Bob Good: Antisemitism and Islamophobia Are Not Equivalent

Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) made the point during Thursday’s congressional hearing on antisemitism on America’s college campuses that antisemitism and Islamophobia are not equivalent or even necessarily related, despite the left’s penchant for linking them.

All three university presidents testifying at the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce mentioned that they had taken steps to address Islamophobia in addition to speaking out against antisemitism (belatedly, in the case of many campuses).

Good pointed out:

There is a deeply troubling tendency by many on the left, as has already been expressed in this hearing, in media, academia, among elected officials, and even some on this committee, who try to somehow conflate or equate antisemitism with so-called “Islamophobia.” It’s troubling that it seems that it’s Jews or Israelis who, when they’re attacked or victimized, somehow become the oppressors, or instigators of those attacks in the eyes of leftists…It’s wrong to suggest that antisemitism and Islamophobia are equivalent problems in this country, as noted already in this hearing. [Anti-]Jewish hate crime is the most predominant [religious] hate crime in this country today.

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Good asked University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill if there had been any anti-Muslim protest on Penn’s campus, or any protest calling for the end of an Arab state, equivalent to Sunday’s anti-Israel, antisemitic protest. She tried to evade the question.

There have been several alleged hate crimes against Palestinians in the U.S. since Hamas launched a terror attack against Israel on October 7, but few of these have involved Jewish perpetrators. In 2022, the last full year for which data area available, there were seven times more hate crimes against Jews — the most targeted religious group — than against Muslims.

Complaints about Islamophobia are sometimes used as a shield against criticism of antisemitism. For example, in 2019 Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) celebrated the passage of a House resolution against antisemitism that had been provoked by her own remarks, because it also condemned Islamophobia.

She falsely claimed it was the first such resolution against “anti-Muslim bigotry.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.