Many Americans are disillusioned by the state of antisemitism today. Not only is it rampant on college campuses but alive and well in U.S. Congress from people like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jewish Americans are considering buying a home in Israel, and perhaps relocate for all or part of the year.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) on November 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Before they do, they should relocate within the United States.
Most American Jews live in deep blue or red states like New York, New Jersey, Florida, California and Illinois. Before moving to Israel, they should change their place of residence to one of the swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona or Nevada. That will enable the person to submit an absentee ballot in a state where the vote could actually impact the outcome of a presidential election, tipping the electoral college towards candidates which favor western values.
Even as the world watches the tragedy in the Middle East, many Jewish Americans have greater fear for their futures in the United States and are moving to a war zone. While abroad, they can continue to help America by making sure their votes will matter by first relocating to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Jews have always been the most persecuted group in the United States on a relative basis, with an average Jew multiple times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an Arab or Muslim. The situation has only grown much worse since the genocidal jihadists of Gaza attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
In addition to the antisemitic violence, Jews have been subject to threats, intimidation and harassment. Whether at schools, synagogues or Jewish community centers, Jews have been confronted by mobs threatening them with genocide and mocking their trauma after the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
On July 15, 2023 these pages suggested new laws be instituted to protect the most beleaguered minority-minority, “Protecting Synagogues Like Abortion Clinics.” The most prominent idea was to enforce FACE which protects religious institutions in the same manner as abortion clinics, banning any protests within 100 feet of the entrance.
Fortunately, the idea was approved in Los Angeles in August. Unfortunately, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) found the idea of protecting synagogues outrageous.
In a letter to the city on September 16, 2024, CAIR-LA called the “bubble zone” around synagogues an affront to the right to protest, even though the right exists everywhere outside of the 100 foot perimeter. It said the protection of Jews “wastes taxpayer money,” and is meant to “serve a political agenda” of Jews.
CAIR not only wants to destroy the Jewish State, but it wants to block Jews from entering their synagogues and enjoying the free exercise of their protected rights.
The radical Islamist group, whose “leaders often traffic in openly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric” is smearing Jews as taking unnecessary money from the public because they seek protection from jihadists calling for an Intifada pogrom while they try to enter Jewish houses of worship and Jewish community centers. The Islamic hate group is further attempting to libel Jews as controlling American politicians.
Leaders of CAIR have been publicly calling Jews “enemies” and blessing “mapping projects” highlighting the location of Jewish institutions for a few years. They have now begun taking their vitriol to the entrance of synagogues and the halls of government in a Diaspora Intifada, designed to threaten Jews outside of the Jewish holy land.
Muslims got the world to bless banning Jews from living in their holiest city of Jerusalem, and praying at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount. Blocking Jews’ basic human rights in the diaspora should be relatively easy.
The Muslim American community is a rapidly growing segment of the United States. It is projected to surpass the Jewish community by 2040 and be entrenched as the second largest religious group, estimated to become 8.1 million by 2050, according to Pew Research.
Like the Jewish community, a major consideration in the group’s focus is the Middle East. For Muslims, the region holds the major Islamic centers of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, while for Jews it is the Jewish holy land of Israel.
Beyond the sanctity of the land are co-religionists. There are 1.8 billion Muslims, with 50 Muslim-majority countries, with most being in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. This compares to just 15 million Jews globally and a single Jewish country, Israel.
Muslim population for Sunni and Shia (dark green), with Israel a dot in the middle
In 2024, several Muslim countries and territories surrounding Israel are waging a war to destroy the Jewish State, and the United States has backed Israel in defending itself. This Iranian Axis-Israel war is weighing heavily on how Muslim Americans are thinking about the 2024 U.S. presidential elections.
The community has long been outraged by former President Trump’s anti-Islamic comments and angered by his strongly pro-Israel actions during his term from 2017 through 2020. Muslims were upset about his cutting funds to Palestinians, placing sanctions on Iran, and normalizing Israel into the Arab Middle East with the Abraham Accords.
But Muslim Americans are also disgusted with the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel fighting against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran. They cannot fathom voting for Harris in the upcoming presidential election, even as they view her more favorably than Trump.
Resigned to the fact that both candidates are not anti-Zionist, a significant part of the community has decided to send a message, and hopefully play spoiler in the upcoming presidential election, in the hope of drawing attention to their position to influence future elections.
The Turkish news site Andalu posted a talk featuring Islamic preachers and members of CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations. The discussion called for Muslim Americans to vote for third party candidates like Jill Stein and Cornel West. While they have no chance of winning, the aim is to make the two dominant political parties start to cater to their demands, especially in halting support for the Jewish State.
According to polls released by CAIR, the Muslim vote in Michigan and Wisconsin – two important swing states to securing the presidency – should have an enormous turnout for Stein. Their hope is to show the Democratic party that had they changed policy course on Israel, those votes could have been theirs. The Muslim American community would rather lose the election to Trump whom they despise, to influence the future direction of the Democratic Party, which is already infiltrated by members of the “Squad.”
Donald Trump may win a larger percentage of the Jewish vote than any Republican nominee over the past cycles which might make him keep pro-Israel positions, but Muslims have a soft back-up hope that Trump will credit the Muslim community for abandoning Harris to help him secure the presidency.
While the vast majority of Americans don’t focus on foreign affairs as the primary concern in elections beyond the border crisis, the Muslim and Jewish communities are putting the Hamas-Israel war at the top of their list, and each group may tip the scales to Donald Trump for very different reasons. Jews will focus on continuing to support Israel in its war against genocidal jihadists, while Muslims will argue that the U.S. should abandon Israel and foreign policy and funding altogether, to let the Iranian axis devour the sole Jewish State.
The Jewish community is taking a very near-term view of the American presidential election, concerned about the terrible spike in antisemitism in the U.S. and the ring of evil attacking Israel right now. The Muslim community is playing the long game, and is willing to simply place a marker on the table in 2024 that they are an emerging force to be reckoned with.
Jews are small in number with a single state and are beset by existential fear, so are pushing for immediate action. Meanwhile, the Muslim world has no existential worries, and can focus on the ultimate prize in which their numbers and power overwhelm American Jews, just as they encircle the Jewish State. In the near-term, they will work to infiltrate the educational system and overtake the Democratic Party to breed a new generation of socialist-jihadists who will normalize anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
It’s called the Insidious Jihad in America and is over five years old now. Imagine where the country will be in five more years.
Imagine an employee of the New York Yankees donning a division rival Boston Red Sox shirt while serving customers at a game. Not only would members of the Yankees be angered but fans coming to the baseball game would be shocked by employees of the organization rooting against the team.
It sounds absurd. The Yankees (or any team faced with a similar situation) would enforce a dress code prohibiting such activity. They would terminate any employee who refuses to abide by the regulation.
Jewish institutions are facing an even worse situation, as employees seek to wear Palestinian kaffiyehs or pins at their place or work, in the middle of the Palestinian Arabs genocidal war against Jews in Israel.
New York City’s 92nd Street Y issued a policy banning patron-facing employees from wearing expressions of “politics or social issues.” According to some reports, a number of employees resigned and one was fired for repeatedly breaking from the policy after wearing Palestinian paraphernalia.
92NY is a “proudly Jewish organization…[which] enthusiastically welcomes and reaches out to people of all ages, races, faiths and backgrounds while embracing Jewish values like learning and self-improvement, the importance of family, the joy of life, and giving back to our wonderfully diverse and growing community, both locally and around the world.” All are welcome to attend their events but must abide by the rules at the Jewish institution.
An employee of the Yankees would not expect to be allowed to wear the jersey of an opposing team while at work. To do so would be a deliberate attempt to antagonize their employer.
Which is precisely the goal of extremists who wish to not only normalize jihadi violence in the shadow of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, but to mock the victims to their friends and family.
The socialist-jihadi mob is actively provoking Jews and mocking their fear and suffering inside Jewish institutions in the center of the largest diaspora community. The mob does so with the knowledge that far-left allies in the district attorney’s office and Senate will shield them from any ramifications.
Many political experts have offered that there is no way to defeat Hamas’ ideology though military means. Israel’s war effort will only be successful in defeating the military capabilities of the political-terrorist group, much like allied forces defeated Nazi Germany in World War II, and US and other allies defeated al-Qaeda and ISIS in the 21st century. The ultimate driver of Hamas, to destroy the Jewish State, will continue to fuel another generation of Palestinian radicals.
What goes unmentioned is that this “ideology” is rooted in religious fanaticism, much like al Qaeda and ISIS, among others. This potentially makes the ideology eternal, so any notion of defeating the ideology would be nonsensical.
Consider that there are only 900 Christian Arabs in Gaza out of a population of roughly 2.2 million, a paltry 0.04% of the region, with the rest being Muslim. The strip is deeply religious under a strictly Islamic religious regime enforcing sharia law. Hamas is attempting to use its Gaza foothold as the launching pad for a caliphate with the help of other Islamic regimes including Iran and Qatar, to consume Israel next door.
Last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas came clean about his fanatical Islamic and antisemitic and anti-US beliefs in front of the Turkish parliament as he declared “we implement sharia law: victory or martyrdom!” and “America is the plague and the plague is America.”
The Israel-Arab war is a religious war for Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic Republic of Iran, not a territorial war. It is therefore not surprising that Jews in the diaspora are being attacked by antisemites who berate Jews as murderers, racists and robbers who are “colonizers,” not indigenous to the land of Israel. It is an unhinged rant of fanatics who celebrate the slaughter of unbelievers unmoored in reality, not a reasoned opinion capable of being addressed.
Columbia University has a long history laying a welcome mat for antisemites.
After the vile “encampments” at the university and threats to Jewish students, the Jewish community held an event on May 31, 2024 to discuss Jew hatred and what to do about it. Three Columbia deans attended the event and mocked the pain expressed. They were suspended and later resigned after their private texts became public.
The Times headline wrote about “deans who sent insulting texts.” But the texts weren’t simply offhand “insulting”; they were antisemitic.
In the sub-header, the Times was more clear that the messages “disparaged Jewish panelists” but was silent on the fact that this was a panel of Jews specifically discussing antisemitism at the university. A casual reader could have concluded that maybe the deans posted something about a select number of Jews who happened to be discussing something generic. The deans didn’t just mock Jewish panelists but the entire notion that there is any antisemitism.
The article started to make the point more clear but not sufficiently.
But then the article went off the rails.
It said that the episode was “deeply embarrassing to the administration.” How is the university the subject here? Jews are the point of concern, not the administration.
And the administration was not embarrassed. It has systematically allowed Jews to be insulted, intimidated and harassed for years.
The notion that the current wave of antisemitism is just a “powerful wave of pro-Palestinian activism,” is a disgraceful whitewash by the Times of jihadi Jew-hatred manifest in the encampments. To label people who celebrate Hamas’ massive butchering of over one thousand people “a symbol of the Palestinian resistance” is to platform antisemitic propaganda.
The New York Times and Columbia University, both headquartered in New York City – home to the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world – cannot fathom antisemitism even when they are forced to focus on it. It is a feature of numb antisemitism, an ingrained belief that Jews are privileged and powerful.
The liberal elite have victims of preference and they are not the most persecuted minority-minority. The Jews are sacrificial lambs to be offered on the altar of intersectionality according to the demands of the socialist-jihadi mob. A small price for the alt-left to gain the audience of the growing global south, shrouded in smug self-righteousness in a toxic empathy swamp.
It’s called “Globalize the Intifada,” and being mainstreamed daily under your nose.
Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) was a famous documentary photographer who captured images of what turned out to be the end of a thriving Eastern European Jewish community. His photographs and story are captured in film and several books, which serve as witness to Jewish life as it existed before being extinguished in the Holocaust.
Vishniac did not try to capture only old Jews or poor shtetl Jews, although his images do bring stories like Fiddler On The Roof to the real world. He captured all kinds of Jews who lived full lives in cities and towns, without the foreboding knowledge that death was coming as individuals and as a collective.
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) captured Russian villages and Jews in his paintings in the decades before Vishniac. Jews had been relegated to live in the Pale of Settlement on the western ends of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years, and Chagall’s early paintings were somewhat peaceful despite the various pogroms which decimated much of the Jewish community in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Vitebsk (1917)Russian Village (1929)
On October 7, 2023, roughly 3,500 people came to southern Israel near the Gaza Strip to celebrate life and music. The Tribe of Nova music festival was an annual all night electronic music experience which drew mostly secular people from around the world. They celebrated with friends and family near Jewish communities whose residents strove for coexistence with their neighbors in Jew-free Gaza nearby. No one knew that Palestinian terrorists were going to descend on the party and the kibbutzes to slaughter and torture as many people as the Arabs could find.
Nova festival party goers
In eastern Europe and Russia, Jews lived in confined areas at the edges of where host countries decided Jews may live. The Jews lived the best they could under the restrictions, until political powers decided that they didn’t want Jews anymore. The militaries either slaughtered the Jews or expelled them.
Vishniac in Berlin after WWIIChagall’s White Crucifixion (1938)
While Jews originated and always lived in the land of Israel, modern Zionism sought to give Jews autonomy in their homeland again. While the reestablished Jewish State was formed in 1948, the country fought many wars against neighbors which found a Jewish State an insult to Islam.
Believing that the Israeli army kept them secure, Israelis danced the night away on October 7, just three kilometers from where the Palestinian group Hamas governed the terrorist enclave of Gaza, with a well-publicized plan seeking the death of Jews and destruction of Israel. Thousands of Gazan terrorists invaded Israel and butchered and slaughtered more Jews on a single day than any day since the Holocaust.
Fleeing NovaDestruction at Nova
Jews danced and lived on the edges, on narrow slices of the world where they were informed they were entitled to live. In the end, whether from their own antisemitic governments or neighboring genocidal armies, they were targeted for annihilation.
The United States Now
What are the lessons for the largest diaspora community the world has ever known, with nearly 6 million Jews accounting for two-thirds of the global diaspora? Or other western democracies like Canada, the United Kingdom and France?
Jews have achieved financial success and attained leading positions at many global companies. They have built schools and hospitals, industries and factories. They have no restrictions on professions or where they can live, how they can pray or what they eat.
Yet the feeling for Jews post-October 7 feels tense. Unsafe.
The presidents of America’s leading universities came to Washington, D.C. and said that they would not combat Jew-hatred on their campuses. The best they could offer were chaperones to escort Jews to their classes or dorms as they confront open and approved intimidation and harassment.
Wayne State UniversityBirmingham, UK
Many American politicians in liberal cities are openly saying that they will not protect Jews. Jews living in the suburbs of New York and St. Louis fought aggressively to oust antisemitic politicians (Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush), with the defeated members of Congress then threatening to come after them.
Are these the new edges in the West in 2024, the straight line on campuses from dorms to classrooms, as well as suburban towns outside of liberal cities? Are universities and cities generally becoming off limits to Jews? Are Jews being told to simply accept that they can live happy lives on the edges?
Jews know history. They carry it in their DNA. They know that any restrictions form the contours of confinement. There is no safety in ghettos, only marked addresses for future annihilation.
Marker for location of massacre of the Jews of Lisbon on April 19, 1506
President George Washington penned a letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, RI on August 18, 1790 which said “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Yet Jews are feeling a deep erosion of that sentiment, that they are part-and-parcel of the fabric of the great country, as leaders of both academia and government assist persecution and inflame bigotry against the most persecuted people in the world.
Excluding Jews in any form, place or time is against the foundational principles of the United States. It cannot be accepted for America to be America.
American Jews will not fight for a slice of land on the edges of society in which to live. They have seen the destruction of fellow Jews when they stay politely in the alloted corners. Whether traditional or secular. Whether in Israel or the diaspora.
Marker of location where 200+ Jews in Vienna who had refused to convert to Christianity were burned at the stake in 1421.
American Jews will fight for all of America and to continue to be integral part of the great nation, unafraid.
American Jews hold fast to Washington’s Newport letter, as he signed “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”
Alas, what make antisemites everlastingly happy is harassing Jews until they experience the pogroms and expulsions of Fiddler On The Roof today.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society started 130 years ago to help Jews fleeing pogroms in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe settle in the United States. It was founded by Jews to help Jews immigrating to a new land.
The agency lost its mission decades ago when newly arriving Jewish immigrants needed much less help because there were very few Jews fleeing to the United States, they came with means, or they had family already established in the United States which helped them acclimate to the new environment.
Refusing to shut down, the agency rebranded itself as “HIAS” and morphed into a “multi-continent, multi-pronged humanitarian aid and advocacy organization with thousands of employees.” It recast its mission statement to be “Drawing on our Jewish values and history, and working with host communities, HIAS provides vital services to refugees, asylum seekers, and other forcibly displaced and stateless persons around the world and advocates for their fundamental rights so they can rebuild their lives.”
The agency is no longer Jews helping Jewish immigrants but everybody helping everybody.
In 2024, that includes members of Hamas and descendants of Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank.
On July 22, 2024, HIAS broadcast a note to its mailing list and on its website “How to help civilians in Gaza.” It specifically highlighted that “in the aftermath of the attacks on October 7, the humanitarian conditions in Gaza quickly became extreme, and the humanitarian crisis there continues to worsen by the day,” without mentioning that the October 7 massacre was launched from Gaza with the broad support of Gazans.
HIAS added that Gaza is outside of its area of influence in that “HIAS does not work in Gaza, but it is clear just how urgently families in Gaza need help. HIAS knows trusted partners who have been providing life-saving aid to civilians caught in the crossfire.” It listed Catholic Relief Services and Global Communities as agencies to which it would forward monies.
Since 1994, Global Communities “advises the World Bank on institutionalizing civic engagement in water sector management and helped establish a national youth organization focused on voluntarism, democracy andgood governance.” It touted its work with Palestinian Arabs who voted the political-terrorist genocidal group Hamas to 58% of parliament which rules over Gaza, and a corrupt Fatah party leading the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, whose president has refused to hold elections since 2009.
Despite no longer being a Jewish organization and not helping Jewish immigrants, HIAS is a member of the Conference of Presidents Of Major Jewish Organizations. The agency’s inclusion has long been a gross oversight, as the HIAS brand and inclusion in the COP misleads donors into believing that it has the same mission as it did at its founding.
As HIAS has now taken a further step of raising money for a group which has been working with Hamas in its efforts of “democracy and good governance” after the October 7 massacre, it is time to expunge it from the Conference of Presidents and everyone’s donor list.
In some ways, HIAS is a microcosm of many secular American Jews who recast themselves as universalists shrouded in “Jewish Values” helping anyone, including those who favor slaughtering fellow Jews.
ACTION ITEM
Write and call the Conference of Presidents to remove HIAS from its member list, at info@conferenceofpresidents.org and 212-318-6111
Antisemitism on college campuses has been growing reality for several years. The explosion of Jew-hatred since the popular Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas‘s slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel has made many school environments toxic for Jews. Not Israelis; Jews. They’ve hidden in their dorm rooms and worked from home. They’ve transferred to different schools. They’ve sued their universities.
In the noxious wake of this antisemitic bilestorm, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) summoned the heads of major universities to investigate the situation on campuses.
The work revealed a systemic bias against Jewish students who were harassed, intimidated and attacked repeatedly. A dynamic which would never have been tolerated for majority-minority groups like Blacks and Hispanics had been given a passing grade.
When the public witnessed the testimony there was an uproar. When it read the subpoenaed texts circulated among college deans about the state of antisemitism, there was widespread disgust.
University presidents and deans lost their jobs. Lawsuits filed by Jewish students were filed and settled.
The revelations of the hearings were not only that Jew hatred had become embedded in universities from the students to professors through the administration, but that the concern was seemingly NOT bipartisan.
Several Democratic members of Congress like Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) used their time at the hearings to ponder why there was no investigation about Islamophobia rather than tackle the subject at hand. The media accused Republicans of holding a partisan spectacle and didn’t really care about Jews, such as The New York Times which wrote “The drubbing is part of a campaign by Republicans against what they view as double standards within elite education establishments — practices that they say favor some groups over others, and equity over meritocracy. Others see it as partisan attack.”
The framing is seemingly peculiar. There is no question that antisemitism on college campuses reached outrageous levels post-October 7. Why would Democratic politicians and liberal media not want to protect young Jews going to school, a community which historically always voted Democratic?
A compulsion to protect DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) which often prioritizes Blacks and Hispanics over Jews and Asians
It begs the question: should Democrats become the majority in Congress in the next election, will Jewish students be abandoned to be tormented at universities around the United States?
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) talking to gathering concerned about the state of antisemitism in universities, July 17, 2024 (Photo: First One Through)
It is both shocking and repulsive to imagine that Democrats would abandon young American Jews but the reactions of Democrats to the past hearings as well as Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) refusal to advance several bills in Congress (since Democrats control the Senate, he controls which bills come forward for a vote) like the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 and the DETERRENT Act make one believe it to be the case.
It would appear that not only is Israel now a partisan issue, but antisemitism has become one as well.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, Jewish Harvard graduate, speaking at Republican National Convention on July 17, 2024
In May 2021, President Biden’s Jewish Engagement Director Aaron Keyak posted on X “It pains me to say this, but if you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your magen david (Jewish star),” in response to growing antisemitic attacks.
The government official did not state that governmental authorities would do whatever it can to protect Jews and prosecute those who harass, intimate and attack Jews. He told Jews to go undercover and erase their identity out of fear.
The situation for Jews has only worsened over the past three years as Jews are being forced from the public arena.
In September 2021, Hollywood opened a new museum, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. By design, the building exhibited a movie industry which was shaped by many Jews, showcasing virtually no Jews. Its desire to be “radically inclusive” of minorities’ contribution to the film industry stripped the minority-minority Jews of a place which they helped create.
Marvel Studios just announced that the introduction of the 1980s Jewish Israeli superhero Sabra in the upcoming movie Captain America: Brave New World, will be stripped of her identity and instead be recast with a Russian backstory.
Plays have been canceled because producers cannot pay the increased insurance premiums that arise out of fear that antisemitic protestors may attack the venue. It happens whether the production includes Israelis or it doesn’t. Jews have been declared the enemy, a too financially and morally expensive cohort to platform.
In April 2024, Columbia University opted to move its classes online after it concluded that it could not keep Jewish students safe on campus. After being sued, the Columbia administration said it would provide “walking escorts” and create a new position called a “Safe Passage Liaison” to help get Jewish students around the school campus, acknowledging that it could not/ would not control campus antisemitism.
Jewish fear of attacks is being met with a widespread canceling of Jews, not the perpetrators. It is reminiscent of the British response to the heinous slaughter of Jews in Hebron in 1929: rather than prosecute the Palestinian Arabs who committed the atrocities, they expelled the Palestinian Jews from their homes into other cities.
The explosion of antisemitism is not being confronted with forceful laws and actions to make Jews safe but a policy of abandonment. Few politicians and non-Jews have declared that this tsunami of antisemitism is un-American, the way Van Jones did in Washington D.C. in November 2023.
Worse, leading American Jews – Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in particular – have not defended Jews from antisemitism. As the most politically powerful Jew in America, Schumer has refused to advance the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 for a vote. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY17) introduced H.R. 6090 back in October 2023 which was passed by a wide bipartisan margin on May 1, 2024. It has been sitting idly on Schumer’s desk for two and one-half months without action.
Even the most powerful Jew in the United States is hiding, lest his advocacy for other Jews make him vulnerable.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
It has become institutionalized in the government.
Jews are being erased in the public sphere and being told to hide. As they do, they are vilified and slandered for hiding in the shadows and conspiring to harm people. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said “they do it from Gaza to Detroit, and it’s a way to control people, to oppress people… open the curtain andlook behind the curtain, it’s the same people who make money and—yes they do—off of racism.” Her comrade Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) said “Westchester is segregated. There’s certain places where the Jews live and concentrate,” vilifying Jews – and only Jews – for not living where he has determined they should buy homes.
The alt-left and alt-right are thrilled at the disappearing Jew. They painted the small minority as too powerful, too rich and too influential for many years. They want the American Jewish footprint to be as meager as their numbers, and the Jewish State eradicated from the global map.
Jews are left with two choices: to either 1) disappear as Jews, by concealing their identity or moving away, or 2) stand and fight for their basic human rights and dignity.
Astute western democratic leaders know those options.
After the killing of Jews in a Parisian kosher supermarket in 2015, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that “if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.”French President Francois Hollande made a similar statement a few days later: “French people of the Jewish faith, your place is here, in your home. France is your country.” Powerful statements from governmental officials to keep its Jewish citizens.
But where are such statements in America? How can Biden officials tell Jews to hide their religion and the leading Jewish politician refuse to bring laws to fight antisemitism?
Bret Stephens, said that the best ally for American Jewry is “America at her best.” Are we there or moving in the opposite direction?
Jews who refuse to disappear are fighting first-and-foremost for fundamental American principles, such as merit, free enterprise and creativity along with respect for tradition. America at her best will see a proud Jewish community thriving, while America unmoored will see its Jews disappear.
The fight against socialist, jihadi and alt-right antisemitism is to enact laws and elect politicians who want to see America focused on creating, not destroying; developing, not redistributing; respecting, not ripping down.
The disappearing Jew is a warning sign that western values are disintegrating, a dangerous omen for everyone.
This is from France, but it could be any Jewish community, anywhere in the world.
First One Through 