The author was inspired to write this book partly in
response to the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting. It stung her for two reasons; it
was the same place where she’d had her Bat Mitzva ceremony, and her previous
congregation in Squirrel Hill burned down the previous year. She compares it to
the attacks on Jews in France and blames that on the French government’s
reaction. Either the French will deny that the Jews were the target, or they’ll
claim that the Jewish community were partly responsible.
Weiss goes into
the history of antisemitism in the USA (or lack of it) which she attributes to
the founding fathers’ dislike of old-world grievances. There wasn’t much in the
way of Christian antisemitism in the USA in the early days, mainly because
George Washington (and Ben Franklin, and John Hancock, and all the others
present at the Declaration of Independence) rarely went to church, and they
certainly weren’t going to take orders from the clergy. Though she doesn’t
expressly say it, the businessmen who founded the USA were less interested in
God and more interested in people who could pull their weight.
Looking back on the
documentary Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, I can see how the
anti-Jewish sentiment lingers everywhere. Take the stereotypes as the prime
clue to the puzzle; the Jew as the money-loving businessman, or the Jew as the
money-hating communist. The image of the Jew is protean; it can be whatever
evil you don’t like. Weiss also goes into how this is about religion more than
ethnicity or color. She points out that the Hasids in Crown Heights were
targeted for their distinctive clothing and beards, while at the same time a
Jewish college student got an “eviction notice” from an anti-Zionist student
group. The Jewish students had nothing to do with Zionism on campus, so why
should they have to answer for what Israel does? The Black youth who targeted
Hasids in Crown Heights didn’t target the Jews who didn’t have beards or black
hats because they were harder to spot. Then there’s the Israeli family who
dealt with rocket attacks in Sderot, a swastika on their garage door in
California, and the Poway Chabad shooting. Each time they were attacked, it was
because of their religion.
I’ve had personal
experience with inappropriate remarks over me being a Jew, but most pf them
were based on idiocy rather than ideology. First there was the idiot coworker
(behind on his child support, averse to having to work, and often in trouble
with the law) who said “you’re the biggest Jew I ever saw” despite the fact
that he probably knew none. Then there was moron coworker #2, who said all Jews
were 90lb wimps with no dicks (lucky for him he never had to fight me). Finally
there was the 16 year old high schooler; a Chinese-American kid, on probation
for a crime committed at Brooklyn Tech, who drew a swastika to see how I would
react. I declined to tell his probation officer about the incident, because I
knew we’d get no results. The judge would’ve been angry at the boy, but who
takes a moron seriously? All of the people who insulted me because of my
religion were morons; lazy, unmotivated, stupid, and likely to screw up no
matter wherever they went.
Ban the Zionists,
and that would include 80% of all Jews. If you ban Cubans for being
anti-Castro, then you would have no Cubans in Miami. As for anti-Jewish
attacks, are they really about a beef with Jewish people, or just plain old
crime? The author devotes a chapter to anti-Jewish sentiment in Muslim
countries, going back to the days of the Jizya. The author finds it surprising
that there can be Jew-haters in the Middle East, when there are few Jews left
in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen, and Syria. So what was the Muslim world’s
beef with their Jewish neighbors? First there was the notion that refusal to
convert to Islam was a slight to the prophet, then there was the Jealousy over
western aid, then it was about Israel. Nowadays the Jews are being spat on by
Muslims in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan, and Malmo, despite the fact that no
European Muslim is suffering at the hands of Jew. When President Trump
announced his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the city of Malmo
was full of protest by Muslims. The famously rough Swedish city, home to scores
of Muslim immigrants, is no stranger to trouble. But the protestors weren’t
rallying against Trump, or the USA, or Israel; they were chanting “shoot the
Jews” The mayor of Malmo didn’t help things by saying “we don’t accept
Anti-Semitism and we don’t accept Zionism.” What does one have to do with the
other? The tiny Jewish community in Sweden isn’t pushing Zionism, in fact there
are probably fewer Swedish Jews pushing Zionism than Swedish gentiles pushing
drugs.
In the recent book Terror
in France, written by French professor name Gilles Kepel, the problem of
Muslim terrorism is blamed on the politicians; the right-wing use it to push
tougher immigration standards, while the left-wing use it to accuse the
authorities of racism. Weiss brings up the same argument in her book, and shows
how the right and left groups in Europe’s legislatures use it to their own
gains. In the end, however, it’s not the Jews who suffer, but the whole of
Europe. The Jews will simply pack up and leave, taking their money, business,
talents, and whatever contributions they make, leaving the rest of Europe to
fend for itself. Meanwhile, racist politicians like Marine LePen have a bigger
platform to bash immigration.
Unfortunately, Weiss
doesn’t give much of an idea of how to fight the problem of Anti-Semitism. From
what I gather in her book, the problem is lax border control and weak law
enforcement. I suspect that Britain and Europe have a separate code of conduct
for different people, and it makes the authorities tolerate criminal behavior
in the name of Islam. Donald Trump is also part of the problem, because his
Anti-Muslim rhetoric puts the Jewish community in a tight spot. However, as
long as the USA has only one set of laws, and the police enforce it, then you
won’t have an entire neighborhood spitting on Jews in the street. In all of the
recent attacks on Jews – the Poway shooting, Pittsburgh shooting, Monsey
machete attack – the perpetrator was either a habitual offender, or a
disaffected loner. The politics behind the attack? Chances are he uses the
politics as an excuse, nothing more. In the Holocaust Museum shooting in 2000
(does anyone remember that one?) the killer was an elderly White supremacist, who
according to his son, had pretty much ruined the family with his activities.
Look at how
Zionism exists in the USA versus Europe. We’ve had Rabbis attacked in Crown
Heights, but the attackers are always criminals and they’re usually brought to
justice. Then you have the Israel Parade in NYC, every year, and there’s rarely
any trouble. Lots of non-Jews march in the parade, and no Muslim group ever
attacked the marchers. Now compare it to the UK and France, where Muslim
fanatics are known to attack people. The attacks in UK and France are often
ideological, and the police are sometimes unsure of what to do. They seem to
wonder if the attack is excusable based on the motivation, rather than relying
on codified law. In New York City’s Israel Parade, you can wave the Israeli
flag without fear, and we rarely see Palestinian rights groups protesting at
the event. In fact the only time I ever saw violence at the Israel parade was a
Jewish militant group harassing the Neturei Karta sect of Hasidism. Jewish kids
run around the city’s parks every weekend without getting rocks thrown at their
heads, and Muslim girls are not told to take off their headscarves at school.
Maybe the problem is not Anti-Semitism, but the condition of
Europe?
