Naturally, Hayes is out of his depth. Nothing Cawthorn said is false or even particularly offensive. Evangelism is a core tenet of Christianity (Islam similarly puts a major emphasis on converting non-believers to the Muslim faith). For Christians, bringing Jesus Christ to others, Jewish or otherwise, is an act of love, not bigotry. Christians believe He brings salvation. Christians believe that eternal life comes through Him, that He is the Son of God, that He died for our sins, and that we are called to share His message of salvation with those who do not know it. As for Cawthorn, he merely stated that, in his experience, evangelization is easier with devout Muslims than it is with devout Jews because Christians and Muslims have a shared supranatural view of Jesus Christ. Perhaps one could say that his attempts to convert religious and non-religious Jews is aggressive. But anti-Semitic? Please…

Tablet Magazine’s Yair Rosenberg explains well why Cawthorn’s remarks are far from offensive.

“[H]is observation that Jews are hard to proselytize to because we don’t believe in Jesus is super accurate!” said Rosenberg. “Rejection of Jesus is one of the few redline beliefs of most American Jews.”

He adds, “Twice as many Jews think you can be Jewish and not believe in God than think you can be Jewish and believe Jesus was the messiah. It’s not anti-Semitic to say this out loud! It just means you’ve talked to some Jews and noticed what most of us believe.”