There’s grave danger in conflating legitimate political criticism of Israel with outright antisemitism, according to one man whose family has seen more than its share of the latter. And he sees serious risk in policing anti-Zionism more than antisemitism.
The man issuing this warning is Mikey Weinstein, a Jewish man who probably experiences more antisemitism than any non-famous American. Because he’s quite famous among antisemites.
For the last two decades, Weinstein has fought for the separation of church and state. A veteran of the Air Force and the Reagan White House, Weinstein founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to protect men and women in uniform from unconstitutional proselytization.
He spends the vast majority of his time helping Christians. The vast majority of the hate he gets is also from Christians.
The MRFF claims 87,000 clients, 95% of them Christian. Just not Christian the way some superiors want them to be.
So Weinstein and the MRFF swat down unconstitutional prayer sessions, Bible displays, and other — almost always Christian — violations of the Constitution’s prohibition against government respect for any establishment of religion. These fights make news. Especially Fox News.
If success can be measured by the intensity of the opposition, it’s worth noting that congressional Republicans just tried to ban members of the military from communicating with the MRFF. That effort backfired, but most of the weapons wielded against Weinstein aren’t legislative amendments.
That’s where the antisemitism comes in. At least, the overt antisemitism.
The fact that it’s a Jewish guy thwarting Christian proselytization in the military is too much for some Christians. Thousands of them.
So they target the MRFF and Weinstein and his family with hate mail. And hate speech online. And threats. Violent images too extreme even for the publisher of his wife’s books about the threats they get.
Some MRFF critics have come to the Weinstein home. They come in darkness, but leave their mark. A swastika. Sh*t. Slashed tires. Dead animals. Shots fired through the window.
The rhetorical assaults lack the coy ambiguities of mainstream antisemitism. No globalist dog whistles here; they’re almost refreshingly old-fashioned. “Christ-killer,” they say.
A spokesman for MRFF says he’s worked closely with Weinstein since 2007. He’s seen the messages.
“I personally know Mikey wakes up every day knowing that thousands of Christian Nationalists nationwide would like to see him dead,” he says.
John Allen is the sheriff where Weinstein lives, and confirmed the threats to me. “I know the ongoing threats against the Weinsteins and they are all antisemitic,” Allen says. “Due to what is going on overseas I believe the whole nation has seen an uptick in hate speech and the same applies here.”
Nationally, law enforcement have reported surges in antisemitic hate crimes, but Weinstein cautions that criticism of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre is worlds apart from what he experiences. The former, he says, is political speech — with which he happens to agree.
What Weinstein gets, he says, is genuine antisemitism.
“We get about a dozen to 18 pretty grotesque antisemitic threats on a daily basis,” he says.
I asked him whether the antisemitism he’s seen since Oct. 7 is a response to Israel’s devastation of Gaza or more a continuation of pre-existing Christian nationalism. “[A]lmost exclusively the latter;” he said in an email, “from fundamentalist Christian nationalists emboldened, specifically, by the POS tRump and, generally, by MAGA.”
And Weinstein says it’s not getting enough attention from the politicians policing expressions of support for Palestinian rights.
Even “from the river to the sea,” which has been a slogan for Jewish eradication, can also be and historically has been used as a peaceful call for Palestinian autonomy, Weinstein notes. But that kind of ambiguity is rare in the overt antisemitism on which he’s now a reluctant authority.
The examples can be hard to read. There are posts with subject headings like “F***k you dirty k*kes.” Commenters with handles like “K*ke girl rayper, aka Anti-termite-ism is GOOD” give fake email addresses — F**ktheJews@gmail.com — and URLs like www.thejewsmustdie.com.
Two days after Christmas, “Jesus is king of kings'' posted a comment with the subject "Scum Jews…Should Have Been Gassed." The comment itself read: “Jews are still evil Christ killing scum blood drinking kids of jewsatan in 2024. john 8.44.”
That Bible verse refers to Jesus telling a group of Jews, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.” It’s a verse Christians share with the Weinsteins a lot more frequently than the Sermon on the Mount.
Some are aware, or correctly assume, that Weinstein lost family in the Holocaust. “All your family and all your kin were wiped out in the furnaces and the ovens by the Nazis and Hitler,” one caller said in a voicemail:
“Is that why you’re so hateful? You know, because your families were killed in masses in concentration camps? You know, they were starved and beaten and burned alive and shot and everything else. Is that why you’re so hateful? Probably. Have a nice day. Unlike your family did.”
The Holocaust references aren’t just stabs at old wounds. They strike at fears about the future.
Weinstein gives the example of an elderly relative, a Holocaust survivor.
She told Weinstein how German Jews had to get distinct license plates. And could only assemble in smaller and then smaller groups. Everything incrementally.
She was in her 80s and Weinstein had just started the MRFF. She told him not to stop.
When she was on her deathbed, it fell to Weinstein to ask forgiveness for the family taking away her car keys once she could no longer drive safely. It had been traumatic for the family. And for her.
Weinstein’s voice breaks when he recalls her explaining why it was so hard for her: “Because when you’re Jewish,” she told him, “you always have to be ready to get away.”
Today, Weinstein has bodyguards, weapons, and dogs. The threat is as real as a set of car keys.
“It’s gotta be pretty fucked up when you’re about to die and you’re in your 80s and you wanna still have your keys to your Buick so you can get the fuck out of there if they come back again,” Weinstein says. “Well, they’re back.”
And they envision an America purged of Jews, in the name of Jesus. That was one response after the MRFF objected to a Bible display at a veterans hospital:
“Fun fact—did you know that jews like you all have been kicked out of 115 countries in this world for your meddling complaining and your betraying. (Sorry but that kind of tells the tale about your brood. You bring this on yourselves by your war on Jesus.)
“Don’t make the United States become #116 to get rid of your tribe.
“Learn your place. Don’t bite the hands or try the patience of Christians who tolerate you.
“Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF are ungrateful and need to shut their bagel holes!
“Praise The Lord Jesus Christ and His Gospel!”
Some commenters advocate worse than exile for Weinstein, his family, all Jews.
One wrote, “Jews deserve nothing less than being gassed and set on fire and raped! F**k the Jews!”
Pictures of Weinstein, his wife, and their children, were posted on a militant far-right website tied to almost 100 murders.
Some say they themselves will kill the Weinsteins. “I have a nice gas chamber for you,” one wrote. “Go ahead and tell the feds Idgaf.”
It’s not just post-Oct. 7. And it predates MAGA. In December 2013, CNET reported, Weinstein got this email, which CNET redacted:
"Hey jewboy Mickey Whinerstein. The Air Force Base in S. Carolina should make a naitivity scene out of your dismembered f——- body parts. You stinking k—- commie athiest liberal d—- sucking Obummer loving Jesus hating f——- lawyer. Who worships satan queers and abortions and muslims sand n——— like Obummer more than your own country. TRAITOR JEW!"
More recent comments incorporate the right’s current predilections:
“Like all jews, he has a fetish for raping kids and in turn being sodomized by liberal zombies. Jews are inbred sacks of s**t and recent events have put an end to their reign and they can't stand it!”
In fact, Weinstein is far from an advocate for a “reign” of Jews. He supports a two-state solution and Palestinian rights. “Because,” he wrote last year, “Palestinians are FREAKING human beings.”
Weinstein shares the hate speech and threats not in pursuit of pity (he says his crusade for the rights of service members is worth the sacrifice). He shares it to illustrate what actual antisemitism looks like.
It’s targeting Jews because of their faith, he says. It’s blaming 2024’s Jews for what some Jews ostensibly did when Jerusalem was part of the Roman Empire.
What antisemitism is not, Weinstein emphasizes, is the defense of Palestinian rights or self-governance. Criticizing Israel’s right-wing coalition government or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not in and of itself antisemitic.
That distinction is crucial to Weinstein.
“If you don’t CLEARLY delineate you destroy and fatally diminish the definitional efficacy and credibility of both avenues of criticism,” he told me in an email.
“It drives me nuts.” Weinstein said later, that “if you even have a tacit nuance indicating that maybe we shouldn’t be driving towards 30,000 dead Palestinians by the Israeli Defense Forces, you’re a complete antisemite. And I reject it.”
Weinstein called the Oct. 7 massacre “hideous” and “a war crime.” He also argues that “it’s not wrong to say, ‘Why did that happen?’” Just as it was important to ask why 9/11 happened, Weinstein says, the answers matter and asking doesn’t merit being smeared.
“If you even want a cease-fire, you are an antisemite. You are Adolf Hitler,” Weinstein says. “That is insane.”
And Weinstein sees his position as more than a defense of legitimate anti-Zionism. It’s also a call to focus on the real danger of the rising Christian theocratic right: A dominionist agenda that threatens not just Jews but anyone out of line with their interpretation of God’s will. “Gilead,” says Weinstein, namechecking “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
“It’s ripped me apart,” he says, “to see antisemitism equated to the slightest criticism of Bibi Netanyahu and his government… when we sit here and we get [antisemitism] on an almost hourly basis.”
That conflation, he says, threatens to blind people to the real threat.
A handful of congressional Democrats are starting to resist Christian nationalist incursions. Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., co-chair of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, released a letter pushing back against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tapping a Christian nationalist guest chaplain with a history of hate speech.
But only 25 other members signed on.
Meanwhile, most politicians are “screaming about people that are screaming for justice for the Palestinians and for a cease-fire, and yet…fundamentalist Christian nationalism is so inextricably intertwined into our military, and into our Congress.” Weinstein says.
“These same politicians and other leaders are completely ignoring what we call the fundamentalist Christian nationalist, corporate, congressional parachurch military-proselytizing complex,” he says.
And as Weinstein points out, this strain of Christianity foresees the eradication of Judaism, a precursor to Christ’s return.
“If these politicians can’t see Christian nationalism and see its dangers, particularly when compared to those that are protesting for a cease-fire,” Weinstein says, “that is completely willful ignorance. They all know better.”
Jonathan Larsen is a journalist who’s worked at CNN, MSNBC, and TYT. He created Up with Chris Hayes, helped launch Anderson Cooper 360, and was a senior producer on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. His original reporting has been cited by members of Congress resisting Christian nationalism. You can support his work by becoming a free or paid subscriber to his newsletter.
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