Media Ignore Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism

While the Jewish state of Israel faces the threat of annihilation, it is cruelly ironic that anti-Semitism has gone mainstream in the US. Since the beginning of this October, it has quadrupled — and you wouldn’t know that from watching the news.

Just after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February of last year, the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag could be seen just about anywhere you’d look in America, especially in Maine. But now less than a month into a different war — between Israel and Hamas or, to be blunt, Iran — precious few, if any, Stars of David adorn the porches, rear windows or public squares of my community or really any of the dozens I’ve passed through since October 7th. Why are gentiles in America so shy about sticking up for our Jewish friends?

Today, The Maine Wire reports on how a law office in Portland was recently defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti. That event is hardly isolated. An essay in the Free Press today recounts the author’s horror to see one of her own friends tearing down posters remembering the Israelis killed earlier this month in the terror act that precipitated what is now a war. However enchanted the Left in the United States or Europe may be by the plight of the Palestinians, claims of moral equivalency are misguided at their core.

Politico’s West Wing Playbook led recent newsletter with a short piece “State of Distress,” describing the angst among Biden administration officials about the costs they’re bearing by publicly supporting Israel. Younger Democrats feel less tied to Israel now than their parents or grandparents did, and if there’s one thing a politician can do, it’s read a poll. Friends of Israel in Washington last week got lectured by Progressive Congressional Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal on how the U.S. positions “chips away at our credibility” in the world. There Jayapal has a point: were America to stand up for our friends too determinedly, people might get rightfully suspicious.

Despite relatively steadfast support for Israel since its regaining statehood in 1948, Washington’s record on defending Jews is not altogether stellar. Nine years earlier, FDR turned back from our shores the St. Louis, a German ship carrying nearly 1,000 European Jews.  One only need read William Faulkner’s descriptions of what Southern farmers thought of the folks who ran the markets up in New York City to understand that the roots of anti-Semitism run deep in our land of tolerance also. Yet the flare-ups we’re seeing now, whether in Portland, in Congress or on college campuses across America are different than the past in one major respect: today anti-Semitism covers itself in the cloak of false righteousness. After all, Israel is the occupier and oppressor, right?

Some of this may be collateral damage from the ease with which people in America started comparing contemporary politicians to Nazis. Just as violence on television and in video games may inure the rising generation to its genuine and arbitrary viciousness, the comfort of denouncing your ideological foe as a fascist has not raised but rather lowered the stakes. Words whose meaning was forged in blood become meaningless when they are misused as casually as we do nowadays. The “appropriation” of serious words can demean them.

Too few prominent gentiles in American life today are stepping forward to denounce how anti-Semitism is creeping back into the forefront of words and deeds. A major news agency reported a 400 percent increase in incidents since Oct. 7 and the news was met with the sound of crickets. Some of this may be because “allies” of the Jews see their friends as plenty strong enough to stick up for themselves, but a good part of it is coming from changing social and political norms.

We should not be too quick to forget the horrors of the past. No matter how hip the arguments are becoming, the bottom line remains: Jews are more likely to be targeted when others fail to condemn anti-Semitism. The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, Edmund Burke reminds, is for good men to do nothing.