Shomer is Hebrew for guardian, watchman — the person posted at the gate whose job is to notice what everyone else has stopped seeing and report back to the rest of us. I didn’t pick the name lightly, and after last week, I’ve never felt more confident it was the right one.

For the past several years, antisemitism has been my beat at the Colorado Times Recorder. I’ve written about it when it showed up at school board meetings and in city council chambers, when it came dressed as Goyim Defense League flyers and when it came disguised as “anti-Zionism” that curdled into something older and uglier. I’ve always tried to write about antisemitism the way I think the subject actually demands: as a phenomenon that doesn’t check party registration before it shows up. I called it out on the right, where I expected most of my readers wanted to hear it. And I called it out on the left, where I knew a good number of them didn’t.

Last week, that ended. My final piece for CTR — “The Shomer: Antisemitism, For All, By All” — ran, and a few days later, the publication ended my employment with them.

I want to be careful here, because I think precision matters more than heat, especially on this subject. In my termination conversation with my now former editor, he told me: “We think [Israel is committing] genocide and you don’t, it just comes down to that.”

I’m going to pause here for a second. The term “genocide” has a very specific definition — a legal one that carries weight and history. The key legal term at play is Dolus Specialis, a Latin legal term meaning “special intent.” There is no shortage of argument to be had about the Israel/Gaza war, about how PM Netanyahu has chosen to prosecute it, whether or not war crimes have occurred, whether or not ethnic cleansing applies. But it’s been very clear to me that the IDF has made more effort to prevent the killing of non-combatants than arguably any other military force at war in modern history. And there are myriad experts on war and history that agree with me. There is no Dolus Specialis.

And I have to acknowledge that despite this fact, the meaning of genocide — especially to the layperson — has been successfully obfuscated by Israel’s detractors, by design, in a campaign that ramped into overdrive on Oct. 8, 2023, less than 24 hours after the terrorist insurrection by Hamas and its compatriots into Israel, where they slaughtered at least 1,200 people and took more than 250 others hostage. As the bodies were still being recovered and counted and the fires continued to smolder, this campaign launched around the world — well-financed, and long planned — designed solely to manufacture a specific narrative around the attack, turning the terrorists into heroes, the victims into villains. And when the first shoes hit the streets in rallies in New York City, Atlanta, Barcelona and others, “genocide” was the blood libel on the lips of those championing the terrorists. All several days before the IDF even stepped foot into Gaza.

Even as those architecting these rallies — such as Neville Roy Singham whose antics have long been controversial even with the most generous of takes as the DOJ has opened a grand jury investigation into his non-profit empire — have dumped millions of dollars into the “pro-Palestinian” movement, there are still legions of people both in the Middle East and here and the west who aren’t buying. People who see that war and genocide are two very different things, and while both result in devastating consequences, purposefully conflating them is an act of bad faith. I firmly believe that the reason “genocide” was used as the focal terminology was that it enabled self-styled “humanitarians” to claim they had moral clarity, and then further justify every subsequent attack on anyone who disagrees with that platform — specifically the 80-90% of Jews in the world who support the existence of the Jewish State. There is no debate to be had when you’re convinced you’re fighting a genocide; if you support Israel in any way, you’re simply a “genocide apologist” or “pro genocide” and thus anything that happens to you is now justifiable. Witness the murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington DC or Karen Diamond here in our own backyard of Boulder. And the ghastly displays of support those acts have garnered. Anyone denying those murders to be acts of antisemitism is providing those who would commit them with at least a measure of safe quarter — and providing justification for more. 

The bottom line here is that at best, there is a chasm of disagreement about whether the term "genocide" applies to the Israel/Gaza war, which continues to this day, even among the brightest legal scholars around the world. And my stance that "genocide" simply does not apply here — which I’ve explained multiple times in my column for the CTR — has now become a terminable offense in the mind of those running the show there.

The fact is, I don’t think most of the people who made this decision at CTR wake up in the morning intending to do antisemitism any favors. That’s exactly why I think this moment is worth writing about, rather than just quietly walking away from. Antisemitism doesn’t require hatred in anyone’s heart to do its work. It just requires that criticizing it be made conditional — that calling out Jew-hatred on the left be treated as a disqualifying opinion, while calling it out on the right is treated as simply doing the job. When a newsroom decides that a journalist’s usefulness on this beat depends on which direction he’s willing to point, it has decided that one form of antisemitism is reportable and the other is a liability. That decision — regardless of what’s in anyone’s heart when they make it — functions exactly like the thing it claims to oppose. It silences the reporting that makes the powerful uncomfortable, and it does so by making an example of the reporter. It’s as flagrant an attack on the profession of journalism as it was on me.

But make no mistake. This isn’t a personal grievance. It’s the reason The Shomer exists.

This newsletter is going to do the thing I am no longer allowed to do at CTR: cover antisemitism as what it is, wherever it shows up, without asking anyone’s permission about which direction I’m allowed to look. I’ll still write about Colorado, because it’s my home and because plenty of this story lives here. But I’m widening the lens even more — this beat doesn’t stop at a state line, or a party line, and neither should the coverage of it.

Here’s what you can expect: reporting and analysis on antisemitism in American politics and institutions, on campuses, on businesses, in our neighborhoods, in media, and abroad — delivered on a regular cadence, starting weekly (or every other week) while I find the right rhythm. I’d rather get this right than get it out fast, so I’ll adjust as needed.

If you’ve read my work before, you know I’m not going to tell you what you want to hear just because it’s comfortable. I’m going to tell you what I see. Sometimes that will implicate people you vote for. Sometimes it’ll implicate people I vote for. That’s the job.

Thank you for being here at the start of it. Standing guard works a lot better with a team.

— David Flomberg