Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO and Vice Chairman Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spoke at the JNS Policy Summit’s Antisemitism Forum.

By JNS

“There has to be a time for accountability,” Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO and Vice Chairman Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told the crowd on Sunday at the JNS Policy Summit’s Antisemitism Forum.

As a tidal wave of antisemitism surged across the Western world following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Jews and Israel’s ensuing war against Hamas in Gaza, experts gathered to discuss the origins of antisemitism and actions needed to curb the trend.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported another record high in antisemitic incidents for 2024. The 9,354 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism marked the fourth consecutive year that the ADL’s audit recorded a new annual high. The 2024 total was the highest since the group began tracking such incidents 46 years ago.

“We are winning battles but losing the war. We are spending well into the nine figures, and there has to be a time now for accountability, for people to do a zero-sum analysis of where this money is going,” Hoenlein said.

“They [antisemites]are targeting every sector. We see it in political processes, in communal organizations, and the educational sector. We are focused on campuses, and many people have done remarkable work,” he added.

Global antisemitism surged immediately after the Oct. 7 terror invasion, but has since shown signs of decline, according to Tel Aviv University’s 2024 Annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report, released Wednesday ahead of Yom Hashoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The comprehensive 160-page document, produced by the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute, found that while incidents dropped sharply in late 2024, antisemitism remains significantly higher than before the war began.

Australia experienced the most dramatic increase, with 1,713 incidents recorded in 2024—up from 1,200 in 2023 and 490 in 2022. Significant rises were also noted in Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and the United States, particularly in cities such as Chicago, Denver, and Austin.

“I regret that on Oct. 9 we did not create a worldwide strike and declare we are not going to take it anymore—that we are going to stand up against those who don’t stand with us and declare them publicly, whether they are in entertainment, sports, or the business world,” Hoenlein said.

“We need to find practical solutions that will affect and mobilize the friends we have—and we have many. We must help them organize, become outspoken, and reinforce one another,” he added.

“I urge and call for a world conference on antisemitism to get non-Jewish leaders worldwide to declare they accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism and to pledge they will join the war against antisemitism—and if they don’t, we will hold them accountable,” he continued.

Bringing three decades of police experience into the discussion, Paul Goldenberg also joined the panel.

“We are not going to stop antisemitism by putting up billboards that say ‘stop Jew-hatred’ and ‘love wins over hate,’” Goldenberg said.

“We have crossed a threshold—and that threshold is when I have 50,000 protesters on the George Washington Bridge screaming ‘kill Jews.’ I want to know why we are not arresting and prosecuting them for terror,” he continued.

“We have to think globally and act locally. We must invest resources into law enforcement. Antisemitism is a crime. We must be clear on what and where the threshold is,” he added.

“We are working right now on an MOU with the Campus Police Association. Our goal is to get them to better understand that if their students come to them saying they don’t feel safe, they need to ask the right questions and gather enough information to lock up the person making that student feel unsafe,” Goldenberg said.

Rabbi Raphael Shore, Executive Chairman at OpenDor Media and founder of the Clarion Project, spoke about the roots of Jew-hatred.

“Antisemitism is not some kind of mystical, irrational phenomenon or mutating virus that most of our leaders and educators have told us. Adolf Hitler called himself a rational antisemite. He didn’t think he was evil,” Shore said.

“Hitler believed that the Jewish people were the greatest threat to the thousand-year Reich because of our ideology. He knew exactly why he hated us and who we are. It was not so much hate as it was fear of what he considered the greatest ideological and spiritual superpower on earth: the Jewish people,” he continued.

“They don’t hate us because we are powerless. They hate us because we have changed civilization through ethics, innovation, and resilience—and we are still doing it. Jew-hatred is a violent and obsessive resistance to the Jewish mission of what we are supposed to bring to the world,” Shore said.

Social media influencer and pro-Israel activist Lizzy Savetsky addressed the crowd, reflecting on how her approach shifted after Oct. 7.

“I quickly realized that smart people and dumb people don’t care about the truth when they hate Jews. After Oct. 7, I made the conscious decision to talk to my own people. We have to know who we are,” she said.

“Many Jews had no idea what it meant to be Jewish until Oct. 7. If we don’t know who we are, we can’t know what we are fighting for and who we are fighting against,” she continued.

“For so long, I used social media to walk on eggshells and be politically correct. We can’t do that anymore. We are in a life-or-death moment. We need to take a stand and be unapologetic,” Savetsky added.