We need to care about Jewish lives first. That’s who we are. That’s our community. Have we forgotten?
In less than a week, hate crimes against Jews rose by 438%, the ADL reports. The scenes are reminiscent of the early years of Hitler’s campaign against the Jews, from 1933 to 1939.
In Los Angeles, a group of people chanting “Death to Jews” attacked restaurant goers.
In Skokie, Ill. and in Tucson, Ariz., synagogue windows were smashed. [See Page 1.] In Skokie, a sign reading “Free Palestine” was left behind.
In Salt Lake City, Utah, a swastika was etched on the door of a Jewish center.
In Boca Raton, Fla., a van with hateful anti-Jewish smears scratched onto its carriage — including “Hitler was right” — drove around with a Palestinian flag waving, throwing trash on a Jewish family walking by.
In Midtown Manhattan, a Jewish man walking past a pro-Palestinian demonstration outside of the Israeli Consulate was physically assaulted and bloodied.
In Manhattan’s Diamond District, where many visibly chasidic Jews work, Jews were firebombed and physically assaulted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
This is global.
In the days following the Hamas’ initial rocket attacks on Israel, anti-Semitic incidents in the UK rose by 250%. These included events like the convoy of cars that drove through a Jewish neighborhood in London waving Palestinian flags and yelling from the windows “[Expletive], rape their daughters!”
In Toronto, pro-Palestinian protesters beat an elderly Jewish man and sexually assaulted a Jewish girl. They also attacked Israel supporters with rocks, water bottles and glass bottles.
In Argentina, graffiti was spray-painted onto a Jewish building threatening to kill Jews and calling them rats.
These are just a handful of the incidents. There is insufficient space to list them all. [See Pages 1, 6, 9.]
Because the state of Israel was engaged in an armed conflict with Palestinians, the response of many was to target, harass and verbally and physically assault Jews.
Where is the outrage, the massive demonstrations (a la the Halimi demonstration in Paris)?
Remember the controversy about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, because it included anti-Israel activity as potentially anti-Semitic? Tragically, recent events have provided incontrovertible proof why the IHRA includes this clause. It is the anti-Israel activists themselves who are unable to stop their opposition to a Zionist state from blowing up into classic anti-Semitism.
When Jews in America — many non-Zionists at that — are being attacked on Manhattan streets for events in the Middle East, the idea that being anti-Israel is not anti-Semitic is empty, a distinction with no difference.
Yet, it is a distinction that progressive politicians are still trying to make, underlying their own anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias.
First, there was near radio silence from many. Then, over last weekend, came a proliferation of tweets, employing the very “all lives matter” rhetoric that these same politicians blasted when it came to Black Lives Matter. Condemnation of rising anti-Semitism was correlated with a rise in Islamophobia — but no one provided evidence of a parallel 438% rise in anti-Muslim behavior.
Look it up: Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Ayana Pressley — just to name a few — all tweeted practically the same message, almost as if they got it from a playbook, all equivocating in their condemnation of anti-Semitic thuggery. Of course, none took any responsibility for their role in ratcheting up extremist, anti-Israel rhetoric that helped incite the anti-Israel mob mentality, which spills over into attacks on Jews.
Although Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did condemn anti-Semitism without any whataboutery, this came only days after her earlier tweets that likely incited anti-Semitism. She tweeted that Israel was an apartheid state and not a democracy. She only retweeted items condemning Israeli actions. In another tweet, she laid the entire blame for the conflict on Israel, stating that this current conflagration originated solely with events at Al-Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah, conven- iently ignoring (or worse, not even bothering to find out about) the unprovoked attacks by Palestinians on Israeli haredi Jews that began with the onset of Ramadan.
These are our representatives in Congress? People who fail to study issues in depth, tweet untruths, incite extremist behavior, and then, when the violent fruits of their labor rear their ugly head, pathetically try to throw a bone to their Jewish constituents?
What is worse is how our own Jewish advocates at first were largely quiet. While the response in recent days has grown stronger, it took close to two weeks — during which time Jews were targeted, assaulted and bloodied — for one national Jewish organization to launch a social media campaign and another to announce a day of action.
How often have leading Jewish organizations turned figuratively apoplectic over Charlottesville and white supremacy in the past five years? But it seems that when the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts are not white supremacists, American Jewry is caught flat-footed. We saw this in late 2019 and early 2020, when violent attacks on Jews in the New York area became commonplace.
That most of these attacks were by people of color left Jewish leaders flummoxed — and often silent. Some innocent Jews were murdered in these attacks, yet the response from American Jewry, just as now, was not commensurate with the heinousness of the acts. It seems that there are “favored” perpetrators, and since the current perpetrators don’t always fit the “favored” profile, they do not elicit the same Jewish response.
In the summer of 2020, when anti-racism protest and riots were taking place across the country, hundreds of Jewish groups, federations and synagogues, spearheaded by the progressive group Bend the Arc, took out a full page ad in The New York Times supporting Black Lives Matter — ironically, the very group that last week called Israel a settler-colonial state and pledged its unequivocal support for Palestinians.
What does it say about American Jewry when American Jewish groups are quicker to support black lives, or Asian lives or fill-in-the-blank lives than Jewish lives? And where are these “allies” now that it’s Jewish lives under attack?
Defending the rights of minority groups has always been a backbone of American Jewish values, as it should be. But we need to care about Jewish lives first. That’s who we are. That’s our community. Have we forgotten?
If we have, it is at our own peril. The horrific scenes we have witnessed these past two weeks are a reminder of that. Are American Jews — and their institutional leaders — naïve enough to ingest the far-left narrative that Jews were now exclusively white, “privileged” and part of the “ownership” class, as Randy Weingarten, president of American Federation of Teachers, recently and inaccurately put it, in a fit of self-flagellation?
What these pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacking Jews don’t realize is that their abhorrent actions may well create stronger Zionists. To be sure, many American leaders, such as California’s Gov. Newsom, spoke out quickly and forcefully against the surge in anti-Semitism. We thank and salute him and other leaders who have done the same. But the rash of violent attacks on Jews, coupled with equivocation or even silence from many in America’s rising political class, have left many American Jews realizing that we cannot afford to live in a world without a State of Israel. Our continued existence won’t allow it.
