT to Be a Liberal answers it with a blunt fact pattern that cuts through slogans: “America and Israel are the very definition of pluralistic societies. Israel allows freedom of religion. Arabs make up 20% of Israel’s population, and they have full civil rights. Arabs also make up 20% of Israel’s government.”
No country is perfect. Israel is not perfect. But the apartheid label is not analysis; it’s a political weapon designed to delegitimize the only pluralistic democracy in the region.
Another strategic lie is that Israel is the cause of the West’s enemies, and that abandoning Israel would leave America alone. The strategic reality is stated directly in 13½ Reasons Why NOT to Be a Liberal: “This is exactly backward. Islamists do not hate America because we support Israel. They hate Israel because it reminds them of America. Islamists refer to America as the Great Satan. Israel is only Little Satan.”
That is the axis of the propaganda war. Israel is not hated because it causes the West’s enemies. Israel is hated because it represents the West’s enemies’ defeat: a free society that refuses to submit.
Gaza is being covered like no other war in modern history—constant imagery, flattened context, selective framing, and a rolling presumption of Israeli guilt that treats October 7 as a footnote. This isn’t “empathy.” This is manufacturing confusion. Confusion creates scapegoats.
That is where the old hatred returns with updated language. People who would never call themselves antisemites repeat antisemitic logic because the packaging has been updated.
Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. In the decades surrounding Israel’s founding, roughly 850,000 Jews were forced out of Arab countries and Iran, with communities emptied and histories uprooted. This is not myth. This is modern history.
And it is rising again now in measurable ways. ADL reported 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024. The UK’s Community Security Trust recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents in 2024. France recorded 1,570 antisemitic incidents in 2024, according to official figures cited in major reporting. These are not “arguments.” These are threats, assaults, vandalism, intimidation, and fear—aimed at families who did nothing but exist.
When October 7 is excused, terrorism is rewarded. When antisemitism is laundered through trendy political language, the ignorant are radicalized and the violent are empowered. When Jews are demanded to be uniquely pacifist in the face of uniquely persistent annihilationist enemies, that is not peace advocacy. It is a demand for surrender.
There are amazing people across the Middle East who reject the theology of death and want normal life—work, family, dignity, freedom. For them we pray. For them we grieve. But peace will never be built on lies, and it will never be built on rewarding mass murder with moral excuses.
The Jewish people are tough—tough like Americans. Democratic people. Argumentative people. Builders. Survivors. There is a reason the United States and Israel are bonded at the hip. Both are free societies that insist moral reality exists, that law matters, that life matters, and that evil does not become “complicated” simply because it becomes fashionable.
Freedom is not free. The cost is high. The bill always comes due. Moral clarity is not cruelty; it’s the beginning of peace—because peace without truth is just a ceasefire before the next massacre.
In the meantime, we, as democratic allies, must continue to stand with Israel and openly refute this new wave of antisemitism with the greatest of clarity and facts.
Sources: ADL “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2024” (9,354 incidents). CST “Antisemitic Incidents Report 2024” (3,528 incidents). France official 2024 antisemitism figure (1,570) cited in reporting. US Holocaust Memorial Museum (six million Jewish victims). World Jewish Congress (≈850,000 Jews displaced from Arab lands/Iran). Reuters background and war summary (Oct 7 death toll/hostages; Gaza health ministry death toll; Israeli strikes/rocket figures). IDF rocket count since Oct 7 (19,000+) as reported/compiled. Israel National Insurance Institute press release (5,229 civilian victims of terror since 1851; 934 since Oct 7 as of 2025 release). Book quotations: 13½ Reasons Why NOT to Be a Liberal.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Judd is a Newsmax columnist, a frequent radio and TV guest, and the author of a prior best-selling Humanix book, as well as his forthcoming new book, titled “13½ Reasons to Love America”. Judd is also a free-market capitalist, an entrepreneur and an unapologetic lover of the American experiment, recognizing its risks, resilience, and enduring promise — and a lover of all wisdom-seeking religions and all the great philosophers.
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