In the U.S., our college campuses are rampant with anti-Semites making their voices heard. From NYU and Harvard to the University of Michigan and UC Berkeley, it is not uncommon for Jewish students to receive death threats or faux eviction notices while administrators remain silent. Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and others have been documenting and fighting the growing anti-Israel movements on colleges across the nation while the average American, the mainstream media, and our government take little notice of the dangers this trend poses.
But it is not just colleges that have been infiltrated with anti-Israel views. The mainstream media has been obsessed with demonizing Israel for decades. HonestReporting has been documenting the media bias in reporting on Israel, and it is without question that this bias has helped lead to anti-Israel indoctrination across the globe. As this sickness takes hold in the minds of mostly leftists, the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement is also growing with hate-filled supporters who call for boycotts of Israeli products (reminiscent of those that occurred against Jewish businesses in Europe pre-WWII).
A new Pew Research poll reflects the partisan divide in support for Israel: “the share of Republicans who sympathize more with Israel has risen [since April] from 68% to 73%; 44% of Democrats express more sympathy for Israel than the Palestinians, which is largely unchanged from April (46%).” This is not surprising. Note the cities where anti-Semitic, anti-Israel demonstrations have occurred. They are all in blue states where Jews live and thrive. Sadly, many of those Jews join the Israel-haters with their progressive ideology and politically correct obsessions that lead to anti-Semitic views being not only tolerated, but permitted to flourish.
Not all anti-Semites in the U.S. are peaceful protestors who simply shout hateful speech while encouraging violence. Many are in fact violent. The knockout game involves black youths beating people until they are knocked unconscious. Although little mentioned by the media, Jews have been disproportionately targeted by these haters in cities across the country. And the FBI’s hate crime statistics indicate that Jews are the most targeted faith, constituting 62.4% of victims. By comparison, Muslims constituted 11%. So much for Islamophobia.
In an article entitled “Does Anti-Semitism Threaten American Jews?” Kenneth Marcus of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law observed:
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) important new study, there are now one billion adult anti-Semites in the world. As Rabbi Yoffie acknowledges, this is fully a quarter of the world’s adult population. Can American Jewry shrug this off?
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As the post-Holocaust taboo against anti-Semitism erodes, the ramifications are troubling. Suppose that one in ten thousand anti-Semites should physically harm or threaten Jews or Jewish institutions in a given year. Under this scenario, serious anti-Semitic incidents would increase to 100,000 per year, even if anti-Semitic attitudes remain constant. In other words, things can get much worse.
While despots around the world murder and maim their citizens with poison gas, torture, and work camps, it is Israel, a democratic, tolerant, and free society, that faces demonization, U.N. and international condemnation, and boycotts. While Jews are a charitable people who have contributed to the advancement of medicine, technology, academia, and the like, hate for them is irrationally exploding worldwide.
The sickness known as Nazi Germany is rearing its ugly head under the guise of pro-Palestinian movements. Despite the fact that it is not state-supported outside Arab lands, as it was during WWII, it is no less dangerous and far more open and pervasive today.
While my office may sit up in the clouds, anti-Semitism had no trouble reaching me last week. It is my hope that world leaders, Jewish leaders, and sane citizens of the civilized Western world come down from the clouds to help stop this psychosis before it spreads too far and wide to contain.