Jews are feeling increasingly afraid and unwelcome. Last week, girls on the basketball team of a Jewish private school in suburban Hartsdale, New York, were jabbed and hit with antisemitic slurs by players from Yonkers’ 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% year over year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
ADL CEO 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 media choose 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.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) had no problem with moral clarity. “There is no ‘both sides-ism’ and it isn’t ‘free speech,’ it’s simply hate speech,” Fetterman said. It should be “reflexive” to “condemn antisemitism.”
But former President Barack 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 Dec. 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. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called it a “gross overreach” to tell colleges whom they should hire.
Sorry. If the discrimination had been against black students, the vote would have been unanimous, and Democrats would have clamored to pull federal funding from the colleges. But Jewish students can pound salt.
Jewish hostages, too. The public’s indifference to the eight American Jews captive in Gaza, the media’s silence and President Joe Biden’s tepid efforts to get them released, are telling.
Recall that during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 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. Carter’s failure to get them out contributed to his landslide loss to Ronald 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 the U.S. 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 Jan. 7 to fill the void and build awareness.
Over 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 Arie Perliger, director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. All Jews must bear the guilt, the thinking goes.
By failing to condemn antisemitism, politicians, academics and their media 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.
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Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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One thing the state commission that oversees high school sports should do is disqualify the Yonkers Roosevelt High School from competing in any sports not just girls basketball. As a team the basketball squad represents the school as a whole therefore until the school itself takes action to correct this blatant hate speech. Likwise referees should halt all games where this occurs, award victory to the offended team and their school be placed on notice!
They’d need Balls to even attempt that.
Democrats are illegally sending thousands of potential Hamas across our borders for the same reason Democrats go overseas to try to enlist and draft deranged and socially disgruntled Muslims to play on Joe Biden’s basketball team that reflects his basket cases of knee capping American sports figures, where politics becomes their blood sport of choice. The sooner they can overwhelm in numbers the 3-4 American loving Jewish Judeo-Christian population of voters, the sooner the end game results can be won with the same spiritual withering that disempowers this nation, resulting in the elevation of emotions like hate, envy, revenge, or just plain sexual gratifications to become the new trophies sought, instead of self-government, fair play, success and long-term future possibilities.
When ““calls for Jewish genocide don’t necessarily violate campus policy — “it depends on the context””,,,,,the intent of “The context” is obviously to control the narrative so that the party and its campaign to replace sane democracy with insane failing socialism empowered by political correct woke weaseling is to be protected at all costs, even the lives cost of innocent Jewish students who are considered to be just so much expendable collateral damaged cannon fodder in the battle for democrat party supremacy at all costs.
The 3-4 million American Jewish voters have at least been equalized and neutralized by illegal immigration. Planned no doubt by a party for sale, with Islam the most dollars to purchase.
Wonder how many Jewish hating Muslim rag heads has the Obama/Biden and the Biden/Obama administrations imported into our country, both legally and illegally?? 🙁 🙁 🙁
MILLIONS! Just look at how stank up both Minnesota and Michigan are with them.