by Yoram Samets and Rachel Feldman

The Jews have always been the canary in the coal mine, sounding the alarm when danger is in the air. The canary’s sacrifice warns others of poison before it spreads. Sometimes that warning comes as a chirp, a whisper, a song. Sometimes it comes as a scream.

On October 7, 2023, the canary died.
And in its place rose a phoenix from the ashes—screaming, burning, refusing to be silent.

The Jewish people are an ethnoreligious minority who have survived 3,500 years of persecution, libel, pogroms, exile, and genocide. We are subject-matter experts in human survival. Yet our warnings are often dismissed—until it’s too late.

Now, again, we are screaming.

Are you listening?

Just two weeks ago in Washington, D.C., a young Jewish couple was gunned down outside the Capital Jewish Museum. They were targeted after having just participated in an event with other young Jewish and Israeli professionals that celebrated peace, connection, and bridge-building between Jews and Palestinians. This was not random. This was Jews, again, murdered in public for being who we are. 

The violence came, again, on the heels of a lie spread about Jews, which was believed and repeated worldwide. Earlier that day, the United Nations resurrected a modern blood libel—publicly circulating a claim about 14,000 dead children in Gaza without context, corroboration, or accountability. That number echoes at home in the U.S. with certain members of Congress blindly accepting and promoting such claims and around the world, inflaming hate, with no mention of how Hamas endangers its people, embedding terror in schools, hospitals, and refugee camps; stealing aid; launching rockets from civilian areas; using its population as human shields.

Gaza is a humanitarian tragedy—but one orchestrated by Hamas.

Days later, as Israel worked with the United States to deliver food and supplies through new humanitarian corridors, international headlines falsely blamed Israeli soldiers for killing Palestinians seeking aid. It wasn’t true. Hamas opened fire—again—on its own people. The footage is public. The facts are available. But the blood libel spreads faster than the truth.

Shortly after the false story spread this past weekend, in Colorado, Molotov cocktails were hurled at a Jewish gathering held in solidarity with the 58 hostages—children, women, and men—still held in Gaza by Hamas. 

Fire has always been used to terrorize Jews. In the Holocaust, our people were burned alive. On October 7, entire Israeli families were incinerated in their homes. Some were buried with only teeth, bone fragments, or melted jewelry—because there was nothing else left.

We’ve seen this before.
And we know what comes next.

We’ve stood on the killing fields of southern Israel. We’ve seen the dried blood, smelled the lingering smoke, and held the shattered pottery that once adorned Shabbat tables. We’ve also watched, with heavy hearts, the suffering of Palestinian civilians—held hostage, too, by Hamas’ brutality and the world’s silence.

But make no mistake:

The underlying evil here is not the Jews. It is Hamas.

This genocidal terrorist group did not just murder 1,200 Israelis and kidnap 251 more on October 7—Hamas lit a fire meant to consume Jews, Palestinians, and hope itself. That fire is still burning, and too many still refuse to see who lit the match.

To the world we love, we say:

Hear us.

Stop ignoring antisemitism.

Stop legitimizing lies that feed it.

Stop empowering those who use Palestinian suffering as cover for their own hate.

Take action before it spreads further.

Ask us how you can help.

Don’t wait for more blood to be spilled—on the steps of Jewish museums, in synagogues, on college campuses, or in the streets of our cities.

Because this time, we are not staying in the cage while others run to safety.

This time, we are not waiting to be saved.

This time, we are saving ourselves.

Shalom Alliance is a grassroots Vermont Jewish organization that confronts antisemitism in education, public institutions, and civic life in Vermont and beyond.