Just the other day, a theatrical version of Anne Frank was performed in Michigan. Outside of the theater, a group of people were waving Nazi flags--and no one took them down. This has now become a norm in America, and around the world. People have taken to painting Jewish stars on people's homes in France. In Amsterdam a bunch of people terrorized Israeli soccer fans in droves. As Brent Stephens says in his editorial on 11/13, "It wasn't merely just overflowing anger over the war in Gaza. It was something altogether darker." On a popular app, people were using the term "Jew hunt." In an Oslo station it read, "Hitler started it. We will finish it."
For anyone who has family who perished in the Holocaust, to anyone who was raised with the good values of tikkin olam--actions intended to improve the world-- (which is why I know all but the right wing Jews voted for Kamala, since they are into repairing the world, not destroying it); to anyone who has reached out to humanity at large, many Jewish people--like myself--were raised with integrity, to a revulsion for what is ugly and vile; hence, read between the lines: Trump used awful antisemitic tropes in his speeches. So, as Stephens says," they are like generations of programists before them--out to get the Jews. Antisemitism in Europe has "now reached the point where the future of many of its Jewish communities is seriously in doubt. They want countries "free of Jews." Isn't that what White Nationalism is partly about? "Jews will not replace us," was chanted on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017--during Trump's first presidency. And his response,"There were good people on both sides."
No. This is not a situation of duality. Antisemitism is never good. I ordinarily do not agree with Stephens, who I sometimes find too conservative, but now there is a warning if we don't pay attention as Americans. "If we stay on this path, the Jew hunt of Amsterdam may be upon us, too, and sonner than we think." Sadly, it already is.
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