When I was growing up, my Jewish identity was always a huge part of my life. I went to Hebrew school 3 days a week after school, I would go to synagogue on Saturdays, and I was heavily involved in the Jewish community. Antisemitism was never a thing on my mind until I got to middle school, and even then, it wasn’t really. Most people either didn’t know I was Jewish or didn’t care. However, as tensions between Israel and Gaza flared up at this time, I would repost and share articles on my social media about the conflict and my views on it, and it would always come up at the lunch table. It was always joking and never serious, but I would always hear about it from people in a slightly demeaning way. I would not exactly call it antisemitism, but the fact that it was such an easy target for people so close to me was concerning. In America and worldwide, the problem of antisemitism has been on the rise in recent years, and extremely little is being done about it. 

During my sophomore year of high school, one of my friends started a club called Students Supporting Israel, a branch of a club that has national ties to larger organizations. He put up posters and reached out to people in order to have successful club meetings. Despite his efforts, posters put up were ripped down, my classmates and I were threatened, and the anti-Jewish sentiment was brought to the community. The school did the bare minimum about it, and the Jewish community at my high school was forced to handle the situation with little help from the administration. Just last year, when there happened to be more violence between Israel and Gaza, swastikas, caricatures of Orthodox Jews, and other anti-Jewish sentiment were graffitied in the school bathrooms. Almost nothing was done by my school administration, and when I would see the pictures and the response from the principal, I was justifiably upset. It upset me that in this day and age, we still see hatred being dealt with the same way it has been for years. The amount of antisemitic incidents has jumped significantly in recent years, and in 2021, there was a record number. The ADL (Antidefamation League) tracks antisemitic incidents, and there was a record high last year. And these incidents are only recorded incidents. Over the last year, the amount of incidents that have happened to me personally, or to people I know has increased as well. I used to never hear about incidents like this, but now it seems like I’m seeing news about an antisemitic act happening every other day. Just last week, there was an antisemitic flyer on the ASU campus triggered by comments made by Kanye West. Seeing hatred that affects me personally in my own backyard is what hurts the most. Furthermore, when a figure that I used to look up to like Kanye or Kyrie makes statements or says things, it hurts not only me but my community more. These acts are extremely harmful because their followers who do not know any better will agree blindly with whatever people like them say. 

Many people believe that the recent spike in antisemitic incidents has stemmed from the amount of conflict between Israel and Gaza in the last 6 years. The conflict, with so many opposing sides, arguments, and viewpoints has caused a lot of trouble for American Jewish communities around the world. It seems that whenever a decision is made by the Israeli government, Jews all over the world suffer for it. In 2018, President Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, officially recognizing it as Israel’s capital. This prompted a resolution from the UN security council that called on Trump to reverse the decision yet it was vetoed by the U.S. 6 months later, the U.S. vetoed another resolution condemning Israel for force used on the Gaza border however Hamas was not mentioned. Furthermore, the one resolution that did mention Hamas did not even come close to passing. These narratives are of interest because the UN was instrumental in Israel even becoming a state in the first place, and yet, they still possess this incredible bias against Israel. The UN has held this bias against the country for years, which has only caused Palestinians to have a stronger negative opinion of Israel and Jews. 

Recently, the Black Lives Matter organization has brought even more energy to the anti-Israel argument. In the mission statement of the original Black Lives Matter organization, they stood for “the liberation of Palestine.” This brought the entire BLM crowd together, as anyone who supported the organization, would support whatever the organization stood for, something known as blind support. Of course, all this was flaring up right around the time of that incident that occurred at my school. The Students Supporting Israel club at my high school was created in early 2020, a time when tensions between Israel and Gaza, and a time when we would see Black Lives Matter on a daily basis. Posters were put up advertising the formation of this new club. Quickly, we saw posters for “Students Against Israel,” we saw swastikas on the posters, and general threats to Jews at my school. Myself and some of my closest friends were targeted, simply because people thought that since we were Jewish, we blindly support everything the Israeli government does. This does not mean we as teenagers didn’t believe in the movement, it was simply hard to support the backing of the movement. 

The Israeli government is not perfect, like any other country. They, like the US government, make decisions that I and many others may not agree with. However, blind antisemitism should not be stemming from that. It seems like the narrative is always anti-Israel, and the phraseology used by TV stations and newspapers almost always sounds like Israel did the wrong thing, that the Jews did the wrong thing. 

One last issue I always see when it comes to antisemitism is comparing it, and antisemitic incidents to other things. The moment we begin comparing antisemitic incidents to things that could make it easier to understand, we lose grasp of how bad it can really be. Take the Holocaust for example; when you compare it to another event or compare it to something you think people may find easier to understand, you lose sight of what it really was. I would never compare the holocaust to anything. The sheer size of 6 million. It is hard to wrap your head around, which is precisely what I want. I want it to be hard for people to fathom because that way, it is more likely for them to understand the true scale of horribleness that the nazis truly were. 

The antisemitism I have experienced in my life is not as bad as many people, and is not as bad as others I know, however, it is the smallest incidents that tell the biggest stories. It is about the little things. Everyone could help if we all speak up the next time we see a person hurt due to antisemitism, or repost information about an antisemitic act on social media. If the world cared as much about antisemitism as it cared about racism, Jews as a whole would be much safer worldwide.