Photo by MJF Portraits
Roberta S. Clark
Roberta S. Clark
In April of this year, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was firebombed with the state’s Jewish governor, Josh Shapiro, and his family, asleep inside. In May, two Jewish Americans were murdered in Washington, D.C. as they exited an event promoting tolerance. On June 1, 12 Jews including one Holocaust survivor were injured when a march to remember the hostages in Gaza was attacked.
Amidst these incidents, the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Community Relations Council issued its annual “Antisemitism Audit.” Antisemitic incidents in Wisconsin have cumulatively increased by 459% since tracking began in 2015, the audit notes. Curiously, the report registered a slight decrease in incidents during 2024.
Roberta S. Clark, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, attributes this ostensible decrease to the unwillingness of many victims to report every instance of physical, verbal or digital abuse. She cites a report by the American Jewish Committee showing that one in three Jewish American believe they have been targeted but that 80% have left the incidents unreported. Clark knows of high school students in the area who didn’t step forward for fear of retribution. “Many people don’t think reporting really matters. I disagree,” she says. Shrugging off antisemitism amounts to sustaining antisemitism. Concerns over the security at synagogues and other institutions spurred the creation a program supported by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, the Wisconsin Jewish Security Network.
In a 2018 interview for the Shepherd Express, Clark’s predecessor, Elana Kahn, said there had been a threefold increase in antisemitic incidents from 2013 through 2017. Like Clark, Kahn added that many go unreported. In an increasingly toxic and belligerent social climate, Jews were not the lone victims in a rising spiral of hate crimes and hatefulness during the past decade. But with the military response by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, the 2,000-year-old virus of antisemitism proliferated and gained intensity.
Conspiracy Theories
The current wave “feeds into lots of age-old conspiracy theories,” Clark says. She lists several: “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the country they live in; all Jews think with one brain; Jews in America control what’s happening in Israel.” Despite online conspiracy mongers, American Jews are not a homogenous society but include many shades of opinion on many issues, including the current conflict in Gaza.
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“Regardless of anyone’s opinion about the Israel-Hamas war,” she continues, “there is no Jew in Milwaukee who is responsible in any way for any decision by the Israeli government, and no member of the Palestinian community of Milwaukee who was responsible for October 7.”
The messaging of some of pro-Palestinian protests, especially the slogan that a Palestinian state should be established “From the River to the Sea,” implies the destruction of Israel. “You can be pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. It’s not either or. We should care about all people,” Clark says. She cites harassment of Jewish students at UWM, including an incident at which the Jewish Hillel group was intimated at a student organization fair, as local examples of protests that turned antisemitic.
What’s often lacking is a willingness to engage in conversations between people with opposing views. “Israelis disagree with their government in the same way Americans disagree with our government,” Clark says. “Disagreement with Israeli policies does not in and of itself constitute antisemitism,” but refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of a Jewish homeland crosses the line, she adds. “And when someone goes on to blame all Jews, that is antisemitism. People can have many different viewpoints, but the idea of attacking people for something we have no control over—beneath it all is antisemitism.”
