Christian, Jewish, and other conservative leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to urge the conservative movement and the Republican Party to prevent antisemitism from taking a foothold on the Right.
“The conservative movement and the Republican Party cannot flirt with antisemitism,” Pastor Mario Bramnick, president of the Latino Coalition for Israel, declared in remarks Tuesday at The Line Hotel. Bramnick is one of four co-chairs of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.
“Wherever it arises on the Left, Right, or in between, we declare in America zero tolerance to any antisemitism in our nation,” Bramnick said. “It is an anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-Western way of living.”
Another co-chair, Luke Moon, opened the gathering by recounting the task force’s history and noting that while “the fight on the Left is still happening,” he warned of “an emergency threat on the Right.”
“People who were aligning themselves with the Democratic Socialists of America called for a full boycott—military and otherwise—of Israel,” Moon, a pastor and executive director of the Philos Project, recalled. “The Left did not call, ‘Enough!’ Did not stop that road.”
He called on conservatives to “build a robust coalition that is willing to take on the challenge we have on the Right.”
A third co-chair, Ellie Cohanim, former deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism at the State Department during the first Trump administration, also addressed the gathering.
A Jew who grew up in Iran and immigrated legally to the U.S., Cohanim warned that “where antisemitism rises, freedom falls. Jews are the world’s canary in the coal mine. When hatred of Jews is tolerated, it signals a deeper moral decay, one that inevitably threatens everyone in that society.”
She remarked that in the coalition, she saw “Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and all faiths, who refused to let hate divide us.”
The fourth co-chair, Victoria Coates, head of The Heritage Foundation’s center for national security, could not attend because she was in Helsinki, Finland.
What Is Antisemitism?
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, set forth two tropes as emblematic of antisemitism.
“If you look at someone saying that Jewish property is stolen—anything owned by Jews is acquired by fraud or deceit—or should I say, occupation—that is an antisemite,” he said. The other trope involves the claim that “Jews are unfair with everybody else.”
Menken said this explains why so many people refer to the Jewish state of Israel by “a European colonialist monicker.”
He pronounced “Palestine” with an F at the beginning, adding, “It sounds like a combination of ‘false’ and ‘Frankenstein,’ because it actually is.”
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, attacked the idea that Zionism is a Christian heresy. He attacked those who would claim that “pro-Israel Christians are squeezed by a brain virus,” asking if that would apply to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, or even President Donald Trump.
He declared that Americans can offer “no appeasement” to antisemitism, “only a war against this racist hatred against the Jewish people.”
Leo Terrell
Leo Terrell, senior counsel to Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department, also addressed the gathering.
Terrell said the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi are “100% committed” to fighting antisemitism.
“Help me help you,” he said. “I’m committed. I’m all in. I will never compromise fundamental rights, the civil rights of Jews in this country.”
“We haven’t done enough until everyone is treated equally, and that’s just basic common sense,” Terrell added.
The Christian Response
Many speakers emphasized their Christian faith, pushing back on the idea that “Christian Zionism” is a “brain virus” or a “heresy.”
Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, noted that in much of American Christian culture, “being a good Christian means defending the Jews.” He recalled his parents going to school with survivors of the Holocaust.
“Don’t believe the media: America’s Christians stand with Israel,” he said.
Reed also cited George Gilder’s book “The Israel Test.” He argued that in every collectivist ideology, such as socialism, Nazism, or communism “because they punish success and they are based on a politics of envy and resentment, they are either antisemitic at the origin or they become antisemitic.”
“Any economic system or ideology that is based on the hatred of, the envy of, and the resentment of merit-based success and achievement … will come to hate the Jew,” he warned.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, noted that “80% of what we read about in scripture took place” in Judea and Samaria, the land now euphemistically referred to as “the West Bank.”
“If we continue to foster this false idea that there is this land available to the Palestinians, we will continue to foment antisemitism,” he warned.
Gerald McDermott, an Anglican theologian who teaches at Reformed Episcopal Seminary, directly addressed the claim that Christian Zionism is a “brain virus.”
He noted that the idea that God gave the Jews the land of Israel appears “1,000 times” in the Bible, and is “all over the New Testament.”
“It’s a brain virus for Christians not to see it,” he argued. “Unity is never worth preserving if it’s used to protect evil.”
A Choice in the Movement
Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., the first congressman to wear a kippah on the House floor, warned that conservatives “have a choice in our movement today.”
“Are we going to do what the Democrats did” in ignoring the threat, “or are we going to stand up and are we going to punch it right in the face?”
