{"id":12811,"date":"2024-01-03T16:04:18","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12811"},"modified":"2024-02-27T14:05:23","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T12:05:23","slug":"non-jews-should-lead-the-fight-against-jew-hatred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/non-jews-should-lead-the-fight-against-jew-hatred\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-Jews should lead the fight against Jew hatred"},"content":{"rendered":"

US leaders have consistently condemned Jew-hating incidents. every decent American should join them<\/h3>\n

Most Jew are finding this Christmas season sobering, as pro-Palestinian rallies, often resounding with Jew-hating jeers, keep turning violent. Since Oct. 7, 70% of\u00a0American Jews report feeling less safe<\/a>\u00a0than they once did.<\/p>\n

Jews keep debating how to fight antisemitism. Yet, all Americans should confront this evil. Jew-hatred is not a Jewish disease \u2013 it\u2019s a non-Jewish one.<\/p>\n

Beyond violating American values, the bigots are lashing out at America\u2019s most defining national symbols, from putting\u00a0bloody hand prints\u00a0on the White House gates to defacing\u00a0Lincoln Memorial Plaza<\/a>\u00a0with “Free Gaza” grafitti. Why aren\u2019t more Americans objecting?<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s an old story. In targeting Jews, Jew-haters often attack\u00a0liberal-democracy,\u00a0Western\u00a0values, America\u2019s core identity, civility itself. The hooligans who\u00a0menaced\u00a0the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting applauded the Hamas bloodbath and endorsed genocide, chanting “End the Settler Zionist State.”<\/div>\n
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Protesters waved posters with swastikas. They peddled Jew-hating stereotypes suggesting that Jewish money and power\u00a0seduced\u00a0President Biden, whom they branded\u00a0“Genocide Joe.”<\/a>\u00a0And,\u00a0as usual,\u00a0fusing anti-Zionism with anti-Americanism, they shouted: “NYPD, KKK, IDF\u2026 they\u2019re all the same.”<\/p>\n

America has a long tradition of peaceful protest \u2013 this isn\u2019t it. Who rips down posters of innocent people, babies, the elderly, kidnapped from their homes? Do we really want fellow citizens menaced by masked, aggressive, hooligans anytime we disagree with one another?<\/p>\n

Americans should look at how these anti-Israel protesters are importing autocratic bullying into American democracy, normalizing it, and ask if this is the tone we seek in the public square.<\/p>\n

Yet,\u00a0when 290,000 people marched\u00a0peacefully in Washington in November to support Israel and denounce antisemitism, fighting Jew-hatred looked like a Jewish concern. One former student emailed: “It was both empowering and extremely lonely \u2013 in that mostly Jews showed up.”<\/p>\n

Traditionally, non-Jewish Americans showed up to fight Jew-hatred too.\u00a0George Washington\u2019s\u00a01790 Letter to the Hebrew Congregation<\/a>\u00a0of Newport\u00a0said America\u2019s government “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” It’s in America’s DNA \u2013 Europe\u2019s religious persecutions were not welcome here.<\/p>\n

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Sadly, that vow wasn\u2019t always fulfilled \u2013 but Washington shifted responsibility away from the victims, targeting the victimizer.<\/p>\n

Seventy-two years later, President Abraham Lincoln opposed a rare act of official American antisemitism.\u00a0Gen. Ulysses Grant\u2019s General Order No. 11 expelled Jews from Western Tennessee in 1862. In overriding Grant, Lincoln explained that “to condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad.”<\/p>\n

Most presidents have echoed Washington and Lincoln \u2013 including an apologetic\u00a0President\u00a0Grant after his election. Unlike in Enlightenment Europe or today\u2019s Middle East, American leaders have\u00a0consistently condemned Jew-hating incidents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But this is a grassroots, mass effort too; every decent American must combat Jew-hatred, and all forms of bigotry. Cowardly silence has never silenced haters.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for\u00a0individual Americans\u00a0to\u00a0stand tall, reaching out to Jewish friends who are feeling blue, feeling scared.\u00a0Symbolic gestures, comforting words, can reassure fellow Americans feeling harassed \u2013 while repudiating the bigots.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, it\u2019s precisely that soothing tone, that empathy, the three Ivy League presidents failed to convey in Congress\u00a0during their now-infamous testimony.<\/p>\n

By contrast, and more typically, in December 1993,\u00a0thugs shattered\u00a0a 6-year-old\u2019s bedroom window displaying Hanukkah decorations in Billings, Montana. The\u00a0Billings Gazette\u00a0<\/i>printed a menorah as a centerfold. Thousands of Montanans then displayed paper menorahs in their windows too. One billboard proclaimed:\u00a0“Not in Our Town! No Hate, No Violence. Peace on Earth.”<\/p>\n

Therapists teach that feeling community support \u2013 and linking your suffering to a broader mission \u2013 helps heal traumatized war veterans and hate crime victims.\u00a0The freed Soviet Refusenik Natan Sharansky survived nine years in the Gulag prison system, aided by gestures of worldwide “solidarity” from activists, which reminded him of his “deep attachments” ideologically and communally.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, a week after an antisemite murdered 11 Jews worshiping in\u00a0Pittsburgh\u2019s “Tree of Life” synagogue<\/a>\u00a0in October 2018, I visited my brother\u2019s family in Kemp Mill, Maryland. That Sunday evening, 250 parishioners of St. Andrew Apostle Catholic Church snaked toward Kemp Mill Synagogue, carrying candles.<\/p>\n

In medieval Europe, when locals marched on synagogues, things ended badly for the Jews, especially when fire was involved. This walk ended, American-style, in hugs, thank yous and toasts celebrating religious and national unity. Strangers who were neighbors soon became friends.<\/p>\n

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Adlai Stevenson eulogized Eleanor Roosevelt in 1962 by saying she would “rather light candles than curse darkness.” Too many Jews have been cursing darkness, alone, since Oct. 7. This holiday season, their non-Jewish friends should start lighting candles \u2013 and lightening their load.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s keep making those traditional, all-American, symbolic gestures that\u00a0defend America, fight the hate<\/a>, and, occasionally, blossom into genuine unexpected friendships.<\/u><\/p>\n

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Professor Gil Troy, an American presidential historian, is a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the JPPI, the Global Think Tank of the Jewish People, and, most recently, the co-author with Natan Sharansky of\u00a0\u00a0“<\/i>Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People<\/i><\/a>,”\u00a0\u00a0recently released in paperback.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n