David Kaufman: Don't fall for the false Islamophobia-antisemitism equivalency

Politicians and pundits are everywhere right now, warning of the risk of Islamophobia in the wake of the Hanukkah massacre in Sydney, Australia, last weekend. There was Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez on X on Monday, decrying that “the normalization and acceptance of Islamophobia in our politics is disgusting.” And rabid pro-Palestinian commentator Mehdi Hasan, also on X, reminding readers that “Islamophobia is always wrong” as he performatively condemned the Bondi Beach killings.

And, of course, New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani piped in, slamming as “vile Islamophobia” statements by Republican New York City Council member Vickie Paladino suggesting the White House begin “developing a formal legal framework for the denaturalization process” of Muslims currently living in the U.S.

With the Sydney shooters confirmed as both Muslims and directly aligned with the Islamic State, the anti-Islam backlash has been as quick as it has been vitriolic. The revelation that a Syrian-Muslim immigrant heroically disarmed one of the shooters helped temper the hate-filled rhetoric. But as the New York Times wrote on Tuesday, “many (in Australia) are now on edge about Islamist radicalization — and a potential Islamophobic backlash.”

Nothing speaks better of the upside-down post-October 7 world than the obsessive focus on Islamophobia in the wake of the mass murder of Jews. And there has been Islamophobia: anti-Muslim hate and hate crimes have risen over the past two years worldwide.

In 2023, for instance, the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tallied over 8,000 reports of anti-Muslim hate in the U.S., the highest number in its history, with more than half occurring during the three months following the Hamas massacre in Southern Israel. CAIR also noted thousands of anti-Muslim online posts during New York’s recent mayoral campaign, which saw the election of Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor. And in Canada, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose by 94 per cent from 2022 to 2023.

Anti-Islamic sentiments, incidents and intimidation are real — and cannot (and should not) be discounted. Pig heads thrown into an Islamic cemetery in Sydney this week reveal how quickly anti-Islam hate can be deployed.

But any suggestion that either the U.S., Australia, Canada — or anywhere, really — is facing a fundamental battle against Islamophobia is downright absurd and highly misleading. Because as progressive politicians and woke pop-culture types scream Islamophobia, they obscure the real target of organized institutional rage right now — Jews, such as those who were gunned down in Sydney last Sunday.

Consider this: while there were some 211 anti-Muslim hate crimes in Canada in 2023 according to Statistics Canada, 900 hate crimes were reported against Jews — even though there are nearly five times more Muslims in the nation than Jews. Similar numbers hold across the Anglophone world: anti-Muslim incidents rose by 150 per cent in Australia from October 2023 to November 2024, which is unacceptable. But that is half the number of antisemitic incidents; and as in Canada, Australia has four times the number of Muslims as Jews.

Yes, anti-Islam sentiments are rising — but any talk of an “epidemic” of hate (as the United Nations described the rising anti-Islamic tide in 2021) is distracting and hyperbolic.

There is nothing particularly new or novel going on here. Indeed, the violent colonization of so many Jewish and Israeli spaces by pro-Palestinian agitators has been a co-narrative of the entire post-October 7 era. Even the condemnation of antisemitism is rarely allowed to breathe freely: rather than solely lament Jew-hate this week, New York Attorney General Letitia James made sure her followers on X understand that “in New York, we reject Islamophobia and Antisemitism.” In New York City last February, Jews were the victims of 70 per cent of all hate crimes. 

The Islamophobia myth is only likely to grow stronger as attacks against Jews scale in their ferocity. Already, Jewish groups and commentators are being accused of weaponizing the Sydney shootings — along with the undeniable antisemitic deluge now drowning the West. Antisemitism skeptics — many conveniently Jewish — have used this same accusation against President Donald Trump’s mid-year crackdown on the febrile universities that so recklessly stoked Jew-hatred. Some six months on, the antisemitism ratchets and reaches ever higher — while so, too, does the Jewish body count.

Urgent alarms are now being raised over “weaponizing” and Islam — as if the real victims of the Bondi attack are Sydney’s Muslim masses imperiled by over-sensitive Jews.

Yet from Colorado to Washington, D.C. to Manchester, it is Jews who are being murdered. Nearly seven years ago, some 51 people were killed in a pair of mosque shootings in New Zealand, perhaps the clearest-cut case of Islamophobia in the antipodes in recent memory. But in Australia, at least, there have been no deaths directly caused by Islamophobia in Australia for decades. Meanwhile, antisemitism claimed 15 lives along the Sydney seashore this woeful week alone.

National Post

David Christopher Kaufman is a New York-based journalist and former New York Post editor and columnist. Sign up for his Substack newsletter, Counterintuitive.