Miller:
At pro-Hamas demonstrations in U.S cities
in recent weeks, anti-Semitism rises up and is heard.
In the
largely Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Chicago’s Petersen Park, residents last
Saturday morning found anti-Semitic leaflets on their way to synagogue to
observe the Sabbath. The leaflets threatened violence against the community
unless Israel stopped the war with Gaza.
For
those progressive Jews who have found solace in the myth that anti-Zionism has
nothing to do with anti-Semitism, the events across the globe of the last few
weeks have been a rude and discomforting awakening. And so they turned to their
final recourse, the belief that America was different.
Sure,
there was a pogrom at a synagogue in Paris, but, well, that’s Paris. Muslims
and their neo-fascist and leftist allies might walk through the streets of
Germany shouting anti-Jewish slogans reminiscent of the Hitler Youth, but,
well, that’s Germany.
Then
came the pro-Hamas demonstrations in Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago.
In San
Francisco, if not for the police, some 30 pro-Israel protesters would have been
brutalized by over 300 people demonstrating on behalf of the genocidal Hamas
terrorists.
Sounds
of a vicious, leftist anti-Semitism associated with anti-Zionism have long been
audible in American society, but Jewish-community leaders, cut from leftist
cloth, refused to acknowledge them. I have to wonder if those Jews pushed back
on the streets of San Francisco by frenzied haters recognized some of their
opponents from joint ventures on gun control, gay and lesbian rights,
reproductive rights, and interfaith dialogues.
Those
who believe in women’s rights, gay rights, reproductive rights, and human
rights have cast their lot with people whose culture violates the basic
dignities of freedom. What explains that? Hatred!
Hatred
is the great unifier. If you are going to hate anyone, hate Jews, because no
one cares. When a naïve foreign-born student at the University of California,
San Diego, put up a noose in the library, as a prank on her boyfriend, the
administration called for a campus soul searching and held meetings, vigils,
and teach-ins. Moved by the inadvertent crisis she caused, the student
confessed. The administration, however, was unsatisfied and notified the FBI,
calling for her to be charged with a hate crime, all for an act of naïveté.
But
just months later, on the same campus, Jumanah Imad Albahri, a member of the
Muslim Student Association, publicly proclaimed her support for killing Jews.
The UCSD administration took no action.
Slight
the voluble sensitivities of any group on an American campus and you’ll be
condemned to sensitivity training and endless bureaucratic harassment. But
propose to kill the Jews and you’ll find that the Constitution will be wrapped
around you tighter than a piece of cling wrap.
The
palpable anti-Semitism visible in recent demonstrations here in the United
States has caused some of our progressive community leaders to come out
strongly for Israel, but in so doing, they have to showcase their progressive
credentials, as if it is necessary to say, take me seriously because I too am a progressive and I support Israel.
Forgive
me if I am not awed by progressive credentials, especially knowing that these
are the people who helped put this administration in office. Why did the
Federal Aviation Administration cancel flights to Tel Aviv, when flights to
Ukraine, where a passenger plane actually was downed, continue? Flights to
Damascus and Baghdad, active war zones, were never canceled. Why was the
Jew-hating, Islamist Turkish president Recep Erdogan once one of President
Barack Obama’s most trusted allies in the Middle East? The questions answer
themselves.
As for
progressivism, gay marriage is not worth putting the lives of 6 million Jews in
the hands of an incompetent, indifferent president, whose cultural affinity is
with Islam. His Jewish associations in Chicago’s Hyde Park were with rabbis who
believed peace was more likely if Israel was on the receiving end of
condemnation.
Progressive
Democrats do not support Israel in this existential struggle, but the
Republicans do. The reality is that progressive Jews are going to have to
decide whether they are progressives or Jews, because the term “progressive
Jew” is increasingly becoming an oxymoron.
The
modern anti-Semitism that now concerns our progressive leaders is an outgrowth
of the Left. It was Marx who wrote the vile “On the Jewish Question.” Hitler
recruited from elements at the margins of Germany’s economy. There is a reason
he called his movement National Socialism and infused it with an ideology of
workers’ rights. The distinguished political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset
has shown how Hitler’s electoral surge came from the liberal elements of
Germany.
Progressive
rabbis will probably organize a call for peace, but that is precisely what
Israel does not need. Israel needs to destroy the Hamas tunnels, some of which
are under Israeli schools and residences. They form part of the
command-and-control apparatus of the terrorists. No nation-state can live with
rockets and missiles falling from the skies and explosive-laden tunnels
underneath its schools.
As for
our progressive Jewish communal leaders, I will believe their commitment to
Israel when they go to the next interfaith-council meeting and publicly
confront their fellow progressives about their boycott-divestment-sanctions
hypocrisy. I will have renewed faith in our community-defense groups when they
confront the double standards on campus that protect every group but Jews.
In the
meantime, their failure to do so only means that, increasingly, American Jews
will have to start behaving and thinking like French Jews, because the bigotry
of Islam and its leftist allies does not end at Europe’s coast.
