In Senate testimony last Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that antisemitism was reaching “historic levels.” “In fact,” he said, “our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.”
Consider this: Jewish Americans, all of 2.4% of the American population, are the targets of 60% of religious based hate.
Why?
Synagogues are on high alert. Jewish schools have been forced to cancel classes. Jewish homes and Jewish students have been targeted. “A mob tearing through an airport in Russia searching for Jews to lynch is terrifying, but it is equally terrifying for a student from Cornell to find on the general message boards these posts to ‘slit the throat of Jews,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League told CNN on Monday, Oct. 30. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he was “sickened” by the threats aimed at Jewish students at Cornell, while New York Gov. Kathy Hochul traveled to the campus to reassure students that steps were being taken to protect them. According to the ADL, antisemitic incidents in the United States have increased 400% since the Oct. 7 massacre and will almost certainly continue to increase as Israel fights to defend itself against those who oppose its very existence.
But make no mistake. The war against Hamas is not the root of the problem. Last year, the ADL tracked 3,697 antisemitic incidents in the United States, an increase of 36% over the year before, and a record that will be easily broken this year. “Jews will not replace us,” the white supremacists in Charlottesville chanted in 2017; contrary to what Donald Trump said, there were not “good people” on both sides, and while he boasted of his Jewish grandchildren, he also dined with an outspoken Jew hater and accused Jewish Americans of having dual loyalties to the United States and Israel. The far left has its own share of haters, as the recent statements from the squad and some outspoken academics (including a Cornell professor who claimed to be “exhilarated” by the massacre) have made painfully clear.
The war against Hamas is taking place against a backdrop of hate and tapping into that well. And are we supposed to ignore that, to pretend that we are all reasonable people?
Students were outraged when employers rescinded job offers to those who sided with the terrorists. They were angry when their names were made public. Too bad. Did they really think that free speech meant not facing the consequences of their words? Who wants to work with haters and apologists who do not share our fundamental values? Appease the haters? Why?
Of course innocent civilians will die when Israel defends itself against mass murderers. That is what happens in war. But Israel didn’t start this war. Israel gave warnings of what was to come. Can Hamas pretend it did not know that there would be consequences to its own from murdering us? Or did they simply not care? There may be no fuel for the hospitals, but Hamas still has fuel to fire their rockets toward Israel.
Why do they hate us?
Because we are educated? Because we are successful? Because we have power and influence and dare to use it to survive? Because we will not cower in fear, not again, not any longer.
Growing up, I was surrounded by the reality of antisemitism. My Hebrew schoolteacher had a number tattooed on his arm. We read the poems and looked at the pictures done by the children in their very own concentration camp. We lived in the part of town where Jews were allowed, not in the parts where they weren’t. There were the clubs we couldn’t join because they were “restricted,” meaning no Jews allowed. There were schools with quotas to exclude and firms that wouldn’t hire us. Don’t make a stink, my mother told me, because the consequences could be too awful to ignore.
For generations, for centuries, Jews were expected to take it, or else. Or else what? Or else there will be more. There is one tiny country in the world that is Jewish, and they want to destroy it. And we are supposed to ignore that, to pretend that we are all reasonable people. The Arab countries turn their backs on Palestinians, and Israel gets blamed.
We must stand up to antisemitism, call it for what it is, use our power to stop it, to resist and to fight back, and to those who resent us for that, the blame is on them. Never again, my parents’ generation said. Never again is now, and now is the time to fight back. We will respect the law in fighting back, which is more than the haters do. But we must fight, and we must win.
