A headline in the New York Times this past week was ominous, “Wave of Antisemitism Has European Jews Wondering if They Will Ever Be Safe.”
In the aftermath of 10/7, the Jew haters have been quickly crawling out of the woodwork, en masse. Jewish schools in London had to close down. There was a near pogrom in Russia. In Paris, stars of David were spray-painted on Jewish homes and businesses, reminiscent of Kristallnacht.
When I finished reading the troubling article, I thought, how easy it would be to cross out European and write in American.
“Wave of Antisemitism Has European American Jews Wondering if They Will Ever Be Safe.”
And then, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress.
Wray said, “The Jewish community is uniquely, uniquely targeted by pretty much every terrorist organization across the spectrum.”
I’ll just let that testimony, from the head of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, sink in for a few seconds.
Ominous, disturbing, scary as hell.
Wray said the threats shouldn’t interfere with our daily lives, but he’s too late. Here are just a few examples.
- You can’t enter a synagogue anymore without armed guards at the entrance and, in some cases, without being patted down.
- Jewish college students have been threatened with death. Anti-Jewish behavior has been boosted by university presidents and deans who are long on moral relativism and short on moral clarity. Simply put, Jewish lives don’t matter to them.
- Amazon was selling t-shirts that read, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”
But for me, the most disturbing overt act of American antisemitism, occurs when young people, and not just Muslims, rip down posters of the men and women, girls, boys and babies, who’ve been kidnapped by Hamas.
Even if you are anti-Israel, how can you be anti-decency?
Tearing down those posters shows the ultimate disdain for Jewish lives. Jews are so worthless, so subhuman, they’re not even worthy of being remembered. Props to the NY Post that called them out and put their cowardly mugs on the front page of the paper.
But where did these American kids learn to despise Jews so deeply? Did they learn it from their parents? From their schools? From their social media feeds? Or is it just in their DNA?
I’ll tell you one thing, it happened before our eyes.
The Hamas brutality of 10/7 was the culmination of years of incremental conflict. Random rockets. Riots at the border fence. The world, including Israel, thought it was kinda under control, and then came the bloodbath and the unspeakable brutalization.
It’s the same for antisemitism in the United States. We were barred from country clubs and neighborhoods. We were subjected to Ivy League quotas. We had to power wash away the occasional swastika. Hasidic men had their hats knocked off, and worse. Yeah, we dealt with it.
But now, in many parts of the nation, antisemitism is in full bloom and unabashedly, on full display. Jews and Israel are being openly barbarized and dehumanized. Jews are oppressors, colonizers and ethnic cleansers.
Jews are committing genocide.
If anything good can come out of the evil perpetrated by the Hamas on Israeli Jews on 10/7, and the eruption of American antisemitism, is the emergence of a renewed Jewish pride and support of Israel amongst a diverse array of American Jewry.
Bravo to the brave Jewish college kids for whom Israel may have been an afterthought before 10/7, but who now openly and proudly stand up against Jewish haters.
Kudos to Mark Cuban, Amy Schumer and Jerry Seinfeld, amongst other celebrities, who’ve told their followers that they stand firmly with Israel.
If you haven’t seen what actress Mayim Bialik posted on Facebook, click the link and spend ten minutes with an intelligent, incisive and proud Jewish woman.
https://www.facebook.com/MissMayim/videos/203611696091233/?mibextid=zDhOQc
We certainly welcome and need the support of the FBI, law enforcement and our politicians, and we are fortunate to be living in the United States and not in, let’s say, France.
But the history of the Jews of America is at a crucial inflection point. The haters are knocking at our doors. Hell, they’ve already broken through, trapping us inside libraries and Hillel Houses.
We are fighting back but we need to fight back more, with every means at our disposal.
We need to get the bigoted, lie purveyors of The Squad unelected from Congress.
We need to rid the colleges where our kids attend of equivocating university administrators and hate mongering professors.
We need to make sure we are well-schooled in our own heritage, to cancel the dangerous punks who spew slogans and chant lies they reserved for Israel and no other nation.
We need to put to rest, once and for all, the canard that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. 10/7 and its aftermath has totally dispelled that bullshit.
We need to stand up for moral clarity. We must be fearless in embracing those who do and in banishing those who don’t.
So, the revamped Times headline works, don’t you think?
“Wave of Antisemitism Has European American Jews Wondering if They Will Ever Be Safe.”
Not quite.
Waves come crashing down and then dissipate. They come and they go. The Jew haters in America today are more like swirling, dangerous whirlpools. Maelstroms of hate, trying to suck us down to our deaths.