October 7 reminded me I'm not just a journalist. I'm also a Jew.

Balanced, nuanced and empathetic coverage of this conflict doesn't just mean criticism of policy. We must also call out the double standard toward Jews.

Elise reporting from Israel and the West Bank in 2015.

Over the course of my career, I've meticulously kept my religion away from the public eye. It wasn’t out of shame – far from it. I’m private about my personal life and have always considered keeping quiet about my faith an extension of maintaining that privacy.

But the October 7 attacks and the subsequent war have forced me to confront issues surrounding my Jewish identity that I rarely even think about, let alone discuss. 

I am trying to reconcile what I see as a reporter with my personal feelings about the war as a Jew: The pain I feel for Israel in the wake of the attacks, the sadness I feel for the civilian death toll and humanitarian disaster facing Palestinians in Gaza and the ugly anti-Semitism raging through our country.

I now realize that my efforts to conceal my faith were partly driven by the fear of being labeled biased as a journalist. I have always prided myself on being an "equal opportunity offender" who calls things as I see them and gives credit where it is due. Accusations of being a shill for Israel on one hand and "Abu Elise Labott" on the other have cemented my belief that I'm hitting the right note of impartiality. I’d like to think my sources, peers and audience agree. 

Still, Jewish journalists have always been lighting rods for criticism, and foreign policy reporters who cover the Middle East, even more so. In my early days at CNN, an anti-Semitic troll tweeted a series of pictures of all Jewish anchors and reporters at the network – myself included - on top of stars of David. That was actually my first personal experience with anti-Semitism. 

My upbringing in suburban New Jersey was a tapestry of cultural traditions rather than religious observances: Large High Holiday family gatherings, Jewish sleep away camp and spending every weekend of the 7th grade at the Bar or Bat Mitzvahs of my friends. 

Now, I go to synagogue once a year on Yom Kippur to say a prayer for my deceased relatives and atone for my sins over the past year.  Each year I light Hanukkah candles on a menorah made up of the Hebrew letters spelling ‘shalom’ that my late grandma bought on a trip to Israel in the 1980s. 

But I’m not exactly what you would call religious. I’m a bacon-loving, chicken parm-eating Jew who has dated Muslims and counts Arabs among my closest friends. The closest thing I keep to “kosher” is refusing to drink milk at the dinner table because I consider it a culinary sacrilege. I enjoy the occasional Shabbat, mostly with some of my non-Jewish friends who visited me while I was working in Israel and now consider themselves Jew-ish. And, to be honest, it’s really an excuse  for us to eat Middle Eastern food and drink wine.  

I’ve spent a lot of time in Israel over the last two decades, often spending months at a time there when I was a correspondent for CNN. I confess to feeling a little tingle when I visit the Wailing Wall. But my affinity for the country lies mostly in the friendships I have made there and the culture, rather than any religious or ideological connection.

While I appreciate the idea of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, I never felt like Israel was my homeland or that its government spoke for me as a Jew. Neither does that suggest an uncritical endorsement of its policies.

I’ve always rejected the notion that all criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. I agree with Jonathan Jacoby, the director of the Nexus Task Force, a group of academics and Jewish activists affiliated with the Bard Center for the Study of Hate. He told the New York Times efforts to stifle criticism of Israel’s government makes it harder for Jews to call out actual anti-Semitism, while stifling honest conversation about Israel’s government and U.S. policy toward it.

By October 8, even before Israel lifted a finger in response to Hamas attacks, protestors outside the Sydney Opera House were screaming, “Gas the Jews.” Closer to home, more than 30 student organizations at Harvard University issued that now-infamous statement holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the violence, without any expression of sympathy for the victims.

The idea – as espoused in worldwide protests, posts on social media and even in some comments on this platform –  that Israeli victims deserved such brutality as an eye for an eye for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians shocked me to my core.  

Perhaps that is because intolerance, bigotry, and violence against Jews in America has mostly lived on the fringe - a phenomenon of extreme right-wing white supremacist ideology.  In recent years anti-Semitism has been mainstreamed: Mutating into a new strain being propagated on college campuses across the country and championed by many on the left as an extension of the social justice movement. 

As George Leef writes in the National Review, “we now have hordes of young Americans who know almost nothing about the history of the Middle East except that the Israelis are ‘settler-colonialists” and the people of Gaza are their victims who deserve liberation.”

In my view, this modern anti-Semitism is more dangerous. By blurring the lines between legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and outright Jew hatred, anti-Semitism has somehow become defensible by cloaking it in progressive political activism. 

A pair of incidents at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison,  illustrate this hypocrisy.  On October 15,  a group of UW students participated in a demonstration on campus glorifying Hamas terrorists' attack against Israel and vowing to “liberate the land — by any means necessary!” The University declined to condemn the chants heard at the event, calling it “respectful dialogue,” even if it  didn’t endorse the message.  

A few weeks later members of the “Blood Tribe,” a  white supremacist group that the Anti-Defamation League says “openly directs its vitriol at Jews, ‘non-whites’ and the LGBTQ+ community” and “aims to usher in a resurgence of Nazi ideas and ultimately build a white ethno-state.” marched in a parade through campus to the Wisconsin State capitol waiving swastikas and chanting ‘There will be blood.’ 

Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who is Jewish, called the group “utterly repugnant” and said she was horrified to see the symbols  of hatred and ant-Semitism in Madison, which are completely counter to the university’s values.” 

Disavowing Nazis  - or the Ku Klux Klan or crimes against LGBT+ persons  - is a no-brainer, as it should be. I fail to understand why cracking down on pro Hamas-fever that calls for the genocide of the Jews is not.

This dehumanizing of Jews also extends to the ambivalence displayed by some human rights groups, the United Nations, and certain segments of the progressive media towards compelling evidence of widespread sexual atrocities committed against Israeli women during the Hamas attacks. When CNN’s Dana Bash asked why progressive women, who are quick to defend women's rights and denounce rape as a weapon of war, have been 'downright silent' about the rapes by Hamas, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called for a 'balanced' approach to covering the war."

As Cathy Young writes for The Bulwark, “Such mealy-mouthed evasions have prompted some Jewish activists to start a campaign with a bitterly sarcastic slogan: “#MeToo unless you’re a Jew.” One may debate whether the insistence on denying or downplaying Hamas rapes is driven by prejudice against Jews or prejudice in favor of groups perceived as “marginalized,” “anti-colonialist,” or opposed to and victimized by “Western imperialism.” What’s not in question is that this mindset is leading to an appalling moral blindness.” 

While she was focusing on Hamas sexual violence, Young was spot on about the broader victim blaming and double standard facing Jews in America today, as well as  the abandonment they feel from progressive groups with whom they have traditional stood with in solidarity. 

As a journalist, my job is to dissect these complex narratives, not to live within them. But as I write this, I realize that providing balanced, nuanced and empathetic coverage of this conflict means addressing the same issues that I’m grappling with as a Jew. That doesn’t only include criticism of policy whenever necessary, but calling out where legitimate political critique of Israel ends and where hatred and bigotry of Jews begin.