American Jews are being asked to get used to something that European and Middle Eastern Jews have been accustomed to for thousands of years – namely, to live with targets on their backs.
The United States was always different. Yes, Jew-hatred has always existed even here in America but almost never in an open, brazen or violent manner. It was always much more of the “we won’t let them into our country club” variety, or quotas at leading universities.
To the extent that Jews died as a result of American antisemitism, it was, in the most egregious case, by not allowing them to enter the United States during the Holocaust, especially after FDR’s disastrous appointment of antisemite Breckenridge Long as head of the visa section of the State Department during World War II.
But with that painful and monumental exception, the United States has been one of the greatest blessings to world Jewry in our long and painful history.
Until now.
The nonstop and deadly attacks on American Jews and especially synagogues boggle the mind. Are we caught in some weird Hollywood nightmare? From Pittsburgh to Poway to Jersey City to Monsey to Texas, with many painful stops in between, American Jews are now accustomed to dead congregants, flashing police lights and security whenever they go and pray.
It was something that, as an American Jew, I had to get used to when I first moved to Oxford, England, to serve as rabbi in 1988 when I was sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The tank-like military vehicles and soldiers with submachine guns you saw outside shuls in London, Rome, Brussels and Berlin were… well, downright un-American.
But no more. Welcome to the new status quo in New York, Miami, Los Angeles and St. Louis.
But things won’t get better until the Biden administration stops its pathetic game of pretending that Islamic terrorism is only “extremism” – as President Joe Biden called the Texas attack – or that it’s not the Jews specifically who are being targeted, which was the astonishing conclusion of the FBI in Colleyville.
Particularly painful were the comments of FBI Special Agent in Charge Matthew J. DeSarno, who actually said that the attacker was specifically focused on an issue “not directly connected to the Jewish community,” and that there was no immediate indication that the attack was part of any broader plan.
Come again?
The agent’s comments strain incredulity. Seriously? The hostage-taker, who did not go to a McDonald’s or a shopping mall, or a church, but to a synagogue – even though the Jews are just 2% of the population – was not focused on something connected to Jews? He was not motivated by hatred of Jews? He was not trying to murder Jews? He was not specifically attacking Jews? It wasn’t a rabbi whom he took hostage?
Never in the history of political correctness has a more confusing statement been made about a blatantly antisemitic attack than this one in Texas.
One wonders whether the FBI – which otherwise performed flawlessly and brought about a miracle by saving the rabbi and the hostages – received its political marching orders from political higher-ups.
Who told the FBI to declare that the terrorist, who was a British national, was not guilty of a hate crime? Has it examined all his online posts? Does it think that he was simply driving down the interstate in Dallas and decided that in order to free “Lady al-Qaeda,” Aafia Siddiqui, he should specifically take four Jews hostage in an out-of-the-way synagogue rather than any place else in the Lone Star State?
HERE’S THE truth.
Islamist radicals hate Jews in their gut. They are congenitally antisemitic, as terrorist Siddiqui showed in her trial where she “demanded” that no Jews serve in the jury. They do not hate Israel because of any dispute with Arab neighbors, but because it’s a Jewish state.
They are antisemitic to their core.
And when the United States overlooks that insidious and murderous hatred and negotiates with Islamist radicals and legitimizes them, that hatred trickles down to the kind of attack we saw in Texas by radicals who believe that Jews are the source of the world’s evil and control all the world’s governments.
Iran speaks openly about annihilating six million Jews. Yet the Biden administration is engaged in talks with them that will ultimately legitimize their nuclear program.
Hamas’s charter demands the murder of every Jew in every place on earth. Yet the Biden administration is reversing Trump-era suppression of funds that cuts off the terrorist organization.
What are we to think when the greatest and most moral nation on earth, America, does not tell Islamists clearly and unequivocally that unless they repudiate any and all threats against Israel and Jewry – especially those of a genocidal nature – the US will have nothing to do with them and will keep them on an enemies list?
The Texas attack dare not become the new normal for American Jewry. Having lived in Western Europe for 11 years, I know what that normal looks like.
I know what it’s like to hear my students on campus tell me that they take their kippot off because they’re afraid to wear them and get attacked. I know what it’s like to hear from residents that I should not put up a public menorah because I’m just going to bring the haters out to attack the community.
And I know what it’s like to grow accustomed to hearing elected officials and members of Parliament give speeches laced with Jew-hatred, as British Jews became accustomed to with Jeremy Corbyn, and which American Jews are now hearing from Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
All this was utterly foreign to American Jewry. And it must remain so.
Ultimately, we have no one to rely on but ourselves. We must take to the airwaves to demand accountability from elected officials to protect the Jewish community and to never excuse any form of antisemitism.
We must advertise against Hollywood influencers who spew anti-Israel hatred and antisemitic bile, which is becoming increasingly frequent, as our organization, the World Values Network, did against Dua Lipa and the Hadid sisters during the May 2021 Gaza war.
We must, as a community, oppose any new deal with Iran that funds the regime without a total and complete cessation and repudiation of any and all threats against Jewry and Israel and an end to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
We must choose and support elected officials who have no qualms about calling out Islamist attacks for what they are, not extremism but terrorism.
Finally, we must reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters and make it clear to them that they dare not allow a great world religion to be represented or usurped by murderers and Jew-haters.
It’s time for our Muslim brothers and sisters to repudiate the likes of the Texas terrorist even more vehemently than us Jews and help create a new era of Jewish-Muslim peace.
The writer, whomThe Washington Postdescribes as “the most famous rabbi in America,” has just publishedKosher Hate: How to Fight Antisemitism, Racism, and Bigotry. Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
(c) All rights reserved The Jerusalem Post 1995 – 2022 Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
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And the Jewish community still hold the democrats in high enough regards to continue to vote for them. Just like in these democrat owned and run cities if that is what they vote for then that is what they want.
The FBI is facing backlash on social media after an official said that the Texas synagogue hostage taker’s demands were “not specifically related to the Jewish community.”
“The FBI is now an organization solely focused on destroying
the “domestic enemies” of the Democratic Party,”
Parents who object to their children being taught the “critical race theory” or anyone who does not support the Democrat Party’s LIES.
That’s why when i SEE stuff like this happen, i have little sympathy… THESE idiots keep voting DEMS INTO OFFICE, so they bring it on themselves imo.
Biden and his Justice Department are acting like a National Socialist Collective of Sergeant Schutz’s. When caught overlooking the defiant action of the American Hogan’s Heroes people they socially imprison in their media mind enslaving POW camps, and fail to do their due diligence of equal protection under the law for all, all we get is “ I know nothing colonel Klink”, followed by 180-degree admissions to the truth when caught, trapped and imprisoned in their own media and administrative lies. Never trust the word of a secular socialist when he tells you what he wants America to be. Just watch what he does in deeds to cover up and deny anything that gets in the way of his agenda, of American conquest from within, then you really find out what he wants to do to YOU. Biden Raging inflation, soaring gasoline Prices, closed pipelines and petroleum drilling, Betrayal of a failed Afghan pullout, forced COVID lockdowns in your own homes, denials to assemble in church while BLM gangs looted the countryside,,,if these are not the real hate crimes of recent history against the American nation, then Bernie’s heroes of National SOCIALIST Hitler, and Communist Stalin were just innocent choir boys who first came for the Jews, then when confident they came for YOU.
Unfortunately that trend imo, started under CLINTON, continued under Bush Jr and got WORSE under obama..
Didn’t PinocchiObama, his vice president “let’s Go Brandon” and “Crooked Hillary” try to con us into thinking Islam is a religion of peace and we should embrace more of them in our country?
The treachery of the traitorous, socialist Democrat Party know no bounds.
“Ultimately, we have no one to rely on but ourselves. We must take to the airwaves to demand accountability from elected officials to protect the Jewish community and to never excuse any form of antisemitism”. How do the Jewish people demand accountability when they overwhelmingly vote into office Democrat communists, who are pro Islamic terrorist? Why do the Jewish people cut their own throats by voting for communists? Like I have stated in past columns, if some of these fools / human beings went to the donkey farm, the jack***** would throw them off of the donkey farm, because the jack***** have more common sense than some human beings.
AND HOW can we ever “GET” any accountability, when the SAME IDIOTS in office, seem to KEEP MAKING THE SAME bloody mistake, time after time, but NEVER GET FIRED< or worse, convicted of Gross negligence or the like?