Rep. Noah Arbit’s Floor Speech Recognizing Combating Antisemitism Month in Michigan

 

 

“Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of my resolution to declare October 2026 as Combating Antisemitism Month in the State of Michigan.

Over the past decade and a half, Jews have been told not to believe our eyes or ears as individuals and movements hostile to our very existence have grown in stature, support, and power. All the while, we have watched with dread as our vibrant synagogues congeal into fortresses. All the while, we have been stalked, and threatened, and vandalized, and graffitied, and beaten, and shot, and burned, and raped, and killed.

THIS. IS. A. WAKE-UP CALL.

At least it should be. But what even is antisemitism? It might seem like a silly question, but I am willing to bet that most people think antisemitism is just the technical term for hating Jews. That definition is woefully inadequate.

Antisemitism is indeed the world’s oldest hatred. But why has the world’s oldest hatred remained so compelling and intoxicating to so many people over millennia?

Antisemitism’s staying power lies in its uniqueness. Rather than just an ethnic or religious hatred, antisemitism is better understood as a conspiracy theory that places “the Jews” behind any geopolitical conflict, economic injustice, societal ill, or cultural rot.

Think about it: in the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of killing Christ. In the 20th century, Jews were attacked as racial pollutants on European society, as bourgeois capitalists in the Soviet Union, and as foreign interlopers in Arab lands. Today, the Jewish State is increasingly attacked as an illegitimate country that is a singularly rogue threat to the international order.

The particulars may differ, but the conspiracy remains constant: as renowned author and expert Dara Horn says, “antisemitism is a lie used by tyrants to gain and wield power, and claims that Jews, are a mortal threat to whatever society holds most dear.”

That logic of conspiracy is how so many otherwise normal people could be motivated to commit extreme acts of violence during the Holocaust. 

That logic of conspiracy is also how, after a thousand years of relative coexistence, in 1941, seven years before Israel was even founded, Iraqis rose up to violently attack, loot, and expel their Jewish neighbors from Baghdad – a city that was more Jewish than New York is today.

So antisemitism is a conspiracy theory. But what does that have to do with Israel? And what is Zionism?

The term Zionism comes from the Hebrew word ציון, an ancient name for Jerusalem found throughout the Bible.

Simply put, Zionism is “the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, defined by the belief in political self-determination for Jews in our historic homeland, Israel.”

Zionism does not mean the inevitable dispossession and persecution of Palestinians. Zionism does not mean hating Arabs or Muslims; it certainly doesn’t mean supporting Netanyahu or his extremist ministers; it does not mean excusing war crimes; it does not mean settler colonialism or Jewish supremacy or any of the insane, conspiratorial garbage out there.

So I’m a Zionist. I have been all my life. Because my parents are Zionists, and so are my grandparents, and before them my great-grandparents, and before them… down the line, every single Jew since the Romans burned down our Temple, sacked our capital in Jerusalem, and expelled us from our country, has been dreaming, hoping, praying for our return to our Promised Land.

But now I am told by people I once considered friends and ideological allies, that my Zionism, embracing my heritage, my faith, my history – makes ME a traitor to human rights, a traitor to progressivism, to liberalism.

When Zionism itself is distorted as an inherently evil ideology, because the vast majority of the world’s 15 million Jews are Zionists, it becomes all too easy for anti-Zionism to become a justification for any and all forms of social, economic, and political exclusion of Jews. Even worse, the logical leap to justifying violence against Israelis, and all Jews, becomes so tiny as to be invisible.

Indeed, when you hound and harass Jewish elected officials because we refuse to disavow our support for Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, that’s antisemitism. When you vandalize a Jewish-owned business because you oppose Israel’s leaders, that’s antisemitism. When you attack a Jewish synagogue because you oppose Israel’s military actions, that’s antisemitism. When you firebomb a Jewish vigil for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, that’s antisemitism.

This terrifying reality is illustrated best by what happened in West Bloomfield. The attack on my beloved Temple Israel was not motivated by religious bigotry; the terrorist didn’t target us because we don’t accept Muhammad as our prophet; no, he attacked Temple Israel because we are a proudly Zionist congregation.

It should be obvious, but supporting Palestinians does not require purging Jews from public life, in Michigan, or anywhere else; nor does it require violence against Jews.

Some will counter with the ol’ one-liner “it’s not antisemitic to criticize Israel!” And guess what, that’s entirely true! There are many sane and rational ways to criticize Israeli policies, politicians, or even the nature of American foreign policy toward Israel, without invoking conspiracies that blame and endanger Jews.

But, that’s NOT what we’re seeing. Not at all. What we’re seeing today is an organized hate movement calling for the elimination of a single country, smaller than New Jersey, and home to half of the world’s Jews.

You know, when I went to Sunday school at Temple Israel, I took away one very critical lesson from Jewish history, which is this: Jews have only ever thrived under democracies. Why? Because Jews have been subjugated, persecuted, expropriated, massacred, and hounded out of almost every country we have ever lived in. The rare times that we weren’t, we were spared only on the whims of a capricious ruler.

Importantly, this rule doesn’t just apply to Jews. History is pretty definitive that democracy, pluralism, and the rule of law are the essential conditions for minority groups to survive. When a society is not free, one way or another, the guns of the majority are always turned on minorities.

That lesson shaped my worldview. I believe fiercely in freedom, dignity, and self-determination for all peoples, including, by the way, Palestinians! Human rights. Civil rights. Minority rights. My commitment to these ideals has defined my life; they are fundamental to who I am.

So you can imagine my fury that I have to go through a daily cleanse of all my online accounts, sifting through the antisemitic bile on all my feeds. I have been called – just this weekend – a dirty Jew, a “Nazi, Hitlerite Jewish supremacist,” a genocidal terrorist, a ZioNazi, a Zionist freak, a Zionist rat, an “Israel first fascist,” and so much more.

Now, I’m a lot tougher than I look, but what bothers me most, is that it doesn’t matter what my voting record is, or that I have long criticized the excesses of Israeli governments, or that the very reason I am a Zionist is the same reason that I stand unequivocally for the freedom, dignity, and self-determination of Palestinians. All that matters is that I stand up for the right of Israel to exist.

Ultimately, these awful people are not judging me based on who I am, they’re judging me based on WHAT I am, and that, Madam Speaker, is the DEFINITION of bigotry, the DEFINITION of prejudice, and the DEFINITION of discrimination.

All Jews, including the vast majority of us who deeply love Israel, deserve equal treatment under the law and equal treatment in civic, economic, social, cultural, and academic spaces. Anything else is pure, vile, and dangerous.

The good news, Madam Speaker, is this: every person of conscience, no matter what you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, can join in the fight against the tsunami of conspiratorial hatred washing over Jewish communities.

You can criticize Israel, even strongly, and still fiercely reject the growing movement to purge Jews from public life because of our connections and commitments to our homeland.

In conclusion, Madam Speaker, we are not Jews with trembling knees. We will continue fighting to be heard above the din of hatred and conspiracy, no matter how excruciating and painful it continues to be. There is a reason we have survived 3,000 years, and why we will survive for 3,000 more. עם ישראל חי. עד לנצח”

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