Are We Blind?

Friend Without Benefits is on the road this week in Spain, a country where dead Jews are a huge tourist attraction.  

Today, tourists love to travel to Grenada, Cordoba, Seville to see where the dead Jews lived, worked and prayed.  

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella did their jobs well, because Spain has been basically Judenrein since 1492.  

All ancient history, yes?  No.  

Just last week, not in Spain, not in Europe, but on the campus of the University of Michigan, a loud and proud demonstration called for the expulsion of Jews and of Jewish culture, just like the Spanish monarchs did in the 15th Century.

Let me tell you about it.  

“Long live the Intifada,” shouted about 50 people marching through the campus.  “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” they chanted.

And of course the familiar protest ditty, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”  “From the river to the sea.”  No Israel, no two-state solution, no Jews.

So here we have it.  On a major American university campus, people calling for an inquisition.

“There is only one solution, intifada revolution.”  Solution?  The Spanish monarchs’ “solution” to their Jewish problem was forced conversion, torture and expulsion.  Hitler’s “solution” to his Jewish problem consisted of marches, marginalization and mass murder.

What happened last week in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is as bad as what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 when the neo-Nazis, the KKK and other white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus chanting “Jews will not replace us.”  

The rightists and the leftists share one thing.  They both want Jews dead.

The rightists come straight out and say it.  The leftists hide behind words that seem so reasonable, so inclusive, so tolerant.  

That Michigan group calls itself the Students Allied for Freedom and Equality.  I guess the equality part doesn’t pertain to Jews.  

Its “solution” is the destruction of the State of Israel and the expulsion or death of its seven-million Jews.

Its charter says it’s “dedicated to advancing the causes of freedom, justice, human rights and equality for all peoples.”  Well, not all peoples.  Not Jews.  And here’s the kicker.  At the end of its charter, SAFE says it is allied with “other racial justice organizations in order to fight against racism, colonialism, imperialism, sexual and gender oppression, religious discrimination, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all other forms of oppression.”  

It’s called intersectionality and it means that so-called marginalized and oppressed groups must unite to fight oppressors and in this case, the white, European Jews that oppress the brown skinned, indigenous Palestinians.

Jews are colonialists, imperialists and racists so they have to be expelled, exiled, eliminated.

Deceitful, devious, dangerous.  In 1492, Jew hatred was religion based.  If weren’t a Catholic, you had to leave.  In 2023, leftist Jew hatred is more sophisticated and nuanced. The 21st Century Jew-haters threaten Jews under the cover of equality and inclusion.

Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, has taken a public role in rallying the Biden Administration in efforts to stem the rising tide of antisemitism in America.  This past week he went to Arizona State University to hold a roundtable discussion with students about combatting campus antisemitism.

Mr. Second Gentleman, here’s a suggestion.  Just last month you visited Nazi death camps in Europe.  You saw how Jew hatred evolved from words to The Holocaust.  How the Nazis carried out their solution for the Jews.  

How about saying that what took place at the University of Michigan is hate speech, plain and simple. It’s not a political statement, it’s not a point of view on a controversial subject.  It’s calling for the death of millions of people, some of them American citizens.  And any university that doesn’t punish or decertify an organization that engages in that type of blatant hate speech, will have its Federal funding terminated.

Or, if you can’t go that far, how about saying that what took place in Michigan is evil and anti-American.  Can you do that?  Can you help focus the American people on the rising tide of antisemitism in this country?

If you don’t, if we remain blind to what is happening before our eyes, then in the not too distant future, travelers will come to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv where, just like in Spain today, dead Jews are a huge tourist attraction.