After a packed morning at the UN General Assembly on Friday, which included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 14th address before the international body, I went out with an Israeli media colleague for lunch on the Upper East Side.
This is a well-known Jewish neighborhood in the heart of Manhattan, a place where Jews are supposed to walk freely and feel at home. But what we experienced shattered that assumption.
As we chatted in Hebrew about the day's events, a woman who looked to be in her 40s suddenly turned on us. She spun around and hurled accusations: "Ya'll are visiting here on my tax money!" she yelled. Stunned, we froze, but she kept going: "Everybody hates you! They don't want you here!"
I tried to end the confrontation with a dose of cynicism, replying, "Thank you very much, goodbye." But she wasn't done. With a bitter flourish, she concluded: "GO HOME!"
Not a political argument
This incident troubles me on several levels. First, it was clear the trigger was our Hebrew. The symbols we wore, an Israeli flag pin and a pin for the hostages, probably didn't help, but even without them we would have been targeted. So would any American Jew who happened to be speaking Hebrew. This wasn't a debate about Israel's policies. It was simple hatred of Jews.
The second troubling aspect was the woman's "normal" appearance. She didn't fit the usual profile of anti-Israel demonstrators in New York, no kaffiyeh, no mask, no radical look. On the contrary, she appeared to be an ordinary citizen who felt comfortable spewing antisemitism in broad daylight on a central street.
And the third, most alarming part: the boldness. Jews in New York are increasingly walking around with targets on their backs.
"Spread the intifada"
I have no doubt that woman already disliked Jews. But something in today's climate gave her the courage to act on it. In the middle of a Jewish neighborhood, in an area swarming with police, she still felt emboldened to unload her hatred. This is no longer an isolated incident. It's a trend.
I can't say whether she was a left-wing antisemite, the type drawn to mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, who has said that "spreading the intifada worldwide" is legitimate and vowed that as mayor he would arrest Netanyahu if he ever returned to New York, or whether she was a right-wing antisemite, the type who follows conservative media figures like the openly antisemitic Candace Owens, who has called Judaism "a cult of Satan." In the end, it doesn't matter: Jews are being targeted from both sides.
And in a climate where a leading candidate for mayor promises to reduce police involvement in anti-Israel protests, demonstrations that often descend into violence and destruction, the outlook can only worsen.
I am a guest in this city, here only from time to time. But sadly, at this pace, the more than 1 million Jews who live here may find that the worst is yet to come.
