A “My View” (June 11-17) comes as near to a comprehensive description as is possible about the consequences for Jews around the world of actions taken by the Zionist state. But the writer’s conclusion, framed as a question—“Why is antisemitism so rampant today in America?”—may be without factual basis. 

During May 2026 in New York City, there were about 8,400 reported serious crimes; in the same period, there were 41 verified “hate crimes.” Even in the unlikely circumstance that all the hate crimes were “serious,” that is pretty meager evidence of increased antisemitism, more particularly since the NYPD does not publish statistics identifying the ethnicity of victims. 

The numbers are of some moment to me since I spend part of my time in New York City in the most Jewish congressional district in the country. Transplanting Europeanized Jews into a territory already occupied by a western Asian people was a bad idea from the start, and the U.K. was without authority to tinker with the demographics of Mandatory Palestine. 

It seems unlikely that Israel would have come into existence without the Holocaust—essentially, that is the heavy price Jews paid for a national homeland. 

The antisemitism ploy is a red herring to divert attention from seeking a solution to the problem. As two Israelis, college classmates of mine in the late 1950s/early 1960s, explained, politicians in their country used the Arab threat to stay in power.

John A. MacKinnon
Lackawaxen, PA