Three years ago, the world witnessed the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Families were slaughtered in their homes. Young people were hunted at a music festival. Women were raped and brutalized. Children were murdered. Hostages were dragged into Gaza, including young children. The horror was almost impossible to comprehend.
But what happened afterward should shock us too.
Within days of October 7, 2023, and in some cases before Israel had even buried its dead, people took to the streets not to mourn the victims, but to celebrate their killers. The massacre was rationalized. Terrorism was lauded as “resistance.” Hostage posters were ripped from walls. Jewish students were harassed and threatened on college campuses. Ancient accusations against Jews returned to mainstream discourse wearing new language and new slogans.
October 7 did not create antisemitism; it exposed it. And today, perhaps the greatest danger is that we are becoming accustomed to it.
We cannot become accustomed to it. We cannot normalize it. And we cannot wait to see where it leads.
As Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, I spend a great deal of time thinking about what history asks of us. The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers. It began with words, lies, and propaganda that demonized the Jewish people. It began when Jews were defined as the enemy, when neighbors were recast as threats, and when ideas once considered unacceptable became acceptable enough to say out loud and then became government policy.
The world before the Holocaust did not lack warning signs. It lacked the will to act on them. That is why remembrance alone is not enough.
Today, the warning signs are everywhere. Jews in America are asking whether it is safe to wear a Star of David. They are harassed on college campuses, while the administrations of elite universities fund student clubs that call for genocide. Synagogues and Jewish schools increasingly resemble fortified compounds. Israel is routinely demonized and subjected to standards demanded of no other nation. Ancient lies about Jewish power, loyalty and control are again being spoken openly.
The hatred is ancient. What is new is the machinery spreading it.
Hate used to need a mob. Now it only needs an iPhone or a laptop. Social media can transport a lie around the world before the truth has had time to respond. Algorithms reward outrage. Foreign adversaries can enter America’s national conversation with a keystroke, using bots, false identities, paid influencers, and manufactured outrage to turn Americans against one another. And make no mistake: A great deal of the antisemitism we see today promoted on social media is not organic to America. It is injected into our political life from abroad precisely because antisemitism is so poisonous to a free society. That should alarm everyone, not just Jews.
We need a new strategy for a new kind of threat. We can protect free speech while demanding transparency, exposing foreign manipulation and holding institutions accountable when they allow hatred to flourish. But we also need the courage to confront antisemitism wherever it comes from.
Antisemitism from the left is antisemitism. Antisemitism from the right is antisemitism. Anyone who condemns hatred when it comes from the other side while making excuses when it comes from their own is not fighting antisemitism. They are exploiting it.
This is not a Republican fight or a Democratic fight; it is an American fight. Because history teaches us hatred may begin with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews. A society that becomes comfortable with the intimidation of Jews and the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories is surrendering something much larger than the safety of one community. It is surrendering the principles of tolerance, pluralism, religious liberty and human dignity that hold America together. That should concern every American, Jewish or not.
We also have to change the way we fight back. There are hundreds of organizations doing important work against antisemitism. But too often we are fighting the same enemy separately. Antisemitism is coming at us with a baseball bat. We cannot keep fighting back with a thousand toothpicks. Government, universities, technology companies, religious leaders, community organizations, and Americans of good conscience need to act with greater coordination and greater urgency. Antisemitism does not care which organization gets the credit. Neither can we. For too long, the silence of decent people has been mistaken for permission. That must end.
Like every parent, I think about the country and world our next generation will inherit. I refuse to accept an America where Jewish children learn that survival means hiding who they are. We cannot allow the next generation to inherit our fear. We must give them our courage.
And we must teach the next generation not simply what happened in the Holocaust, but how it became possible: how lies become accepted, how hatred becomes normalized, how dehumanization becomes policy, and how indifference allows evil to advance. Those lessons are not confined to history. They are warnings for our own time.
We owe that to those murdered on October 7. We owe it to the hostages who endured unimaginable suffering. We owe it to Holocaust survivors who entrusted us with their stories. We owe it to the six million whose voices were stolen. And we owe it to generations not yet born.
The past has warned us. The present is testing us. And the future will judge what we do now.
History will not excuse us for recognizing the warning signs and choosing, once again, to look away.
We must decide whether “Never Again” is merely a phrase we recite, or a promise we intend to keep.
Jeffrey L. Miller of Miami Beach, Florida, is chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, having been appointed by President Donald Trump in March 2026; Miller has been a member since 2021.
