October 7 & today · United States · 2023–present
Christian and nativist exclusion, racial conspiracy and left-wing collective blame acquired a common focus around Israel after October 7.
Explore United StatesPublished by WTJPublication updated
2023–present
October 7 & today · October 7 & today
Christian and nativist exclusion, racial conspiracy and left-wing collective blame acquired a common focus around Israel after October 7.
A daycare locks down in Albany
On December 7, 2023, Mufid Alkhader fired a shotgun outside Temple Israel in Albany, shouted in support of Palestine and tried to remove the synagogue’s Israeli flag. The daycare locked down. His later guilty plea established the criminal intimidation.
The target was an American Jewish congregation. Whatever views its members held about the war, they had been made answerable for it together. The children’s need for protection makes the consequence clear: a political grievance had been turned into a threat against local Jewish life.
Different movements rediscover a shared suspect
Henry Ford’s propaganda imagined Jews controlling American finance and politics. The far right’s replacement story later cast them as organizers of racial change; Pittsburgh showed its lethal reach. ADL describes the hidden-controller accusation returning through Tucker Carlson’s claims about Israel and his platforming of Holocaust revisionists and white nationalists.
Parts of anti-colonial activism reached collective blame through another story: Jews as representatives of imperial oppression. AJC records workplace exclusion over actual or assumed ties to Israel. Meanwhile, ANSWER’s organizer list documents secular-left/Muslim protest cooperation, without establishing that every partner was Islamist or antisemitic. The dangerous convergence lies in the accusations themselves: Jewish power, foreign loyalty and inherited guilt. Anti-Zionist language can carry those myths across left and right, making discrimination sound like political principle.
A public gathering becomes a place of loss
In May 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum. Days later, a firebomb attack struck a hostage-solidarity gathering in Boulder. Karen Diamond died from her injuries. Suspects in both cases faced murder charges.
That year’s lower overall incident total therefore sat alongside lethal violence. AJC also found that many Jews had changed everyday behaviour because of antisemitism. A museum event, a public gathering or a visible sign of identity now carried questions about safety that reached well beyond the people directly attacked.