Our house is on fire, and the cavalry isn’t coming The responsibility to protect our families and our future is going to fall on us. Charles Jacobs
https://www.jns.org/our-house-is-on-fire-and-the-cavalry-isnt-coming/
The failure of the Jewish establishment—the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, Jewish Community Relations Councils and Jewish Federations—to protect and defend the Jewish community against the decades-long build-up and the current surge of hatred in the United States has become a subject of public concern and analysis. The organizations that have claimed to speak for us and guard us against antisemitism have proven unwilling or unable to meet the challenge.
The Jewish Leadership Project, along with others across the country, for years has sought to persuade, pressure, and, when necessary, shame establishment leaders into prioritizing the defense of our community. We believed that if they could be made to see the growing danger with clarity, they would recalibrate and lead. But they have not, even after the explosion of antisemitism following the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, and even as their supposed progressive allies turned on us.
Our leaders have refused to pivot. I believe that they will not and cannot.
Many resist this conclusion. It is far easier to cling to the hope that our old structures still work—that the powerful organizations of the past can still deliver security and stability. Abandoning that means accepting that the responsibility to protect our families and future now rests on us all. And the sooner we face this truth, the better.
But first, the community needs to understand why the Jewish establishment won’t change. Effective leadership of any enterprise requires a sober recognition of errors and a concerted effort to analyze why the leadership’s assumptions failed and the courage to chart a new course. It is human nature to resist acknowledging catastrophic mistakes, especially when you have raised hundreds of millions of dollars promoting yourselves as the most competent to do the work. Jewish leaders fear that when the enormity of their errors becomes broadly known, their community support might collapse, their (often) lucrative jobs will be at risk, and they will feel public shame.
Leadership is about knowing the territory so you can develop effective paths forward. Jewish leaders, however, have failed to grasp the obvious tectonic shifts in the American political culture. They assumed—and then placed all our bets on—the notion that classical liberalism, which had for so long protected Jews, would endure.
But classical liberalism—with its respect for pluralism, civil rights and the rule of law—has been eclipsed by a radical progressivism that paints Jews as privileged “white oppressors” and portrays Israel as the world’s villain. Even as it gained ascendancy, Jewish organizations deluded themselves by assuming that woke ideology was an exuberance of youth when it was, in fact, brilliantly organized, paid for and operated by nations like Russia, China and Qatar, and wealthy antisemites; and supported by the social justice-NGO complex. It’s not going to fade.
For decades, Jewish leaders invested vast sums of money, communal passion and moral credibility into alliances with leftist agendas and identity groups: feminists, black, Latino, trans activists, LGBTQ+ coalitions and even Muslim organizations. They believed that solidarity with those promoting left-wing agendas would be reciprocated.
But after Oct. 7, these “allies” turned on us with ferocity, branding Jews and Israel as “oppressors,” and openly celebrating our pain. The investment of decades was not just wasted; it actively strengthened these foes who now lead lethal campaigns against us. The community’s resources would have been better set aflame than handed over to organizations that weaponized them against Jews.
Because our leaders yearn to reclaim their seat at the “social-justice victims” table, they abide by the progressive rules that most threaten Jews and America. They refuse, for example, to explain the jihadist threat against Jews and the West. Large portions of the Muslim world embrace a religiously based program that explicitly targets Jews for destruction. This is not paranoia; it is a declared worldview.
Jewish leaders, however, tiptoe around this reality. They abide by the left’s ban on “Islamophobia,” a taboo that prevents any criticism of Islamist-led assaults across the world.
For the same reason, they ignore the “red-green alliance” between radical leftists and Islamists. Both groups seek to destroy America as we know it. Those on the left want to replace the Constitution with global governance, and the Islamists want to replace it with Sharia law. That these movements would join forces was predictable; that Jewish leaders refuse to acknowledge it is unforgivable.
Adding to the problem of their left-leaning ideology is their lack of courage. To admit mistakes, to rethink lifelong, deep-seated beliefs and to break with old allies requires fortitude. Instead, our leaders cower before the woke army, collapsing into silence and appeasement as their safest posture. They have—and they will continue to prioritize leftist agendas over Jewish interests, whether from belief or a lack of imagination and courage.
The responsibility to protect our families and our future then falls to the rest of us. This is not a cause for despair; it is a call to action. Jewish history is filled with moments when ordinary men and women rose to the challenge of defending their people when institutions failed. We can and must do so again.
The time to face reality is now. The old cavalry is not coming. But we are not helpless. We have strengths and talents, and we have allies across the world who want to defend us as a way to defend their own freedom from this newer emerging tyranny.
We must build new coalitions with those who truly share our values and our foes; people who believe in freedom, democracy and the survival of the Jewish people, and people who understand that the burning Jewish house is meant to be the kindling to burn down America. We, each of us, must now decide to act. Time is short, but we can win.
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