2023-10-28 20:51:09
WASHINGTON.- A group of Jewish students locked themselves in the Cooper Union University bookstore in Manhattan, New York, in the midst of a tense protest in favor of the Palestinians, when a group of protesters began to forcefully bang on the door of the bookstore shouting “Free Palestine, Free Palestine!” In Philadelphia, a building near the University of Pennsylvania’s Alpha, Epsilon Pi Jewish fraternity house was vandalized with graffiti that read, “Jews are Nazis.”
In a town near Chicago, Illinois, a six-year-old Palestinian boy, Wadea Al Fayoume, was stabbed to death by the owner of the house his family rents, a killing that shocked the country. The Justice Department is investigating that crime as a hate crime, and Attorney General Merrick Garland said it “raises the fears” of the Muslim, Arab and Palestinian community. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) had to cancel its annual dinner due to bomb and death threats against the staff of the hotel in Virginia where the meeting was held for the last ten years. During rush hour on Friday afternoon, hundreds of protesters blocked Manhattan’s iconic Grand Central Station to protest Israeli bombings in Gaza and call for a ceasefire. At least 200 were arrested.
In the United States, a nation of immigrants, home to the world’s largest Jewish community and 4.5 million Muslims, the new conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas sparked waves of protests, and a surge in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. . The Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, the world’s leading anti-hate organization, said that since the Hamas attack there were more than 300 anti-Semitic incidents, a jump of nearly 400% over the same period the previous year. CAIR, which conducts the same survey for cases of Islamophobia, said it received more than 700 reports of incidents against Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims, the highest level since 2015. Federal security agencies are on alert.
The new peak of hatred that is raging in the world and touching the two peoples locked in the historic conflict in the Middle East forced the White House to provide a message that sought to provide “moral clarity.” The message was delivered by presidential spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre from the podium in the press room, a day after she appeared to dismiss concerns about an outbreak of anti-Semitism by noting that Muslims had suffered a “disproportionate number of fueled attacks.” for hate.”
“When Jews are attacked for their beliefs or their identity, when Israel is singled out for anti-Jewish hatred, that is anti-Semitism, and that is unacceptable. There is no place for anti-Semitism. Full stop,” said Jean-Pierre. “Following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, which were the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust, the president has been consistent and clear: we must all do our part and speak out forcefully against anti-Semitism, and we must ensure that there is no room for hate in the United States, against Jews, not against Muslims, not against Arab Americans, not against Palestinian Americans, not against anyone,” he concluded.
In the United States, the new war between Israel and Hamas has generated two very distinctive reactions: on the one hand, there were marches of support and displays of solidarity with Israel for the attack; on the other, protests in favor of the Palestinians and against Israel for its counteroffensive on the Gaza Strip – which has already left more than 7,000 victims, almost half of them children – and its policy towards the Palestinians, which included messages against Israel, Zionism, and the occupation and blockade in Gaza and the West Bank.
Some protests have blurred the line between support for legitimate Palestinian grievances and tacit support for the violence deployed by Hamas against the Jewish people. In Washington, a pro-Palestinian protest in front of the Capitol – called by Jewish organizations very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government – displayed several posters against Israel and its policy in the Palestinian territories, including messages against “genocide.” , “apartheid” and the Israeli “occupation.” “Resistance is justified when people are busy!” was one of the cries heard.
The protests and the outbreak of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia also reflect a lack of sensitive resolution to the complex moral dilemmas that run through North American society – and the rest of the planet – when addressing the historic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the support for the rights and claims to live in safety and peace of Israelis, Jews, Palestinians and Muslims.
In search of that balance, former President Barack Obama advocated showing “the best values” and not the “worst fears” by recognizing Israel’s right to exist and the Jews’ claim to a secure nation, and, at the same time, recognizing that Palestinians have lived in “disputed territory” for generations and have been displaced sometimes with the explicit backing of the Israeli government. Obama said that “it is possible for people of good will to defend Palestinian rights and oppose certain Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza without being anti-Semitic.”
New twist
The new outbreak of hate offered a novel twist. Historically, anti-Semitism came from the extreme right, from neo-Nazi or white supremacist groups. But now anti-Semitism has found a new home on the left that unequivocally supports the Palestinians. An epicenter of pro-Palestinian protests has been the campuses of many universities, a reflection that many young people have taken sides in the conflict in the Middle East, a displacement entrenched by Israel’s policies deployed under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu. Faced with this new reality, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution this week that condemned cases of anti-Semitism at institutions of higher education and “encouraged college and university leaders to speak out against anti-Semitism.”
The fracture on the left goes beyond the borders of the United States. The Western left walks a new chasm between condemnations of Hamas, sometimes nuanced with criticism of Israel, to ambiguous statements, or, at one extreme, justifications for the Hamas attack and support for the Palestinians who at times fall into anti-Semitism. Arie Perliger, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, led research that found that “the ideology underlying anti-Semitism in the United States now runs along both sides of the political spectrum.”
In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous, renowned for her criticism of the Israeli government, spoke of a sense of “existential loneliness” among Jews that added to the shock, anguish and fear that the Hamas attacks had sown.
“The clear message from many people in the world, especially in our world – those who claim to care most about justice and human dignity – is that these Israeli victims somehow deserved this terrible fate,” Brous said. “How does a person look at a campaign of annihilation and see a quest for liberation?” he asked.
In another attempt to bring clarity amid the violence, Brous spoke of the search for a “shared liberation” between Israelis and Palestinians.
“And I ask us to promise that this feeling of isolation and loneliness, the longing for solidarity, reminds us of the sacred responsibility of reaching out, instead of hiding, making mistakes and withdrawing when another people is suffering. We, who have been excluded by the narrow scope of others’ moral concern, must not narrow the scope of our moral concern to exclude others. Do you understand what I’m telling you?,” she asked. “Just because others have lost their damn minds, we shouldn’t lose our damn minds,” she replied.
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