Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro looks on during a press conference outside after a portion of the Governor’s Residence was damaged in an arson fire on April 13 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, after the first Passover Seder. Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images

Senior Columnist Rob Eshman April 15, 2025

There is zero evidence so far suggesting that the attack targeting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the first night of Passover was motivated by antisemitism.

That’s confusing, because on its face everything about what happened seems pretty tailor-made to set off Jews’ finely attuned instincts for self-preservation. But blaming the attack on antisemitism — which some people have positively rushed to do — doesn’t make anyone safer. If anything, it merely increases our communal anxiety, as if there’s not enough of that.

I get the instinct to panic. The arson attack occurred on a holiday when Jews have been historically victimized. Pogromists throughout the centuries persecuted Jews during Passover, accusing them of making matzo with the blood of Christian children. In 2002, a Hamas terrorist blew up a Passover seder in Netanya, killing 30, one of the deadliest terror attacks in Israel’s history.

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Plus, the attack took place only 100 miles from Pittsburgh, site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history, the 2018 massacre of 11 congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue. 

And it targeted a proudly Jewish politician whose outspoken (although not uncritical) support for Israel led anti-Israel protesters to label him “Genocide Josh.”

In the aftermath of the nationwide protests against Israel in the 18 months since the Oct. 7 attack, which have sometimes involved direct hate toward Jews, naturally people would assume antisemitism was again at work.

But so far, it bears repeating, there’s no clear evidence to support that assumption. Cody Balmer, 38, of Harrisburg, Penn. has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated arson, burglary and terrorism, for committing a “violent offense intending to affect the conduct of a government.” No hate crime charges have been filed.

Balmer admitted in a police interview to “harboring hatred” toward Shapiro, whom he said he intended to beat with a sledgehammer. But the initial investigation into his social media posts and a search of his residence haven’t turned up any evidence that Shapiro’s Jewishness was relevant to the attack.

Instead, Balmer posted screeds against former President Joe Biden, and had a history of violence against members of his immediate family. His mother said her son suffered from mental illness and was refusing medication, although Balmer denied this to police.

Yet the narrative advanced in the media — and even by Shapiro himself — has clearly skewed toward the idea that the attack must have been in some way antisemitic.

“It’s hard to escape the idea that this may have been motivated by somebody who was targeting the governor because of his Jewish faith,” State House member Dan Frankel, a Pittsburgh Democrat who co-chairs the legislature’s Jewish Caucus, told a local news station.

“I believe this was a hate crime,” Jordan Golin, CEO of Jewish Family Services, told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 on Monday. “To attack someone during this holiday, to try to take away their freedom, to try to disparage them, to kill them, to hurt them, because of their faith is so antithetical to the whole purpose of the holiday.”

“This wasn’t random,” wrote Hen Mazzig, a pro-Israel influencer, in a multi-page Instagram post. “This is what antisemitic hate does. It doesn’t stay online. It escalates, until our homes are set on fire.” His post opened with a image asking “WHY IS THE WORLD SILENT WHEN PEOPLE TRY TO BURN JEWS ALIVE?”

The answer, of course, is that the world isn’t silent. The attack has received massive coverage and widespread bipartisan condemnation. Shapiro’s own eloquent reaction was prominently featured in news reports.

“If he was trying to terrorize our family, our friends, the Jewish community who joined us for a Passover Seder in that room last night, hear me on this,” Shapiro said, “We celebrated our faith last night proudly, and in a few hours we will celebrate our second Seder of Passover again, proudly. No one will deter me or my family or any Pennsylvanian from celebrating their faith openly and proudly.”

I worry that immediately classing Balmer’s attack as one fueled by antisemitic hatred risks obscuring the more complicated narrative that appears to be true: That it was just one more example of growing political violence, an outgrowth of deep polarization turbocharged by toxic social media.

It is small comfort to say don’t worry, this might not be antisemitism, just the run-of-the-mill domestic terrorism of the kind Americans have experienced far too often lately. There were two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump during his 2024 campaign. In 2022, a deranged man attacked former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer after breaking into their San Francisco home. On Jan. 6, 2021, vicious thugs invaded the Capitol. In 2017, a man shot Republican lawmakers at a baseball practice. Attacks on American political figures, fueled by an often unfocused political rage, are a new norm.

And yes, sometimes our new norm of political violence is informed by specific violence toward Jews. But sometimes it’s not.

None of this is to say further investigation won’t turn up an antisemitic rant in Balmer’s past. But spreading the idea that the attack was definitely antisemitic, before there’s any proof, carries its own risks.

Mazzig’s post comparing the attack to Oct. 7, Nazi massacres and Cossack pogroms has garnered 23,000 likes and 7,000 shares so far on Instagram alone.

That kind of reach is not without its own dangers, leading to increased and misplaced fear. Mazzig lives in Israel, where attacks on Jews are far more common than they are anywhere else in the world, and where the motives are so abundantly clear the attackers don’t need to leave behind any explanation.

In the United States, Jews are far safer from antisemitic attacks. Training us to see antisemitic violence everywhere, rather than take time to look clearly and calmly at the facts, won’t actually help us understand and respond to the threats we’re facing. And there are, clearly, threats — painfully complicated ones.

Which is to say: It’s not necessarily what’s happening to Jews in the U.S. that should have us worried, but rather what’s happening to the U.S. itself.

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