The surge of antisemitism in the West has prompted many thoughtful observers, particularly among Jews who have long prized intellectual depth, to search for deep-seated cultural, religious, or anthropological explanations. The truth is perhaps more mundane and more damning. This wave is not the product of ancient hatreds resurfacing on their own. It is the direct result of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of our elites, who are desperately trying to make Jews foot the bill for a catastrophic immigration experiment.
That experiment rested on a naive premise: that Muslim adults from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia are as malleable as children, and that they would casually discard the religious convictions and social norms of their ancestors just as secular Western liberals have done.
At first, there was a strange blend of paternalism and romanticism. Elites imagined that the Muslim communities settling in Molenbeek, Marseille, and Bradford would revive a sanitized, golden-age version of medieval Andalusia. When educators, police officers, and social workers on the ground quickly saw that this was not happening-that integration was failing and parallel societies were forming-the elites doubled down with contempt. What could these “racist" cops, antiquated teachers, or underpaid caseworkers possibly grasp that the cosmopolitan class, comfortable in five-star resorts in Morocco or Lebanon, did not?
The core problem has always been the fundamental incompatibility between core elements of Islamic doctrine-rooted in the life and teachings of its militant founder-and the liberal democratic order. Yet any honest discussion of this was immediately branded “Islamophobic" or “racist," with lazy comparisons to 1930s antisemitism. This sleight of hand defies reality: Jews, throughout centuries of persecution, responded with industry, patriotism, and disproportionate contributions to the societies that hosted them. By contrast, certain immigrant communities have disproportionately drawn on Western welfare systems, human rights protections, and European and American historical and political self-criticism-while repaying them with increasing rates of violence, sexual assault, intolerance, antisemitism, and support for terrorism.
The data from European crime statistics, grooming gang scandals in the UK, and repeated terror incidents are not illusions conjured by bigots; they are facts that elites have spent years denying or contextualizing.
By mid-2023, the game was clearly up. The elites knew their multicultural project had failed-in France, Britain, the Benelux countries, and beyond. Rather than admit hubris, ignorance, and the immense human cost (including the grooming scandals that sacrificed hundreds of thousands of vulnerable girls in Britain to preserve the narrative), they pivoted to a familiar scapegoat. In the wake of October 7th, just as Arab and Muslim regimes have long blamed Jews and Zionists for every failure in their own societies, our mainstream media and progressive intelligentsia flooded screens and printed media with images of suffering in Gaza. Legitimate public anger over crime, failed integration, economic strain, and cultural erosion was redirected toward Israel and Jews in general.
Journalists who once claimed to champion truth abandoned any pretense when it came to reporting about Israel or Gaza. Progressive activists, suddenly donning the mantle of humanitarianism, exploited the conflict with the same selective outrage they apply to other favored causes. Greta Thunberg became a latter-day Joan of Arc; European leaders postured as moral giants.
The complexities of the conflict-Hamas’s use of human shields, theft of humanitarian aid, the jihadist ideology that has always refused peace or compromise, and the stark contrast between Israeli society and its non-Jewish neighbors-were ignored. What mattered was the narrative: Jewish success and self-defense were the origin of the deepest problems afflicting the Middle East and Muslim immigrant communities.
This strategy has backfired spectacularly. By mainstreaming antisemitism-through campus boycotts, professors legitimizing violence against Jews, and institutions demanding Jews denounce Israel-the left has dissolved the post-Holocaust taboo. The horrific images of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen once served as a brake on racism and extremism. That moral restraint is weakening. The result is not only an explosion in naked Jew-hatred but also the emboldening of populist and harder-right forces across America and Europe. Parties and ideas once stigmatized are gaining ground precisely because elites prefered to scapegoat Zionism rather than address uncomfortable realities.
Thankfully, Europe’s Jewish population is relatively small. The continent that once profited enormously from Jewish ingenuity, science, and critical thinking is now being driven over the cliff by dishonest and self-referential elites. Nevertheless, the victims of this new antisemitism are not primarily Jews or Israelis. They are the very immigrant communities that secured unprecedented rights and tolerance in the wake of the Holocaust's destruction of European Jewry. These communities are fully-exposed and vulnerable now that the protective consensus against collective blame and violence against minorities dissolves.
Holocaust memory in the West was never primarily a “Jewish agenda." It was a civilizational guardrail against scapegoating, mob justice, and the normalization of hatred. Our elites have squandered this precious collective capital motivated by opportunism and cowardice. The recent outbreaks of anti-Muslim riots in Ulster and elsewhere offer a grim preview of what is coming.
The banality of antisemitism lies not in the brutality of its foot soldiers, but in the hypocrisy, cynicism, and intellectual laziness of those at the top who tolerate it to cover their own failures. Failures have consequences and, as the historical record suggests, the consequences of victimizing innocent Jews are calamitous.
Rafael Castro is a Yale- and Hebrew University-educated independent political analyst. An Italian Noahide, Rafael can be reached at rafaelcastro78@gmail.com