A Jewish man was burned in his car from two fireworks that were thrown at him from a car belonging to Arab rioters during a solidarity with Gaza demonstration in the diamond district on west 47th Street in Manhattan around 7 PM on Thursday, the NYPD reported. Meanwhile, wilding Arab groups were scanning the streets of the city in search of “Zionists.”
The Israel Files twitted: “The type of vile disinformation spread over the past two weeks across social media, the incitement and anti-Semitic comments made by notable members of Congress, and the doctored photos aimed at vilifying the Jewish people and the State of Israel have led to this situation in NYC, to the likes of the Hadids & Shaun King who posted vile lies; to Trevor Noah and John Oliver who whitewashed terror threats from a terror organization dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people; to members of the ‘Squad’ and multiple media outlets: you contributed to this.”
Please share widely to show the insanity of the moment we’re in.This is Washington Square Park, NYC. pic.twitter.com/7rw1Onee5r
— Deborah Friedman (@DeborahProudJew)
The tweet continued: “The comments only reinforce this point: (a) peddling more disinformation about Al-Aqsa and claiming Israel is committing genocide; (b) those complaining about and denying our assertion, as Jews from Judea, that there is an inextricable link between Jews and Israel are doing so on a thread showing Jews, with no identifiable connection to Israel, being attacked in the heavily Jewish Diamond District.”
Former NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind tweeted a partial list of places where Jews have been attacked in the Western world in response to those vile bits of disinformation: Toronto, NYC, LA, DC, Seattle, S. Florida, Germany, and London.
Palestinian mob attacks innocent Jewish man, beating him into critical condition!! pic.twitter.com/1JPeIXfFrw
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov)
The Anti Defamation League (ADL) ran an even more alarming tally (Some at Anti-Israel Protests Express Antisemitism, Support for Terror):
Stamford, CT: a protester in Connecticut on May 18 held a sign comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust, depicting a swastika next to what appeared to be an Israeli flag alongside the message, “One Holocaust does not justify another.”
Now, that’s proportionate, especially when recalling how the Jews of Poland shelled the cities of Germany with thousands of rockets before the Sept. 1, 1939 invasion.
Los Angeles, CA: videos posted on Twitter appear to show at least one Jewish individual being beaten in Los Angeles. Videos apparently taken in the same vicinity appear to show Jews being intimidated on the street by individuals in cars carrying Palestinian flags. A clip posted on Twitter appears to show a Jewish individual in Los Angeles fleeing on foot from two cars whose passengers carry Palestinian flags.
If I were a member of the Nazi party, I’d be flushed with waves of nostalgia after reading that one. Because, hey, one Kristallnacht doesn’t justify another.
Washington, DC: at a rally in Washington, DC, a pro-Palestinian activist told the crowd: “As Muslims, as Arabs, we condemn ISIS because they operate under the guise of Islam…Zionists are likewise f***g terrorists because they operate under the guise of Judaism. They’re not Jewish.” The crowd responded by chanting “Zionists are terrorists.”
New York, NY: a protester at a rally in New York City wore a t-shirt with “Hezbollah” written on it in Arabic. Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based terrorist organization whose goal is the destruction of Israel.
There were many more poisonous worms in the Big Apple, of course. I had to smile when one news reporter informed his readers: “New York City’s diamond district is well known as the workplace of many Jewish people.”
Brooklyn, NY: at a rally on May 15 in Brooklyn, protestors chanted “No justice no peace, Israel out of the Middle East!” According to the ADL, this slogan explicitly rejects the existence of the state of Israel. Also in Brooklyn, a protestor held a sign reading “It was wrong in Auschwitz, it is wrong in Gaza,” comparing the current crisis to the Nazi death camp where one million Jews and others were murdered during the Holocaust.
Houston, TX: a rally in Houston included signs that read, “One Holocaust doesn’t justify another,” and “Zionist media lies.”
Of course, because media is the Latin plural form of Medium, the slogan should have read: “Zionist media lie.” You can be a repugnant neo-Nazi Muslim, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use proper grammar.
Dearborn, MI: a protester at a rally in Dearborn held a sign reading, “Zionists r modern-day Nazis.”
Clever. As one of the centers of Arab immigrants in the US, I’d have expected a better uneducated expression of hate dipped in ignorance, but maybe in hate, as in poetry, less is more.
Cleveland, OH: a protester at a rally in Cleveland held a sign that read, “Zionists = Terrorists.”
Miami, FL: a protestor at a May 16 rally in Miami held a sign reading, “Jesus was Palestinian and you killed him too!” The ADL noted that the sign directly invokes the age-old anti-Semitic accusation that Jews are responsible for the killing of Jesus, adding that such rhetoric has been used for centuries to justify persecution against the Jewish people.
Skokie, IL: on May 16, a group of about twenty pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted “Intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” across the street from the Temple Beth Israel synagogue in Skokie, IL. According to the ADL, targeting a Jewish religious institution with anti-Israel activism is a form of anti-Semitic intimidation.
Meanwhile, a window of a synagogue in Skokie was shattered. Someone left a sign that read, “Freedom for Palestine.”
San Jose, CA: a sign at a rally on May 16 in San Jose equated the flag of Israel with the flag of Nazi Germany.
Boston, MA, and San Francisco, CA: at anti-Israel protests in San Francisco and Boston, participants held signs comparing the situation in Palestine to the Holocaust. According to the ADL, that comparison attempts to diminish the impact and horror of the Nazi regime’s genocidal campaign against Europe’s Jews.
Gary Rosenblatt, the last editor of The Jewish Week, wrote an op-ed in The Atlantic on March 15, 2020 (Is It Still Safe to Be a Jew in America?) that offers both a perspective and a vision for the terrifying moments US Jews are facing these days.
Rosenblatt noted that “over the past century, American Jews have found their finest hours rising up to help others in danger, first with their endeavors, mostly financial, on behalf of Israeli statehood in the years before and after 1948, and then with the grassroots movement in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, to free the Jews of the Soviet Union from religious persecution.”
Admittedly, “these efforts were in some ways a response to the community’s feeling of guilt for not doing more to speak out on behalf of European Jews during the Holocaust and its failure to pressure Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration to take action,” and so, “since World War II, and especially after the founding of the Jewish state, American Jews have become far more organized, outspoken, and effective lobbyists.”
He continued: “Today, though, the challenge is closer to home,” recalling: “On a cold Sunday afternoon in December, more than 20,000 Jews and others held a public rally, on short notice, in Brooklyn to protest the recent wave of anti-Semitic attacks. ‘No hate, no fear’ was the theme, and government officials, including the governor, marched in solidarity.”
Rosenblatt concluded: “They were not marching for their brothers and sisters facing persecution in faraway countries. They were marching for their neighbors and families—and themselves.”
This is probably the wrong time to try and convince people that safety awaits them over in a Jewish country that has just been battered by its psychotic Arab enemies who’d rather kill a Jew than heal an Arab. Still, hope exists for the future of the Jews of Israel who are proving to be made of strong stuff. Does hope exists for the future of the Jews of the Western world?
Do check out this website, it’s the home page for Nefesh B’Nefesh. It says, Aliyah. It’s your move.