An Extraordinary Panel at the Federalist Society's National Lawyers' Convention
At at time where moral clarity about antisemitism and radical hostility to Israel has been sorely lacking, the Federalist Society stepped up.
[Readers: this post has a long windup before it gets to the relevant Federalist Society panel. If your patience wears thin, feel free to scroll to the end.]
The last decade has been an extraordinarily difficult one for Jewish Americans. It began in 2015, when Donald Trump's populist candidacy unleashed a wave of vicious antisemitism on social media from right-wing extremists convinced that Trump was secretly on their side and that his presidency would end what they imagined to be "Jewish control" of the United States.
That same year, the far left surged within the Democratic Party with the rise of Bernie Sanders. After Trump's election, leftist antisemitism surfaced quickly—most prominently in the antisemitism scandal that roiled the Women's March movement and in a venomous campaign against the Anti-Defamation League fueled by fabricated claims of racism.
The intervening years brought a series of horrifying episodes: the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre; antisemitic murders in the New York area by members of radical African-American cults; hundreds of attacks on visibly Jewish pedestrians in New York City; and increasing efforts by activists to exclude Jewish participants who were not openly anti-Israel. Surveys showed antisemitic attitudes rising sharply for the first time since the 1940s, albeit from historically low baselines.
October 7 intensified the troubling preexisting trends. Mainstream outlets have lavished attention on the fringe of Jews who have literally aligned themselves with pro-Hamas activism, while devoting far less attention to the mainstream Jewish community and what it has endured. Many Jews—especially progressive Jews—were stunned that non-Jewish friends showed little empathy or concern for them in the aftermath of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Even before Israel mounted any significant counterattack, some of those friends expressed more sympathy for the perpetrators than for the victims.
College campuses where Jews once felt extremely comfortable, such as Columbia and Penn, saw open celebrations of the October 7 massacre. Some SJP chapters even posted images glorifying the Hamas hang gliders used to murder and kidnap civilians in peacenik kibbutzim. Anonymous campus apps overflowed with antisemitic content. Jewish students faced harassment, shunning, and a spate of violence. Universities that had spent years proclaiming their commitment to equity and diversity responded with indifference—and in some cases effectively sided with the Hamasniks.
Off-campus, Jewish institutions and businesses, especially in New York City, were besieged by pro-Hamas demonstrators. Jews lost friends who demanded they denounce Israel, or who simply dropped them because of their connections to Israel. One of my young relatives, who had been teaching disadvantaged children in Israel when 10/7 occurred, returned home after enduring Hezbollah missile barrages. Instead of being welcomed with love and compassion, her longtime friend group disowned her for her ties to Israel. Multiply that story by tens of thousands to understand the emotional landscape.
Meanwhile, the left-leaning organizations with which American Jews have long allied themselves were silent or complicit. Even the ADL's vocal opposition to Trump's Muslim ban did nothing to shield it from left-wing accusations of racism and Islamophobia.
The trauma of the current moment is such that Jews now routinely discuss the "attic test": Would this person hide me in their attic if an antisemitic mob or government agent came looking? Many have realized that people they once trusted might hand them over to the Gestapo—as long as the Gestapo claimed to be seeking "Zionists" rather than Jews.
The broader climate of incitement soon produced deadly consequences: two people murdered after leaving a Jewish event in Washington, DC, and an elderly woman murdered and others severely injured at a rally for Israeli hostages. Some influential far-left accounts applauded the violence with minimal pushback from mainstream progressives. And the fact that Zohran Mamdani—a Hamas sympathizer who spread the absurd antisemitic trope that NYC police brutality was Israel's fault—could become mayor of New York City illustrates the political space now available for such views.
On the right, early expressions of solidarity with Israel and denunciations of campus antisemitism gave way to a rise in antisemitic Groyperism. Several Trump nominees turned out to have overtly antisemitic social-media histories. Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson drifted from "just asking questions" into disseminating unabashedly antisemitic content. Nick Fuentes became one of the country's most popular podcasters. The president of the historically pro-Israel Heritage Foundation defended Carlson and declared he saw no reason to "cancel" Fuentes. Today, right-wing social media is a sewer of conspiracism, Holocaust denial, and open Jew-hatred reminiscent of the 1930s.
Two aspects of this environment are especially devastating. First, Jewish institutions increasingly resemble armed camps, a constant reminder to Jewish Americans of their vulnerability to violence from extremists of the left, the right, Islamist radicals, and assorted kooks and cultists.
Second, political actors on both sides are actively stoking antisemitism because they see it as electorally useful. The far left has weaponized radical "antizionism"—often indistinguishable from antisemitism—to differentiate itself from the Biden administration and purge the Democratic Party's moderates before 2028. The far right's nativist isolationists, disappointed that Trump not embraced their agenda, have similarly turned to demonizing Israel and American Jews as a strategy for post-Trump influence. This marks the first time since the 1930s that being anti-Jewish is often a political positive.
In the face of this hostility—some sincere, some cynically manufactured—very few organizations outside the Jewish community have shown genuine solidarity.
That is why, as a Federalist Society member for 37 years, I was profoundly moved by a two-hour plenary panel at last week's National Lawyers Convention.
The panel opened with Senator Ted Cruz unequivocally denouncing right-wing antisemitism and calling out Tucker Carlson by name. It continued with a discussion featuring nine federal judges and one state supreme court justice—most not Jewish—many of whom had visited Israel with the World Jewish Congress.
The full panel is available online. Every panelist—Catholics, Jews, Mormons, evangelicals, mainline Protestants—did one or both of the following: denounced antisemitism or defended Israel as a vital outpost of Western civilization against the terrorist barbarism of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their allies. Judge Amul Thapar delivered an especially forceful defense of Israel. I was deeply moved by Judge Elizabeth Branch's comment, paraphrased here: "My mom reminded me that I have always stood behind my Jewish friends. I have decided that now is the time to stand in front of them."
Since October 7, I have not seen anything remotely comparable—a group of highly influential Americans from diverse religious backgrounds speaking with such moral clarity on behalf of what many of them referred to as their "Jewish brothers and sisters."
This panel also delivered a clear message to the Groypers: you are not welcome in the Federalist Society. If you are a law student who allies with antisemites, you should not expect a clerkship or access to the Society's extensive network of distinguished lawyers.
The moral clarity shown by the Federalist Society and its president, Sheldon Gilbert, has been almost entirely absent in elite American discourse since October 7. Even many Jewish organizations outside the far left have struggled to defend the Jewish community without hedging. I hope others will follow the Federalist Society's example—but I am grateful even if they do not.