Jew Hatred Redux

If you haven’t seen the Ken Burns documentary on PBS about the United States and how little it did to save Jews from the Holocaust, you should.  You must.  Then, think about what’s going right now at City University in New York, at the University of California at Berkeley and at colleges and universities across the United States.

Jew hatred was rife in the US as Hitler rose to power.   American icons like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford did not only privately loathe Jews , they bought newspapers and formed organizations that openly preached hatred of the Jewish people.  

And it reached into the highest levels of the government.

As the documentary points out, it is a total lie the US government didn’t know the evil that was befalling the Jews of Europe.  Over and over, American newspapers reported on the Nazi persecution.  One courageous correspondent, Dorothy Thompson, reported early on of the Nazi persecution of Germany’s Jews.  She was deported on the direct orders from Adolf Hitler himself, but nevertheless continued to sound the alarm.

As the Nazis steamrolled over Europe, tens of thousands of Jews lined up at American embassies and consulates begging, pleading for entry into the United States.  Some American diplomats tried to help as best they could, but they were blocked by the striped pants antisemites back at Foggy Bottom.

At the top of the putrid food chain were the nation’s intelligentsia.  Smart people, college educated people, people holding government offices, took their Jew hatred and made it into law.

The US Congress was complicit.  It passed immigration quotas designed to keep those dirty European Jews from polluting the American gene pool.  They cruelly kept the Jews bottled up in Europe, trapped on the continent of death.

What’s happening now at City College and at Berkeley, triggers in me a fear that we are in another era where Jews are being socially delegitimized and physically persecuted.  

Aw, come on, Friend, you are being an alarmist.  You are overreacting.  Surely the United States today is not the United States that could have saved hundreds of thousands, but instead sat by and watched the murder of millions.

No, I’m not overreacting.  

Physical attacks on Jews are at an all time high.  But attacks just as insidious as a punch in the face or a kick to the head, are taking place on college campuses from CUNY to Cali. 

At CUNY’s law school, its student government organizations passed a resolution to ban Hillel and other Jewish groups.  

At Berkeley’s law school, nine student organizations have adopted a resolution banning pro-Israel speakers.  No Jews allowed unless they renounce their support of Israel.  Call it woke eugenics.  These CUNY and Berkeley punks say we have nothing against all Jews, as long as they reject the State of Israel. Wear a metaphysical Star of David that says you are anti-Israel and you’re ok by us.  For now.

To those who say these are fringe student groups and they don’t represent the majority of students, I say this.  At the beginning, no one took Hitler and his Nazi party seriously.  They played on deep seated and long held Jew hatred and eventually rose to power and implemented their sick, genocidal policies.  It was all above board.  They passed laws barring Jews from professions, from parks and from universities.  The United States passed laws consigning tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths. 

What scares me to death is that all these so-called professors and students of the law at CUNY and Berkeley and at other universities, won’t be unlearning their Jew hatred when they leave academia.  They will occupy elected offices, they will lead corporations, they will be teachers. 

Oh, you say the United States of 2022 is not the United States of 1942?  Our government will never again allow antisemitism to become legal, legit.

Really?

What will happen if we wake up one day and find that the “squad” has expanded into the “army”?  What happens, if in the name of rooting out racism, the Zionists, the colonizers, the genocidal rulers of the apartheid state,  must check an anti-Israel box before being hired or buying a house?  

Is that so far fetched?  The documentary shows us that hatred of the Jewish people has a long and frightening history in this nation.  The people today that wear the Jew hating mantel are telling us plainly and clearly; if you are a supporter of Israel you are the enemy.  We don’t have to smash your store widows or burn your synagogue, all we have to do is denounce you on social media.  

We cannot underestimate or ignore the haters.  We can be neither timid nor tentative.

As Ken Burns points out, many American Jews before and during World War II demonstrated, wrote letters, beseeched Roosevelt to save the Jews of Europe, but America was deaf to their pleas.

Are we sure. I mean really sure, that as we scream about the spreading cancer of Jew hatred, that America will listen this time?

Here’s what I have to say.  While we shout out, we’d better look out, because history DOES repeat itself.  We Jews know that all too well.

Watch the documentary and then tell me I’m crazy.