Ignoring anti-Semitic assaults signals that Jewish blood doesn’t matter when it can’t easily be politically exploited by Philip Klein |
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ignoring-anti-semitic-assaults-signals-that-jewish-blood-doesnt-matter-when-it-cant-easily-be-politically-exploited
Last month, Tablet‘s Armin Rosen wrote a disturbing piece on the rise of hate crimes against identifiable Jewish New Yorkers, writing, “Jews are routinely being attacked in the streets of New York City. So why is no one acting like it’s a big deal?”
Rosen detailed many of the crimes directed at Jews, noting that more hate crimes were committed against Jews in the first half of 2019 than in all of 2017.
On Aug. 12, just a few weeks after Rosen published his piece, three Hasidic Jews were violently mugged within an hour in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This Tuesday, another Hasidic Jew in his 60s was bloodily beaten with a brick in Crown Heights. Then this Thursday in Crown Heights, a Hasidic Jew was in a truck when a group of youths threw a stone through the window, giving the man a laceration in the head.
The attacks are happening in broad daylight and at night and, in some cases, have been captured on video.
They range from harassment and attempted intimidation:
-WARNING – this video is horrifying. An Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted in broad daylight in Brooklyn, New York. We thank @NYPD66Pct for swiftly apprehending the assaulter and extend our best wishes to the victim and his family.
New York City has the largest Jewish population in the United States, and Jewish roots there are long and deep. And yet, the situation for observant Jews is quickly devolving into that of Europe, where Jews cannot safely walk to synagogue or through the streets while wearing a yarmulke without being attacked verbally or physically. This is a disgrace.
Why is everybody standing pat as Jews get targeted in a city where, if anything, they should feel most safe? Why in a voracious 24/7 media environment is it being given so little attention? The simple answer is that highlighting the attacks does not provide any clear partisan advantage.
It would be difficult to tie the attacks in Brooklyn to any comments from President Trump or to rising white nationalism. Additionally, they can’t be easily linked to any of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s tweets. Thus, this is a failure not only of Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who sanctimoniously tweets about anti-Semitism as he stands idly by as it rages in his own city, but also of major Jewish organizations. These organizations have collected tens of millions in donations to supposedly fight anti-Semitism and yet have proven absolutely useless in pressuring politicians to take action as observant Jews have become unsafe in the epicenter of American Jewish life.
As Rosen wrote, “The fact that the victims are most often outwardly identifiable, i.e., religious rather than secularized Jews, and the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, inverts the perpetrator-victim dynamics with which most national Jewish organizations and their supporters are comfortable.”
Anti-Semitism comes in many shapes and forms and is not confined to any one ideological camp. In some cases, it is not attached to politics at all. The only way effective way to fight anti-Semitism is to fight it in all of its manifestations, free from political blinders.
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