It’s a democracy. In elections, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Move on.
I can’t. Not because some of my preferred candidates lost in the recent midterms, and even though some of my preferred ballot measures in Colorado won. It’s not business as usual, balancing inevitable ups and downs in politics. Absurdity has acquired legitimacy.
I’m hearing double. “Jews kill Christian children in order to use their blood to bake matzah.” More than the hate, this always struck me as absurd. How could anyone possibly believe it? How could it have been the motivation for anti-Jewish violence? I hear: “Republicans lost the election because of Israel.” Two absurdities. Except that one is history. The other is today. How could anyone possibly believe it? Except that Vice President Vance does.
Far worse is believed. After a Muslim in Michigan became the first Muslim to be elected to the US Senate, I received an email listing faith leaders who celebrated the election as a great expression of democracy. One of the celebraters is identified as Rami Nashashibi, founder and executive director, Inner-City Muslim Action Network. He wrote:
“We have been inspired and honored to help lead American Muslims in standing shoulder to shoulder with our sisters and brothers across faith traditions, mobilizing our communities, protecting the sacred right to vote, defending election integrity . . . ”
So far, so good.
Nashashibi continued: “Our faith traditions call us to place people, principle, and the sacred dignity of our entire human family above the politics of division, dehumanization, and genocidal war.”
Right there alongside motherhood and apple pie — “people, principle, dignity, human family” — and equally alongside Satan — “politics of division, dehumanization” — is “genocidal war.” It slips in so naturally. Genocidal war.
It would be wonderful if Mr. Nashashibi were to admonish me for imputing to him something he didn’t mean, but since Oct. 7, 2023 “genocidal war” means Israel’s response to Hamas’ war on Israel. Perhaps also Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s war on Israel. It just slips in. Genocidal war. Israel = genocide.
That’s why I can’t move on. Words lose meaning. Realities lose traction. Israel = genocide. Of course. Neither history nor geography register. Israel’s vulnerable geography. The Jewish people’s exile from and return to its land. The Israel Defense Forces’ endangerment of their own troops to avoid killing Gazan civilians. Nothing registers.
Move on? This election goes beyond the repudiation of Trump. It shows the normalization, the routinization, of something that I term Jew hatred but that others have transformed into statements of principle. I now live in a country in which the absurd becomes normal, the evidence for Israel is not heard.
It’s not the same country.
Not the same political language.
Not the same standards of argument.
Not the same standards of evidence.
Above all, not the same feeling.
I cannot recall ever having disparaged any person because of skin color, ethnicity or religion. Doesn’t matter, since I support Israel. For that, to many in the Republican Party, starting second from the top, and to an increasing number in the Democratic Party, flowing outward from Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to electoral districts around the country, including Denver, I am demonized. I am an apologist for evil. So what if I’m also a nice guy? Doesn’t matter anymore, even if I grovel to make the obvious point about Israel that no one else is asked to make about any other democratic country, namely, that I don’t support everything Israel does. Doesn’t matter.
When American Jews feel they need to start taking off their Stars of David, when Jews who dress in an obviously Jewish way are attacked for who they are, when a Jew who is marching on behalf of other, kidnapped Jews is murdered and a congressional candidate in Denver (now elected) cannot call the murder anti-Semitic, when Israel is no longer a reality but a badge of evil, yes, feeling counts. To be a Jew in America today is not the same feeling.
From that, I can’t move on.
© IJN 2026
