Jared Moskowitz says antisemitism in America is the ‘new normal’

U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz believes antisemitism in America has crossed a point of no return.

Appearing this week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Moskowitz said the hate directed at Jewish Americans — including multiple death threats against him — reflects a country in a fundamentally different and more dangerous place than it was before Oct. 7, 2023.

“We’ve totally passed the Rubicon now on antisemitism, and we’re not going back,” the Parkland Democrat said.

“This is the new normal for Jews in America right now.”

Moskowitz, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, released audio of the voicemails his Office recently received, which included callers demanding that Jewish people be killed and references to Nazi death camps.

He noted that he now has a constituent serving a 25-year prison sentence for a separate assassination plot against him.

Most Jewish members of Congress, he said, now require security at their homes, as do Jewish places of worship.

“Every synagogue in this country has to have security outside of it,” he said Monday morning. “Soon, Jewish-owned businesses will have security outside of them.”

In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists on Israel, which killed 1,200, Israel has engaged in a military campaign in Gaza that has resulted in the death of more than 72,500 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and militants.

Since then, Israel has also taken military actions against Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria and Yemen.

In the first full year after the Hamas attack, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a record-shattering 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States.

Last year, an ADL audit recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents — a 33% drop from the year prior, but still five times higher than a decade ago and the third-highest yearly figure recorded since tracking began in 1979.

Physical assaults rose 4% in 2025, which was also the first year since 2019 in which Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks in the U.S.

In May 2025, a gunman shot and killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., shouting “I did it for Gaza” as he was taken into custody.

Weeks later in Boulder, Colorado, a man using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails attacked a peaceful hostage solidarity march, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen others, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

This past March, a Hezbollah-inspired attacker rammed a pickup truck into a Detroit-area synagogue with 150 children inside. And last month, an 18-year-old North Carolina woman was arrested for allegedly conspiring to drive a truck through a Houston synagogue to “kill as many Jews as possible.”

The perpetrator of last year’s shooting at Florida International University was obsessed with Adolf Hitler, even carrying a copy of “Mein Kampf” to the crime.

Florida has taken countermeasures. Lawmakers have repeatedly approved legislation to fund Jewish school security and OK’d budgetary set-asides to protect Jewish college students. Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz stepped up Jewish security measures after the Washington killings last year.

Moskowitz blamed social media propaganda and the silence of bystanders for rising hate against Jewish people, adding that his grandmother — a Kindertransport survivor whose parents were killed at Auschwitz — would find much of what’s happening today hauntingly familiar.

“These were the things that were starting to happen in the 30s before what happened in Germany. And I’m not saying we’re on that trajectory, but I’m just saying there are similarities,” he said. “Jews are the other. We’re not just being blamed for (Israel Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu. We’re being blamed for the world’s problems. We’re being blamed for the economic problems in this country. We’re being blamed for the Middle East.”

Those sentiments are especially high among young people, Moskowitz said, perhaps referring to research like a recent Yale Youth Poll survey of more than 3,400 American voters, which found that 18% of adults ages 18 to 22 believe Jewish Americans have negatively impacted the country, a share higher than any older age group surveyed.

“The statistics don’t matter. It’s feelings that Jews have. They’re having to put their Jewish stars away,” he said. “Jews are starting to hide in this country, and that is the telltale sign that we are on a very scary trajectory.”