New York City recently announced a significant new strategy to combat antisemitism. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is doubling funding for community organizations working to prevent hate crimes and support survivors, investing $6.4 million through the city’s Partners Against the Hate initiative, along with additional investments in security, education, and awareness.
The need is difficult to dispute.
Jewish New Yorkers make up roughly 10 percent of the city’s population, yet they have accounted for more than half of the city’s confirmed hate crimes so far this year.
Those numbers deserve our attention. But they also made me think about the problem underneath them.
How did we get so comfortable talking about millions of individual human beings as though they were one person?
“The Jews.”
“The Muslims.”
“The Democrats.”
“The Republicans.”
“The Christians.”
“The liberals.”
“The conservatives.”
“The Black community.”
“Latinos.”
“The immigrants.”
“Indigenous people.”
Pick your group. (This is a random lists of groups, this is inclusive but not limited to.)
We take an enormous collection of people with different families, experiences, beliefs, values, and opinions, put a label on them, and then assign them a collective personality.
Once we do that, it becomes surprisingly easy to dislike “them.”
I recently saw someone share a FACEBOOK post a sweeping characterization of Muslims, suggesting that Islam is inherently violent and that Muslims are consumed with converting or conquering “infidels.”
But which Muslims?
Nearly two billion people around the world do not share one mind any more than Christians, Jews, Democrats, Republicans, or Americans do.
A Muslim New Yorker is not responsible for the actions of every Muslim extremist. A Jewish New Yorker is not responsible for every decision made by the Israeli government. A Christian is not responsible for every act committed by someone invoking Christianity.
And a Democrat or Republican certainly does not bear personal responsibility for every statement made by someone of the same political party.
It seems obvious when we say it out loud.
Yet our political and social conversations increasingly operate as though it isn’t.
I think we have lost something critically important: the ability to understand that two things can be true at the same time.
You can support the safety of Jewish people and question or oppose the actions of the Israeli government.
You can condemn antisemitism and condemn Islamophobia.
You can support Palestinian civilians and reject Hamas.
You can disagree strongly with elements of a religion without assuming that an individual member of that religion shares the beliefs of its extremists.
You can be a Republican and reject racism.
You can be a Democrat and disagree with Democratic leaders.
You can personally oppose abortion and still recognize circumstances in which a woman may need legal access to it.
You can support abortion rights and still believe there should be limits.
And perhaps most importantly, you can disagree with someone and still refuse to hate them.
None of these things is a contradiction.
They are what happens when human beings are allowed to be complicated.
I hear “the Dems” constantly now. I hear “MAGA” used the same way. At some point, these words stop describing actual political positions and become containers into which we place everything we dislike about the people on the other side.
But who exactly are “the Dems”?
Which Republicans?
Which Muslims?
Which Jews?
Which Christians?
These groups contain millions, sometimes billions, of people. They cannot possibly have one opinion.
Sometimes I think our political version of “them” has become almost an empty set. We talk about this enormous collective enemy, but when you start pulling individuals out of the group and actually talking to them, the category begins to fall apart.
That matters especially when we elect people to public office.
I don’t expect a Muslim mayor to govern only for Muslims any more than I would expect a Jewish mayor to govern only for Jews or a Christian mayor to govern only for Christians.
I don’t expect a Republican elected official to represent only Republicans or a Democrat to represent only Democrats.
The office is larger than the individual who occupies it.
Once elected, the responsibility is to the whole constituency.
That is why Mayor Mamdani’s antisemitism strategy should be examined for what it actually does rather than through assumptions about what someone believes a Muslim mayor must think.
Look at the policy.
Look at the funding.
Look at the implementation.
Look at the outcomes.
Hold him accountable for those things.
That should be the standard for every elected official, regardless of party, religion, race, or background.
And our elected officials have a responsibility here, too.
When governing becomes entirely about party identity, it reinforces the very divisions we complain about. If every Republican is expected to vote one way simply because Republicans are supposed to, and every Democrat another because Democrats are supposed to, we shouldn’t be surprised when citizens begin believing those labels tell them everything they need to know about one another.
They don’t.
Maybe we need to return to something much simpler:
Person → individual beliefs → individual actions → accountability.
Instead, too often we are doing this:
Person → group → assumptions → judgment.
That distinction matters because misinformation thrives in the space between those two ways of thinking.
When misinformation and stereotypes are repeated often enough, people can begin accepting them as facts. Fear becomes easier to justify. Hostility becomes easier to excuse. The distance between “us” and “them” grows.
And sometimes people act on it.
Then, the government and communities are left to deal with the consequences.
Which brings me to one more truth we don’t talk about enough.
Hate costs us money.
When antisemitism becomes widespread enough that Jewish New Yorkers need additional protection, all of us pay for that protection.
We pay for increased security.
We pay for policing and investigations.
We pay for prosecution.
We pay for education campaigns, community outreach, and prevention programs.
We pay for services for people who have been victimized.
Those investments are necessary when people are at risk. We absolutely should protect targeted communities.
But imagine if so much protection weren’t necessary.
Imagine if fewer people repeated sweeping claims about “the Jews,” “the Muslims,” “the Democrats,” “the Republicans,” immigrants, Black people, white people, Christians, or any other enormous collection of human beings as though millions of individuals shared one mind.
Imagine if we interrupted misinformation before someone absorbed it as fact, turned it into fear and potentially acted upon it.
That is prevention.
So when New York City spends millions more combating antisemitism, I don’t just want to ask whether we are spending enough to protect people. We should protect people who are being targeted.
I also want to ask why we have created an environment in which so much protection is necessary.
There is a financial cost to division that rarely appears in the argument.
Every time we normalize the idea that an entire population can be judged by its worst member, its most extreme voice, or the actions of a government somewhere in the world, we contribute to an environment that requires resources to counter fear, hostility, and sometimes violence.
And those resources belong to all of us.
Money spent responding to hate is money that cannot simultaneously be spent on another public need.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend it.
It means we should work much harder to reduce the need for it.
Maybe that starts with something remarkably simple.
Stop telling me what “the Jews” believe.
Stop telling me what “the Muslims” believe.
Stop telling me what “the Democrats” believe.
Stop telling me what “the Republicans” believe.
Tell me what this person said.
Tell me what this person did.
Then hold that person accountable.
Because no individual represents an entire group.
Not a Muslim.
Not a Jew.
Not a Christian.
Not a Republican.
Not a Democrat.
Not a woman, man, LGBTQ.
Not me.
Not you.
Two things can be true at the same time.
We can spend what is necessary to protect people from hate today.
And we can start doing the upstream work that might make spending so much money protecting us from one another less necessary tomorrow.
