I’ve spent the last few days asking myself the same question: How did we get here? How did we reach a point where antisemitism is so thoroughly normalized that it barely registers?
Earlier this month, I sat in the Capitol Building on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and found myself reflecting on a painful truth: Since October 7, we’ve watched similar patterns that preceded the Holocaust begin to repeat. Synagogues defaced. Jewish students assaulted. Blood-libel conspiracy theories spread, such as the age-old trope that Jews operate in secret cabals that control world events. Jews being falsely blamed for all the world’s evils. Antisemitic slogans — like “Jews run the media” and “Globalize the Intifada” — are broadcast through bullhorns.
And each time, just as before, the overwhelming response has been silence. Attacks, slurs, threats, and vandalism targeted explicitly at Jews were met not with outrage, but with rationalization, dismissal, complacency, denial, misinformation, or some deranged distortion of history.
I sat and reflected, watching as the last remaining Holocaust survivors walked into our Capitol 80 years after the end of the Holocaust. Abraham Foxman spoke about his experience as a survivor, a living reminder of what happens when complacency goes unchecked. Then he uttered words that shook me: “Silence is a choice.” We’re not absolved of our moral responsibility to ensure “never again” by turning away: Saying nothing is also an active choice.
As a lifelong activist, I’ve learned the importance of drawing lines — clear boundaries that define what culture will and will not tolerate. Since October 7th, I have searched endlessly for that line as it pertains to Jews. Is there a limit to the overt antisemitism that my peers and friends would tolerate? Was anything ever going to cross the boundary when they wouldn’t choose silence? I watched every boundary be crossed, over and over. Still silence.
If someone had told me two years ago that Kanye West would release a song called “Heil Hitler,” in which he repeatedly did a Nazi salute in a music video distributed around the world — and the dominant cultural reaction would range from detachment to casual amusement — I wouldn’t have believed it. That Adolf Hitler, the architect of the systematic genocide of six million Jews, could be publicly lauded by a global celebrity without immediate and widespread condemnation? Impossible. It’s like the most surreal test of how far people would let this virulent, incessant Jew-hate spread. And still, silence.
But this isn’t about Kanye West (as much as he might wish it were). It’s about a society that encounters a song called “Heil Hitler” and chooses not to care. What was once confined to backrooms and fringe forums is now broadcast in the open — and the response is a collective shrug. The hate is horrifying, yes. But it’s the detachment, the complacency, that allows it to flourish. People treat silence as neutrality. But Abe is right: Silence is a choice. The Holocaust didn’t begin with gas chambers. It began with silence, with yellow stars and Jewish professors quietly dismissed. And with neighbors watching passively as it all happened — each one grasping for a reason that made the horrors a little easier to justify.
That same silence reverberated during the pogroms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Jewish families were attacked and no one intervened. It echoed when Jewish communities were cleansed out of all the countries in the Middle East from where they originated. And it echoed again, painfully, after October 7th, when Jewish women were raped, mutilated, and murdered — and many of the loudest feminist voices fell silent. Some remain silent still. Maybe “believe women” didn’t mean Jewish women?
Antisemitism doesn’t go away. It’s a virus with a long memory.
As I write this, my phone buzzes: Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, two staffers for the Israeli embassy, have been murdered by terrorists. Their deaths are not theoretical. They’re the tangible consequences of a culture that dismisses antisemitism until it turns violent. This is the intifada being globalized. The hateful rhetoric of these mobs turned into action. Sarah and Yaron’s murderer yelled “Free Palestine” — the same words used to harass and target Jews outside of cancer hospitals, libraries, synagogues, and their homes.
I keep asking myself how this hate became so mainstream, but I know the answer. It’s something Jews have always known: Antisemitism doesn’t go away. It’s a virus with a long memory. It mutates and reemerges with each new generation.
In an age where we’re finally having honest conversations about the systemic racism and misogyny embedded in our culture, where we’re being asked to examine our own complicity, our inherited biases, the subconscious ways we perpetuate harm, I’m asking: Can you extend that same lens to antisemitism? And if your knee-jerk reaction is, “I’m not antisemitic,” or to recite some historical narrative, can you look inward and ask yourself how age-old conspiracy theories about Jews have, just maybe, seeped into your worldview? How assumptions about Jewish power, wealth, loyalty, and identity might be coloring your reactions, or lack thereof? For years, I have been trying to teach — with compassion and patience — what antisemitism is, with the genuine hope and belief that if people only knew, they would learn and change. And yet, despite the collective understanding that hate speech should be defined by how it’s received and not intended, I am gaslit over and over by the very people that echoed those sentiments for every other marginalized group — by the idea that the very real hate and trauma that we know to be antisemitic is, in fact, not.
I don’t want to live in a world where “Heil Hitler” is a trend, Or where a couple is gunned down on the streets of D.C. for attending a Jewish event (which happened to be about raising money for aid to Gaza). I don’t want to live in a world where women are raped on video by terrorists, and families are stolen out of their beds, and the response is “Yeah, but…” I don’t want my children to live in a world where Jewish suffering is dismissed. Because that’s exactly what led to the Holocaust. I want to believe we’re better than that.
So please: If you’re reading this, don’t choose silence. Listen to our stories and our experiences, and teach your children about them. Call hate what it is, and refuse to let a hate anthem become a cultural moment. We do know how we got here, because it’s happened before. And we know how this story ends: With people like Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky (z”l) murdered, days after the world scrolls mindlessly past a song praising a genocidal dictator. Your silence is a decision; your silence is antisemitism. So if indeed you’re not antisemitic, then make a different choice.
Mandana Dayani is an Iranian-born attorney, business leader, human rights activist, and co-founder of I Am A Voter, a national, nonpartisan civic engagement organization; she most recently served as President of Archewell, the media and philanthropic organization founded by Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex. In January 2025, President Joe Biden appointed her to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council’s Board of Trustees; a vocal advocate against antisemitism, Mandana recently addressed the United Nations Special Session on Sexual Violence on October 7, and her video condemning Hamas has been viewed over 50 million times.
