Today’s Antisemitism Is Coming From the Left

Jews are feeling increasingly afraid and unwelcome. Last week, girls on the basketball team of a Jewish private school at suburban Hartsdale, New York, were jabbed and hit with antisemitic slurs by players from Yonkers’s Roosevelt High School. “I support Hamas, you f—ing Jew,” a Roosevelt player snarled. The game had to be called off in the third quarter, and the Jewish girls needed school security to help them leave.Antisemitic incidents were already on the rise in 2021 and 2022. Now they are up nearly 400 percent year over year since the October 7 Hamas attack against Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League.The league’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt, explains, “I am not talking about, you know, stores producing IDF T-shirts. I’m talking about a coffee shop on Long Island, an ice cream parlor in the Bay Area, a restaurant in Chicago.” It reminds him of his grandparents’ barbershop, which was vandalized by the Nazis in Germany. “I can’t believe this is happening in our country today.”Believe it. The mainstream press chose to downplay it and the Democratic Party is, at best, divided. Antisemitism has often come from the Right, but it appears now to be coming from the Left.When the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania caused outrage by saying at a congressional hearing in December that calls for Jewish genocide don’t necessarily violate campus policy — “it depends on the context” — Democrats’ reactions were mixed.Senator Fetterman had no problem with moral clarity. “There is no ‘both sides-ism’ and it isn’t ‘free speech,’ it’s simply hate speech,” Mr. Fetterman said. It should be “reflexive” to “condemn antisemitism.”Yet President Obama, the titular head of the party, had a different response. He reached out to Harvard and made a behind-the-scenes effort to save President Claudine Gay’s job.On December 13, the House of Representatives voted on a resolution to condemn antisemitism on campuses and demand the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and MIT for tolerating it. Democrats split, with 84 supporting the resolution and 125 opposing. Congressman Jerry Nadler called it a “gross overreach” to tell colleges whom they should hire.Sorry. Should the discrimination be against Black students, the vote would have been unanimous, and Democrats would have clamored to pull federal funding from the colleges. Yet Jewish students can pound salt.Jewish hostages, too. The public’s indifference to the eight American Jews captive at Gaza, the press’s silence, and President Biden’s tepid efforts to get them released are telling.Recall that during President Carter’s tenure, 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage at the American Embassy at Tehran and endured 444 days of captivity.During that ordeal, Americans tied yellow ribbons around trees and Walter Cronkite announced on the nightly CBS news how many days the hostages had been captive. Mr. Carter’s failure to get them out contributed to his landslide loss to President Reagan in 1980.That’s unlikely to be a factor this November because this time, so few Americans care.Granted, there are only eight hostages, and they were not serving America in an official capacity when they were taken. Even so, the silence is troubling.In 2014, First Lady Michelle Obama made it a cause celebre when 200 Nigerian school girls were abducted. They weren’t Americans, but she said, “In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters.”Prominent Democrats today are not holding signs saying “Bring Back Our Hostages.” Families of the American hostages released an ongoing TV ad on January 7 to fill the void and build awareness.Through the centuries, hatred of Jews has come from many directions. The latest wave appears linked to progressive opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, according to a study done by the director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Arie Perliger. All Jews must bear the guilt, the thinking goes.By failing to condemn antisemitism, politicians, academics, and their press allies are doing our enemies’ bidding. One week ago, ISIS released a 67-minute diatribe calling for the destruction of Jews worldwide to avenge Israeli strikes against Gaza. The message was “kill them wherever you find them.”Meanwhile, Jewish families privately talk at the dinner table about Anne Frank, hiding in attics, and where this new wave of antisemitism could lead.It’s time for all Americans to denounce it.Creators.com

Today’s Antisemitism Is Coming From the Left

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