Why Zero Tolerance for Antisemitism Must Define the Oregon Republican Party

When the Oregon Republican Party rightly champions limited government, individual liberty, fiscal responsibility, and strong national defense, one stain threatens to undermine everything we stand for: the creeping rise of antisemitism and hate within our ranks.

This is not a fringe issue or a matter of legitimate foreign-policy debate. It is a moral failing that drags conservatives into the very moral gutter of collectivist group judgmentalism that Democrats have occupied for years.

Russ McAlmond, candidate for the United States Senate, stands unequivocally opposed to antisemitism, racism, and every form of judging individuals by their group identity. He recognizes what too many in our party have allowed themselves to forget: true conservatism demands judging people as individuals, not as members of ethnic, religious, or national collectives.

Antisemitism has no place in the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, and those who promote it betray our principles just as surely as those who traffic in racism against African Americans.

The notion that criticism of Israel can be neatly separated from hatred of the Jewish people is a fiction. Israel is not some abstract foreign lobby; it is the world’s only Jewish state—the homeland and refuge of the Jewish people after centuries of persecution, pogroms, and the Holocaust.

To single out Israel for unique condemnation while ignoring the far worse human-rights records of its neighbors is to apply a standard to Jews that we apply to no one else. When self-proclaimed Republicans post on Facebook and other platforms that “Israel controls Trump” or that AIPAC “buys” politicians who would otherwise oppose Israel, they are not engaging in policy analysis.

They are recycling the oldest antisemitic tropes of Jewish control over finance, media, and government. These claims are not conservative; they are collectivist conspiracy theories that belong on the radical left. They echo the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, not the writings of Buckley, Reagan, or Goldwater.

Any Republican who traffics in antisemitism or reflexive hatred of Israel is no different from a Republican who promotes racism against African Americans. Both substitute group guilt for individual responsibility. Both abandon the color-blind, faith-blind ideals that define American conservatism.

Group judgmentalism is not a Republican value. It never has been.

Our party’s greatest triumphs—from the abolition of slavery to the defeat of communism—came from rejecting collective blame and affirming the dignity of every person made in God’s image. We cannot claim the high moral ground on crime, education, taxes, and border security while allowing antisemitic rhetoric to fester in our online spaces and local meetings.

On issue after issue Oregon Republicans stand tall. On antisemitism we are letting ourselves be pulled down to the Democrats’ level of identity politics and grievance. We cannot allow any Oregon Republican or candidate to drag us down into this moral gutter of hate. 

Consider the facts about Israel’s relationship with the United States. Israel does not ask American troops to fight its wars. Unlike the European allies in World War II or South Vietnam in the 1960s and ’70s—where 58,000 Americans gave their lives and hundreds of thousands more were wounded—Israel has never required U.S. combat forces to defend its borders.

Israeli men and women fight and die for their own country. American support for Israel consists primarily of military aid that strengthens a reliable democratic ally in a dangerous region, an ally that shares intelligence, develops cutting-edge defense technologies, and confronts terrorism that threatens the West.

We provide similar assistance to Egypt and substantial aid to Ukraine, a nation that is not even a formal treaty ally. Yet only Israel draws obsessive conspiracy theories about “control” of Congress and the presidency. That double standard is antisemitism, plain and simple.

The antisemitic claim that Jewish money or lobbying “buys” support for Israel collapses under scrutiny. American politicians support Israel because it is in America’s strategic interest to have a stable, democratic partner in the Middle East—one that buys American weapons, conducts joint military exercises, and stands with us against Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and other Islamist threats. AIPAC, like every other advocacy group in Washington, makes its case openly and legally.

To pretend otherwise is to revive the lie that Jews secretly manipulate gentile leaders. This trope did not disappear after 1945; it has simply migrated online, sometimes cloaked in “anti-Zionism.” Republicans who repeat it are not fighting the administrative state or woke ideology—they are importing the left’s worst instincts.

McAlmond rejects this poison. He understands that conservatism is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that values every human soul. He knows that America’s security is enhanced, not endangered, by a strong Israel that fights its own battles.

And he insists that the Oregon Republican Party must adopt a policy of zero tolerance: no platforms, no endorsements, and no tolerance for those who peddle antisemitic or anti-Israel hatred under the guise of “America First.”

Real America First means supporting allies who pull their weight, not scapegoating Jews for problems created by big government and weak foreign policy. On taxes, regulation, education choice, and Second Amendment rights, Oregon Republicans hold the moral and intellectual high ground.

We lose that ground the moment we tolerate collectivist hatred of any group—Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, or anyone else. Group judgmentalism is the left’s specialty. It has no future in a party committed to individual liberty and equal justice under law.

The choice before Oregon Republicans is clear.

We can drift into the antisemitic fringes, alienating the very voters who value principle over partisanship, or we can draw a bright line and declare: antisemitism stops here.

Russ McAlmond has drawn that line. He calls on every Oregon Republican—elected officials, party leaders, precinct captains, and grassroots activists—to join him.

Delete the posts. Call out the conspiracy theories. Affirm that support for Israel is consistent with conservative values and American interests. And above all, recommit to the truth that built this party: every man and woman is judged by the content of their character, not the faith of their fathers or the passport they carry.

Zero tolerance for antisemitism.

Zero tolerance for racism.

Zero tolerance for group judgmentalism of any kind.

That is the standard McAlmond demands, and that is the standard that will keep the Oregon Republican Party on the right side of history and the right side of moral principles.