Don’t Look Away From the Primary Cause of an Epidemic of Antisemitism

Jonathan S. Tobin

We could look at it as just another day in New York, where protests on behalf of one cause or another have been part of the culture of the place for more than a century. But the organized effort to snarl traffic with demonstrations blocking a tunnel and three major bridges by people chanting support for the killing of Jews ought to be treated as more than just another day in Gotham.

The answer as to why this is happening is linked to recent controversies about college presidents who had trouble deciding whether advocacy for the genocide of Jews violates their academic institutions’ rules of conduct. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, there has been an epidemic of antisemitic incidents throughout North America. Jewish businesses and even Jewish neighborhoods have been targeted for boycotts or harassment. Jewish students are harassed and heckled with vicious antisemitic taunts, most recently during a high school basketball game.

The people committing these antisemitic actions are not right-wing extremists, neo-Nazis or members of the Ku Klux Klan — groups that Jews have long feared.

Instead, so-called “progressives” are the ones engaged in behavior that seeks, at the very least, to silence and drive Jews from the public square unless they are prepared to join with those opposing efforts to defeat genocidal anti-Jewish terrorists.

The reason for this is no secret. The pervasive influence of intersectional and critical race theory teachings, coupled with diversity, equity and inclusion, is the cause. These toxic ideas divide the world into two immutable groups: white oppressors and people of color, who are always the victims. It has created an atmosphere in which people who think of themselves as enlightened liberals think it is acceptable to single out Jews for opprobrium and ill-treatment because the woke catechism that is their secular faith falsely labels Israel and the Jewish people as “white” oppressors.

Peaceful protest or domestic terrorism?
While The New York Times referred to it as a “pro-Palestinian protest,” those who effectively prevented vehicular access to Lower Manhattan during rush hour on a Monday morning were doing more than demonstrating support for a cause or inconveniencing tens of thousands of people. They were effectively holding a city hostage.

That, in of itself, ought to dictate that those involved — 125 of them were arrested by the New York Police Department — would be subject to serious punishment. But there is an aggravating factor that also ought to be taken into account.

They and their apologists claim that they are only doing this to show New Yorkers what Gazans are allegedly experiencing during the war begun by Hamas by the Oct. 7 atrocities. While blocking traffic, they also voiced chants that were a thinly veiled call for more terrorist attacks on Jews, both in Israel and around the world.

That’s what the “long live intifada” and “globalize intifada” slogans heard at these and other “pro-Palestinian” protests mean. Along with the “from the river to the sea” chant, this is ample evidence that what was going on was an antisemitic protest carried on by a coalition of groups, including some like Jewish Voice for Peace that pose as Jewish, which make no secret about the fact that they share a goal with the Hamas terrorists: the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet. It’s also a goal that can only be accomplished by the genocide of the Jewish people.

That ought to mean that such protests would be treated as hate crimes or at least prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Unfortunately, it’s likely those involved will — like those involved in other recent protests — get the usual slap on the wrist that weary city officials have given to most demonstrators in recent memory.

Prejudicial double standards
But just imagine if three New York City bridges and a tunnel were similarly shut down by MAGA red-cap-wearing supporters of former President Donald Trump, protesting efforts to prosecute or throw him off the 2024 presidential ballot. They would almost certainly be labeled as “insurrectionists” and deemed by the Department of Justice to be “domestic terrorists” whose tactics were a threat of civil disorder not to be tolerated.

But because endangering New Yorkers while calling for the death of Jews is treated by the chattering classes as merely exercising free speech about a topic on which reasonable people ought to agree to disagree, the protesters will likely be free to terrorize some other thoroughfare as soon as they like.

Similar incidents have happened elsewhere in the country, with highways blocked and businesses that the “pro-Palestinians” associate with the Jewish community subjected to harassment with few, if any, repercussions for those engaged in this conduct.

In Toronto, “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators were even less subtle about their antisemitism. They have blocked traffic on a highway bridge in a Jewish neighborhood, causing not just inconvenience but creating an atmosphere of intimidation for its residents. Yet rather than throw these people in jail, the police brought them coffee and doughnuts in a vain effort to “manage” the situation rather than restore public order.

To put that into perspective, this outrage is taking place in a country in which truckers protesting COVID-19 policies by parking their vehicles paralyzing traffic in the capital of Ottawa in what they called a “freedom convoy” were treated as insurrectionists.

It’s all part of the same mindset that led to a private Jewish high school’s girl basketball team withdrawing from a game being played in Yonkers, New York, against Roosevelt High School after they were repeatedly subjected to antisemitic taunts and rough play by their opponents. One Roosevelt High player screamed at The Leffell School players, “I support Hamas, you f**king Jew.” Roosevelt forfeited the game. One player was suspended a day later, and the coach was fired.

But again, just imagine, if one of the Jewish girls or any non-minority had yelled, “I support the Klan” at an African-American player. It would have made the front page of the Times and become a national cause-célèbre.

These incidents and the growing total of opinion surveys that point to a spike in antisemitic attitudes are not just a result of indoctrination in the intersectional lie about the Palestinian war to destroy Israel being analogous to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. It’s also a product of the mainstreaming of anti-Zionist invective and barely disguised prejudice against Jews.

The problem is that the people who are committing the growing list of antisemitic acts on the streets and on college campuses are not part of a tiny radical fringe like the tiki-torch-bearing neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville. These demonstrators are educated “progressives” who claim to support human rights and are often connected in one way or another to the elites who run the institutions of academia, the media, the arts and liberal politics. In other words, the new shock troops of antisemitism are people that liberal Jews are used to considering as allies.

Jews cannot afford to look away from the main cause of their current woes. The community needs to mobilize its resources and demand that political leaders start treating those who are carrying out these antisemitic hate crimes in the name of supposed sympathy for the Palestinians with the harshness they deserve. It must also insist that mainstream publications go back to treating anti-Zionism as a form of hatred against Jews. Only then can we hope to quell this dangerous surge of hate.

Jonathan S. Tobin is the editor-in-chief of JNS.