IT’S HAPPENING IN AMERICA.
Cowards are attacking Jewish cemeteries, scratching swastikas on cars in predominately Jewish neighborhoods, painting hateful words and symbols on synagogues.
Change the target from “Jewish” to “black” and the attacks hark back to the 16th Street Baptist Church and 1963.
We KNOW who bombed the church — no thanks to J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI — but so far we don’t know who is attacking Jews and Jewish property.
The attacks occur all over the lower 48 wherever there is a congregation of identifiable Jews. The attackers don’t seem to care if their targets are observant Jews or assimilationist, leftist Jews who don’t know an א from an ע and whose closest connection to Judaism is a “bagel and a smear.” The attackers know something the nazis knew but which too many Jews fail to recognize: a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
What would happen — how fast would communities react — if those attacking Jews started attacking Christians — as extremist Islamists are doing in Egypt’s Sinai — and their churches and cemeteries.
Muslims — like Jews — also are targets of hate crimes, albeit most often following an Islamists attack on others (e.g., the attacks in Europe).
Since both Jews and Muslims are targeted in the U.S. while American Christians — at least WHITE American Christians — are left undisturbed, it suggests that neither Jews nor Muslims are behind the attacks on each others’ people and property.
According to USA Today, the Muslim Jewish Advisory Council — a partnership of the Islamic Society of North America and the American Jewish Committee — "a 67% increase in hate crimes against Muslim Americans in 2015, according to FBI data, while Jews remain the targets of the most hate crimes based on religion."
Most Israelis and Muslims from the Middle East seem to leave their political “baggage” in the country they left; as a Jew I have worked peacefully with Muslims from a number of countries that don’t recognize Israel, where I hold citizenship (along with my U.S. citizenship). That is not to write there always is a high level of trust, especially by Jews who came to Israel from a Muslim country, particularly after 1948.
If the Muslims are (for the most part) not attacking Jews and Jewish property, and the Jews are (for the most part) not attacking Muslims and their property, then who is left?
What religion has historically persecuted Jews and Muslims?
Certainly not all Christians are attacking Jews and Muslims, but the evidence suggests that some followers of this religion are the ones committing the hate crimes — or perhaps these folks are just out “having a little fun” at others’ expense.
What can be done? Jews and Muslims, and Christians who respect others, need to be alert to threats; to provide security for each other and each others’ property, even if the “security” amounts only to reporting attacks to police as the happen, before the perpetrators can abscond
