Wednesday marks the three-year anniversary of one of the most brutal terrorist attacks in history: the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Hamas terrorists flooded into Israel and murdered over 1,200 innocent Jewish men, women, and children, including 46 Americans. In addition to the death toll, Hamas captured and tormented 254 hostages, among them 12 Americans.
On Oct. 7, the world united against the horrors of antisemitism. Across the globe, people posted messages such as “Pray for Israel” and “We stand with Israel.” However, by the next morning, antisemitic propaganda was already flooding social media and college campuses around the country. People took to the streets to celebrate the “liberation” of Israel. A speaker at a rally in Philadelphia proclaimed, “I think that we should all give an applause right now to Hamas for a job well done,” and a rally in New York City chanted, “Globalize the intifada” and “smash the settler Zionist state.”
Within a few weeks of the Oct. 7 slaughter, it inexplicably became trendy on the political Left and the supposed “New Right” to say dumb and violent things about Jews and Israel. The rhetoric exceeded well beyond simple disagreement with the political or military decisions of the Israeli government. Without question, the U.S. Constitution protects the right of people in America to say epically dumb things. The Constitution also protects my right to call their rhetoric what it is — racist, ignorant, and antisemitic.
Hatred isn’t new for the Jewish people. For thousands of years, they have suffered racism, slavery, and genocide. From Egyptian slavery to Haman, Roman Occupation, the pogroms, and the Holocaust, irrational hatred toward Jewish people has persisted over millennia. But, in a more educated American society, you would hope that the lessons of the past would be applied and the scourge of antisemitism would finally end. That may be so someday, but today the social media algorithm teaches people to join in the centuries-old bias. We still have hope delayed.
Earlier this year, I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Jews were unloaded from trains and sent to their death. I walked through the muddy streets that day and saw the evidence of the atrocities at the death wall and the crematoria. Hitler and his Nazi apparatus spread their vile antisemitic propaganda, then murdered 6 million Jews and absurdly declared that their brutality was justified because the Jews were “the problem.”
We are now living in the world of Oct. 8, where antisemitism is growing, and antisemitic incidents involving harassment, assault, and vandalism are more frequent now than they were before Oct. 7, 2023. Recent data from the FBI’s 2025 Hate Crimes Report shows that more than 62% of religiously-motivated hate crimes in 2025 targeted Jewish Americans — more than any other religious group. 2025 was the third-highest year of anti-Jewish hate crimes on record.
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How we talk about antisemitism matters for the next generation. A recent study found that a single classroom lesson for middle and high school students on antisemitism reduces their willingness to agree with antisemitic tropes. Fact-based education matters in a free society. If you want to dive deeper into the past and help your classroom or family explore the consequences of antisemitism, the United States Holocaust Museum has excellent free online videos, visuals, and teaching materials. The deceit online needs a good dose of truth.
As a Christian and the co-chairman of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, it is my mission to work for justice for all people. I collaborate with my colleagues, law enforcement, the White House, federal agencies, state and local governments, educators, advocates, and clergy against irrational Jewish hatred. In the Oct. 8 world, we each have the responsibility to call out antisemitism wherever we see it, to defend human dignity, and to speak out for the inherent right of religious liberty for all people.
James Lankford represents Oklahoma in the U.S. Senate, where he is co-chairman of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combatting Antisemitism.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
