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The Loneliness of American Jews Post-October 7: A Reflection on True Friendship, Antisemitism, and Double Standards
The world revealed a terrible ugliness and horrific hate on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a brutal terror attack on Israel, and started the ongoing war against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and their supporters.
The global rise in anti-Jewish bigotry and hatred have been shocking, but not surprising. The hatred of Jews being so openly expressed, and often masked as anti-Zionism and anti-Israel activism, has left a deep scar on the Jewish community worldwide.
For American Jews, this tragedy has not only been a moment of profound sorrow, but also a time of painful revelation. When the terror attack began and the world reacted, many American Jews began to grapple with the uncomfortable realization of who their real friends are. The rise in anti-Jewish racism and bigotry, and the hypocritical double standards justifying antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist sentiments have exacerbated a profound sense of loneliness and alienation.
The Shock of Silence
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, Jewish communities across the United States looked to their friends, colleagues, and allies for support and solidarity. Many of us found solidarity among our own Jewish communities and the few allies who rose as upstanders.
While many stood in solidarity, offering condolences and condemning the violence, a distressing number of erstwhile allies were conspicuously silent. The absence of unequivocal support from individuals and organizations who had previously championed human rights and social justice was a stark and painful revelation.
This silence was not just an absence of words; it was a loud declaration of where allegiances truly lay. For many American Jews, it felt like a betrayal, a stark reminder that our pain and suffering were not seen as legitimate or worthy of the same empathy extended to other marginalized groups.
The Rise of Antisemitism
Antisemitism is anti-Jewish racism. No matter if it is called anti-Israel or anti-Zionist, it is anti-Jewish.
The resurgence of antisemitism has been another bitter pill to swallow. According to the Anti-Defamation League, antisemitic incidents in the United States have been on the rise for several years, and the aftermath of the October 7 attack has only intensified this trend. Synagogues have been vandalized, Jewish individuals harassed or attacked, and anti-Jewish rhetoric has proliferated online and in public discourse.
The surge in antisemitism is not just a reaction to the conflict in Israel, but a reflection of deep-seated prejudices that have been allowed to fester. The false dichotomy between being anti-Zionist and antisemitic has provided a convenient cover for those who harbor ill will towards Jews. The vilification of Israel often spills over into a broader hatred of Jews, making it increasingly difficult for American Jews to feel safe and accepted in our own country.
Every day, my social media accounts are filled with anti-Jewish hatred, personal threats, and even death-threats against me as an individual. And the hatred online does not stay online. I have needed security to be hired for my speaking engagements outside of Israel. News reports, and countless stories shared with me by individuals and organizations, reveal the ever-increasing targeting, bullying, harassment, hate crimes, vandalism, and terrorism.
Hypocrisy and Double Standards
One of the most insidious aspects of this experience has been the hypocritical double standards employed to justify anti-Jewish racism and anti-Zionism. Many who speak out passionately against other forms of racism and discrimination are conspicuously quiet when it comes to antisemitism. The selective application of principles of justice and human rights is glaring.
Critics of Israel often frame their arguments in the language of human rights, yet they ignore the existential threats faced by the Jewish State and its people. They hold Israel to an impossible standard, one not applied to any other nation. This hypocrisy extends to the justification of violence against Israelis and Jews, which is often downplayed or excused in ways that violence against other groups would never be.
My own liberal, progressive, and LGBTQ communities have revealed terribly anti-Israel and anti-Zionist factions that I actively speak out and stand against — and some of these are former fiends and organizations I used to be involved with.
It is vital that we stand up for our people, our values, and our rights and security, even if it means we stand up against some of the communities that were supposed to include and represent us. The harsh reality of their words and actions let us know who supports us and who is against us.
In the first months after October 7th, I felt as if two-thirds of my friends were not real friends, or had become former-friends. In the following months it felt like almost three-quarters of them were former-friends.
I was pained when people directly expressed anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish sentiments in their social media posts, in marching and attending the protests, riots, and encampments, and even in direct messages to me. But I shifted away from that pain towards the hopeful outcomes of my activism and advocacy. These former-friends revealed to me that they never were the types of people who should have been my friends to begin with.
Finding True Friends
In these challenging times, American Jews have found solace and support in unexpected places. True friends have emerged, those who understand that standing against antisemitism and supporting Israel’s right to exist is not mutually exclusive with advocating for Palestinian rights. These allies recognize that condemning terrorism and supporting Jewish communities in their time of need is a matter of basic human decency.
Jewish organizations and some interfaith groups have also played a crucial role in providing support and fostering solidarity. By coming together, sharing experiences, and working towards mutual understanding, these groups have helped to mitigate the feelings of isolation and loneliness that many American Jews have been experiencing.
I have been traveling across the United States and Canada on a speaking, advocacy, and media tour. As keynote speaker, my goal is to empower, inspire, and motivate Jews and allies towards being activists and advocates for the Jewish people, Israel, and the values we find important.
While I consistently am met with hatred and threats in many of these cities (and across social media), I have also made new friends and have witnessed communities coming together and new bonds being formed.
Moving Forward
The path forward is fraught with challenges, but it is also filled with opportunities for growth and solidarity. American Jews must continue to advocate for our rights and work towards educating others about the realities of anti-Jewish racism, hatred, and bigotry. We also must share the truths and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Building bridges with other communities and finding common ground will be essential in combating the double standards and prejudices that persist.
In the aftermath of the October 7 attack, and the ever-increasing anti-Jewish hatred, violence, and threats, the loneliness felt by American Jews is a painful reminder of the work that still needs to be done. But it is also a testament to the resilience and strength of the Jewish people — and why the Zionist movement exists. We have faced adversity time and again. By standing together and reaching out to true friends, American Jews can continue to fight against antisemitism and for a more just and compassionate world. We are fighting for our existence today and for the future of our people, here in America, Israel, and around the world.
Am Israel Chai.
Yuval David is an Emmy and Multi-Award-Winning Actor, Filmmaker, Journalist, and Jewish LGBTQ+ activist and advisor. A creative and compelling storyteller, on stage and screen, news and across social media, Yuval shares the narrative of Jewish activism and enduring hope. Follow him on Instagram and X.
The post The Loneliness of American Jews Post-October 7: A Reflection on True Friendship, Antisemitism, and Double Standards first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference?
Moments after Seattle rapper Macklemore led fans in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium in a call to “Free Palestine” that ended his opening spot on a national tour, another notorious rapper, despite years of toxic, antisemitic behavior, played to a sold-out crowd in Chicago’s Soldier Field for the second night in a row: the artist formerly known as Kanye West.
On Monday, Macklemore paid the price for that Sept. 4 show where he accused Israel of genocide and apartheid while opening for English singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran. That gig ended when Robert Kraft, owner of Boston’s Gillette Stadium, said Macklemore was not welcome there for Sheeran’s two scheduled shows.
The shutout went beyond Gillette. With 10 more shows left on the tour, eight including Macklemore as the opening act, Kraft rallied other stadium owners to bar him too. Macklemore was removed.
“The venue’s and promoter’s decision was final,” Sheeran wrote on Instagram. “Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision. It was not mine. I have spent this week trying to build bridges, to find a solution and unfortunately, was unable to do so.”
On Tuesday, Sheeran’s three other opening acts and his back-up band withdrew in solidarity.
On that list of stadiums that barred Macklemore was AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, where tickets to see Ye in November went on sale last week. But there was no mention of canceling that show.
Neither Soldier Field nor AT&T Stadium responded to the Forward’s inquiries about why Ye was still welcome there despite his escalating antisemitism over the years.
In 2025, his antisemitic conduct hit a fever pitch when he ran a Super Bowl ad directing viewers to an online store that briefly sold a $20 T-shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. He also released a music video on X titled “HEIL HITLER (HOOLIGAN VERSION),” featuring the lyric “So I became a Nazi, I’m the villain,” which surpassed one million views. He was banned by Twitch after appearing in a livestream giving a Nazi salute and shouting “Heil Hitler.”
So is hating Jews more acceptable than hating Israel?
Not exactly, said Ari Ingel, executive director of The Creative Community for Peace, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting antisemitism in the entertainment industry. Macklemore has shown no signs of remorse or intention to understand why his actions were harmful.
Meanwhile, Ye has paid a hefty price for his antisemitic rants over the years, losing lucrative deals with Adidas, Gap, Balenciaga and Universal Music Group. And while some still question Ye’s sincerity and he has more work to do, he did apologize, Ingel said.
“Kanye is still being held accountable for his statements,” Ingel told the Forward. “He’s not working with the biggest promoters in the industry … We have not let go of all the harm he has caused yet, but his team has put him on a better path.”
Though Ye has performed in some European shows, his headline act at this summer’s Wireless Fest in London was canceled after the U.K. denied him a visa to travel to the country. Concerts in Italy, Russia and Poland also got nixed.
Here in the U.S., his promoter has only been able to book select stadiums for this 2026 tour, including the New Orleans Superdome, San Antonio Alamodome, and two shows at Soldier Field in his hometown of Chicago.
In San Antonio, Mayor Gina Maria Ortiz Jones unsuccessfully tried to prevent Ye’s July 4 show in the city-owned stadium. But backlash against pulling the plug was too intense and the show was allowed to go on. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott also sought to cancel Ye’s June shows at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, another publicly-owned venue scheduled to host Sheeran on Nov. 7.
Ye’s shows have featured the spectacle that he is known for – the artist performing on top of a gigantic spinning globe in the center of the stadium with billows of fog, laser light shows, fireworks and surprise guest appearances. His setlist covers the span of his career, minus the song “Heil Hitler.”
Macklemore, by contrast, commandeered what was supposed to be a family-friendly show to deliver a not-so-family-friendly, even hostile, message, Ingel said. He didn’t just speak briefly about the plight of Palestinians, which would have been within his right to do. While singing “Hind’s Hall,” his tribute to pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied a building at Columbia University, he projected images of war and encampments on giant screens and led the crowd in a call and response, creating an atmosphere where Jewish fans felt threatened.
“Ye, despite the previous statements, is not doing that at his shows,” Ingel said. “He’s not whipping up the crowd into a frenzy of antisemitic hatred.” If he did, his tour would undoubtedly come to a screeching halt.
“Stadiums are not going to allow their venues to turn into forums for hate,” Ingel said. “This is about bringing people together.”
And so far, ironically, that’s what Ye’s shows try to do by sticking to the music. Unfortunately, Ingel said, Macklemore did not.
The post Macklemore got canceled. Kanye is playing sold-out shows. What’s the difference? appeared first on The Forward.
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Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment
(JTA) — Cisco Systems likely violated the civil rights of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees, a federal agency has found, after employees were subjected to harassing messages — some of them posted by employees in an internal forum called the Connected Jewish Network.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined in June that there was “reasonable cause to believe” Cisco subjected the employees to a hostile work environment based on their national origin, religion or association in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The determination follows on media reports and an EEOC probe into an ugly climate at the tech company following the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attacks by Hamas on southern Israel. Pro-Palestinian employees called on the company to end its business dealings with Israel, while Jewish employees said the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees.
The EEOC case, however, turned in part on messages shared in the internal Connected Jewish Network forum. A complaint filed by Legal Aid at Work, which represented the Muslim and pro-Palestinian employees, said employees on the Jewish forum had “repeatedly glorified violence, joked about sending people to their deaths” and “labeled Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims as murderous, violent, terrorists.”
“This is a massive multinational corporation with all the resources in the world and they couldn’t get it right,” Christopher Ho, a director at Legal Aid at Work, told the Guardian, which reported on the EEOC finding last month. “Thankfully the EEOC did.”
Ho said Cisco had “at best failed to take their harassment seriously” and through its inaction had sent “the implicit message that its pro-Palestinian employees were unworthy of protection.”
The letter is not a binding ruling, and both sides said the EEOC has indicated it will not sue. The finding could nonetheless strengthen employees’ cases if they pursue their own lawsuits. The employees are considering collective and individual litigation, according to media reports.
The case examines the period after a group of mostly Palestinian, Arab and Muslim employees called Bridge to Humanity circulated an open letter urging Cisco to end its business dealings with the Israeli military. More than 1,700 employees signed the letter. The employees said they were subsequently subjected to racist and Islamophobic harassment.
In August 2024, employees — including some concerned Jewish employees — filed a 76-page ethics complaint accusing more than a dozen colleagues of creating a hostile work environment through posts on the Connected Jewish Network, which was visible to all company employees, according to the Guardian.
The episode was not one-sided. Wired magazine, in a 2024 investigation into the dispute, reported that some Jewish Cisco employees also believed the company had failed to protect them from harassment by pro-Palestinian employees. One former employee told the magazine that Cisco leadership could have done more to “reduce the mess across the board.”
Legal Aid at Work believes this is the first EEOC finding against a major tech company involving discrimination against workers engaged in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, the EEOC has made combating workplace antisemitism a major policy and enforcement priority, with scrutiny on academia and the private sector increasing under the Trump administration.
Cisco has disputed the EEOC’s determination, saying it had “thoroughly investigated all concerns and took appropriate action.” The company previously said it had removed some comments, issued discipline warnings and provided coaching to multiple employees.
The post Feds say Cisco likely failed to protect pro-Palestinian workers from harassment appeared first on The Forward.
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Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University citing ‘hostile environment’ for pro-Palestinian students
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University alum who was detained by the Trump administration last year, is suing his alma mater along with an Israeli dean of the school he attended for facilitating a “hostile environment” for pro-Palestinian students.
Khalil became a national symbol of the campus pro-Palestinian protest movement when he was detained in March 2025 after the government accused him of being aligned with terrorists. On Monday, he filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court accusing the school of engaging in months-long “deliberate indifference” toward the harassment of pro-Palestinian students on campus, including at the hands of right-wing pro-Israel groups.
He contends that Columbia’s alleged indifference ultimately helped to lead to his 104-day detention by federal immigration authorities, during which he missed the birth of his first child, before being released after a federal judge ruled his detainment was likely unconstitutional. He is joined in the suit by members of the School of International and Public Affairs Palestine Working Group, a pro-Palestinian student group on campus.
“Columbia laid the groundwork for my targeting by the Trump administration through its deliberate indifference and discrimination aimed at intimidating Palestinian students,” Khalil told reporters at a press conference in New York on Monday.
SIPA’s Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo speaks during a book talk for Fareed Zakaria’s new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present” at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs on April 3, 2024 in New York City. (Shahar Azran/Getty Images)
In addition to the university, the suit also names Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, who is Israeli-American, as a defendant. The complaint says that Yahi-Milo had unfairly accused Khalil, while a student in the school, of antisemitism and harassment.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Columbia representatives defended Yarhi-Milo in general terms.
“Throughout her time at Columbia and during her service as dean, Dean Yarhi-Milo has worked with and supported students of all backgrounds, including our Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students,” the statement reads. “The University is grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of our students and her commitment to a campus free of discrimination and harassment.”
Columbia representatives declined to comment further on the lawsuit but said that “creating a campus environment where every member of our community feels welcome, supported, and safe is fundamental to who we are as a university. It is also a responsibility we take seriously.”
A leading figure of the encampment movement that began at Columbia before spreading to schools across the country, Khalil was the first pro-Palestinian student protest leader to be detained by the Trump administration and spent months in an immigrant detention center despite holding a green card.
In the months since a federal judge ordered his release, Khalil has filed a number of lawsuits, including against pro-Israel groups that he said “conspired” with the government to target him. He has also sued Columbia before, for disclosing student records as part of a congressional investigation.
Khalil’s latest lawsuit against Columbia claims the school violated Title VI protections for him and his fellow plaintiffs based on their ethnic identity, national origin or “affiliation with Palestine.” The lawsuit invokes the same federal civil rights law that Jewish and Israeli students have used in discrimination claims against universities, some of which have resulted in settlements.
Columbia itself signed a controversial agreement with the Trump administration last year to resolve federal civil rights investigations, paying $221 million and agreeing to a number of concessions in order to free up hundreds of millions in federal funding. During his press conference Monday, Khalil called such settlements “disgraceful.”
The suit notes that, as a student, Khalil called Yarhi-Milo “genocidal” in a message to fellow students. The suit then describes a subsequent internal university investigation into Khalil as “unfounded and retaliatory,” and claims the school “repeatedly launched meritless allegations of antisemitism against Mr. Khalil” prior to his federal detention.
During the press conference, Khalil accused Yahi-Milo of being someone who “weaponizes her identity to shield herself from legitimate concerns and criticism.” Khalil added, “Her priority has never been her students, me and my fellow students here. Her priority has always been Israel.”
The lawsuit’s examples of indifference include a claim that Columbia failed to intervene when a right-wing group, Accuracy in Media, labeled some of the members of Palestine Working Group as “Columbia’s Leading Antisemites” in messages on the side of trucks driven near campus for months after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. The group had targeted pro-Palestinian students in a similar fashion at several campuses.
Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia who is Jewish, spoke at the press conference in support of Khalil, whom he called a friend. “We all see how the university’s anti-Palestinian racism has directly endangered its students,” said Howley, who wore a Jews for Racial and Economic Justice hat and a “Not In Our Name” shirt. “I won’t be wasting any more time on town halls or listening sessions or imagining anything.”
In a statement to JTA, Accuracy in Media president Adam Guillette said his group “uses publicly available information, and we are steadfastly opposed to doxxing. We pledge to continue delivering accountability to pro-Hamas radicals across the country.”
The post Mahmoud Khalil sues Columbia University citing ‘hostile environment’ for pro-Palestinian students appeared first on The Forward.
