From nowhere they came — and now they’re everywhere. The spotted lanternfly, with its colorful delicate wings and destructive path, has infested the American landscape. It’s believed to have originated from China and, in just a few years, has spread across states, devastating crops and trees like the “tree of heaven,” its favorite host. The government seems incapable of containing it. Few natural predators exist. The infestation has become a symbol of bureaucratic failure and public resignation.

But some wonder: does this pestilence reflect something deeper, more corrosive — a cultural infestation?

In the wake of October 7, when thousands of Gazans crossed into Israel in a massacre they proudly broadcast around the world, antisemitism in America, Canada and Australia exploded. Synagogues were vandalized. Jewish cars were firebombed. Campus protests called for a “global intifada.” And the institutions tasked with standing guard — universities, governments, media — offered excuses, silence, or, worse, justifications.

Many point again to China, not just for the lanternfly, but for feeding antisemitism into western culture, especially through TikTok — a powerful delivery system for ideological poison. Others blame Qatar, which has poured billions into American universities that now shelter hatred under the guise of “free speech.” The Gaza war may have triggered the firestorm, but the kindling was laid long ago — through foreign influence, academic corruption, legal systems reluctant to confront hate when it wears the right colors and intersectional culture intent on vanishing Jews.

The response has been toothless. Protesters shut down airports and bridges with impunity. Cities release vandals hours after they’re arrested. Politicians decry antisemitism in speeches while voting to defund the very police tasked with protecting vulnerable communities. Universities who once claimed to be safe spaces now protect the mob instead of the beleaguered minority.

Like the lanternfly, antisemitism has become endemic. And just as officials tell us to stomp on the bugs as a civic duty, people now post videos taking down “protest” signs and washing off graffiti — not to eradicate the hate, but to vent helplessness.

We’ve reached a tipping point. Many have chosen to watch the wave rather than swim against it.

But Jews are not trees. Unlike the “tree of heaven,” the Jews have a history of moving, surviving, rebuilding. As America shrugs at the firebombs and broken windows, and as elected leaders dismiss Jewish fear as overreaction, a quiet migration begins. New York, Toronto, and Melbourne may look the same in ten years — but they will feel different. Not because the skyline will change, but because of the absence. The absence of a people whose presence once animated these places with faith, culture, and conscience.

Vienna was no longer Vienna after the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered, and French leaders know that France will no longer really be French if Jewish frustration and fear makes them move. But America has no such institutional memory. And as Americans elect younger and more inexperienced radical politicians, the destruction will accelerate.

Jews were forced to wear distinctive clothing in the Middle Ages and in Nazi Germany, and were tattooed in concentration camps before the annihilation was manifest. But it’s the moral corruption of the cities themselves that marks Jews for extinction; black sooty mold as the lanternflies feast and kill.

The last Jews will be those who see fellow Jews’ fears as fantasies, constellations drawn from a few distinct points like ancient mariners and pagans lost in heavenly thoughts. Perhaps those survivors will be the only Jews the West wants anyway: hearty crops which withstood the plague may have more in common with the new natural order.