An elderly Jewish woman is firebombed while at a solidarity walk for the hostages in Boulder, Colo. Two Israeli Embassy staffers are gunned down on the steps of a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. And now, Charlie Kirk, an outspoken Christian Zionist, is murdered in cold blood at 31.
We do not yet know the motive behind Kirk’s murder. His Zionism may not have played a role. Even so, these are not disconnected events. They are part of a dangerous current running through our national life.
For centuries, violence against Jews and those who stand with them has been a signal of civilizational peril. When Jews and their allies are singled out for hatred and attack, it does not stop there. It is a warning that the broader culture of law, civility and debate is unraveling, and that intolerance is spreading and becoming more dangerous.
That warning is now impossible to miss. The violence that has targeted Jews with growing intensity since Oct. 7 is spilling outward. Firebombs and bullets aimed at Jewish lives have not and will not stop there. The same illiberal and murderous impulse has now claimed the life of the young Kirk, just as it struck down Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, who was gunned down outside a New York City hotel, and the Minnesota legislators and their spouses who were shot, and one of the couples killed, in a politically motivated attack.
What begins as targeted hatred metastasizes into a civic culture where no one is safe, and where disputes are settled not by words or courts but by force. I have felt this pattern in my own life. In Massachusetts, my family’s home and display of Israeli flags have been repeatedly vandalized because my wife and I are Jewish leaders who openly support Israel. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a climate in which Jews are marked out for intimidation and attack, a reminder that antisemitism is not just a foreign pathology but a domestic warning sign
We like to imagine that America has always been governed by words rather than weapons. History tells a harder story. Violence has scarred our politics before, from the Alexander Hamilton–Aaron Burr duel to the assassinations of President Abraham Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. What distinguished America was not the absence of bloodshed but the patient building of institutions strong enough to contain it.
Courts, legislatures and a free press offered nonviolent ways to resolve disputes. The rule of law did not end violence, but it branded it as illegitimate, something outside the boundaries of political life. That boundary allowed most citizens, most of the time, to trust that our destiny would be decided by ballots and argument, not by intimidation and bullets.
I spent years in homeland security and law enforcement, working to prevent violence and protect communities here at home. I saw firsthand how fragile order can be during the Boston Marathon bombing, when I witnessed the explosions and then helped manage the response and recovery when civic celebration on Patriots’ Day in Massachusetts was turned into carnage.
That experience showed me what I have seen again and again in my career as a police officer, prosecutor and homeland security and emergency management leader; the difference between chaos and civilization is not wealth or culture, but whether disputes are resolved by civil discourse and law rather than by force.
Law is the invisible contract that lets ordinary people speak freely, raise families and live without fear. Strip it away, and the violent abuse the peaceful, the strong prey upon the weak, the loud silence the thoughtful and society reverts to philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s description: nasty, brutish and short.
But violence does not appear from nowhere. It is prepared. It is justified. It is excused. First come the slanders, the delegitimization, the endless distortions that make hatred seem respectable. Then come the firebombs and bullets.
That is why I believe that CAMERA’s work is not ancillary to democracy but central to its defense. At CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, we fight every day on the battlefield of words, exposing the lies that make violence thinkable, holding media accountable when bias and propaganda pave the way for bloodshed.
Kirk, who valued CAMERA, put his energy into argument and dialogue. On campuses and in public forums, he made his case openly and invited others to push back. In doing so, he served as a reminder that the democratic spirit is not about agreement but about the willingness to contend with one another through free speech. His murder is an assault on that spirit, and on the idea that free societies resolve their differences through debate instead of violence.
This is not a partisan matter. It is a civic one. Republics do not collapse because people argue too much. They collapse when people decide that silencing is easier than debating.
The violence against Jews was the canary in the coal mine. The murder of Kirk and the killings of Thompson and the legislators in Minnesota show the collapse spreading outward. These are harrowing injustices. They are also warnings. Our task now is to recommit to the habits of civilization: Law instead of force, debate instead of violence, truth instead of distortion.
Everything we cherish depends on whether we can.
This article originally appeared at JNS.org, which you can read here.