Palestineism Is Antisemitism Writ Large

The pro-Palestinian movement in the United States has gone full jihadi, targeting JEWISH institutions, including synagogues. The instigators are not only anti-Israel but anti-Jews.

Squirrel Hill Synagogue, PA location of worst mass murder of Jews in the US, defaced with pro-Palestinian graffiti, July 2024

Jewish houses of worship are not Israeli. They have nothing to do with the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists, but were targeted by pro-Palestinian antisemites.

Synagogue in Los Angeles, CA spray painted with “Free Palestine” and “F*ck Israel” in May 2020

The Palestineism movement specifically calls for finding and confronting Zionist organizations, which it has determined is every Jewish organization unless it specifically repudiates Zionism. They have created a “Mapping Project” to enable people to locate and harrass Jewish Americans, Jewish organizations, Jewish schools and synagogues.

The United States Holocaust Museum has written extensively about the Nazis use of intimidation as a tool to weaponize fear and “rationalize war, persecution, and genocide.” The “Free Palestine” graffiti on houses of worship – especially in the shadow of the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023 by Palestinian Arabs – is a deliberate targeting of Jews, a marker for exclusion and persecution.

The Department of Justice needs to act against these hate crimes. The department knows that “Hate crimes have a devastating effect beyond the harm inflicted on any one victim. They reverberate through families, communities, and the entire nation, as others fear that they too could be threatened, attacked, or forced from their homes, because of what they look like, who they are, where they worship, whom they love, or whether they have a disability.”

Section 241 of the civil rights code makes it a felony to intimidate people to hinder the free exercise to a basic privilege like worship.

Yet in Pennsylvania, home to the largest mass murder of Jews in the United States and scene of recent graffiti on a synagogue, Sen. Bob Casey and Gov. Josh Shapiro did not flag that the perpetrators of the antisemitic intimidation should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They only spoke of the symbolism of the vandalism and graffiti.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) made it an offense to use intimidation to prevent a person from going to a synagogue. A Tennessee woman was just sentenced to three years and five months for intimidating people from using an abortion clinic. Such action should be enforced quickly and broadly for vandalizing a synagogue, with long sentences when the language calls to eradicate the Jewish State.

Words of condemnation are appreciated but American Jewry needs and demands that politicians and law enforcement enforce laws to protect Jews from the onslaught of toxic antisemitic Palestineism that is sweeping the nation.