By Keith Newman
It was 1972 when I experienced my first run-in with anti-Semitism. It wasn’t a major incident, and no one was hurt badly but the feeling of being targeted was, at the time, unsettling. As an American Jew growing up in a middle-class community in Queens, NY, I had always felt a sense of safety.
The neighborhood consisted of people from all backgrounds, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear multiple languages spoken in one day. In fact, there are more languages spoken in Queens than in any other place on the planet. Even today, the residents there speak 138 different languages, with over 50% of the households speaking 2 languages or more. On that day, however, I learned that hate doesn’t care where you live. It can strike anywhere, at any time, even in a place as culturally diverse as Queens.
Then came the summer of 1978. I was working at a summer camp outside of Indianapolis, Indiana which hosted Jewish children from different areas of the Midwest. That year, with an assist from the ACLU, neo-Nazis were given the right to march in the streets of Skokie, Illinois. More than a few of those young campers lived in the Skokie area and were forever traumatized by that singular event.
Even though they were allowed to march down the streets of that town without fear of retribution, the message they were sending was rejected. It was not only rejected by the people of Skokie, but by the entire country. Just 33 years removed from the end of World War II, many who fought in that war were still very much alive and active in their communities. By the time the war ended in 1945, this country lost over 400,000 brave men and women whose sole purpose was to rid the world of this very same ideology.
While those who hate never went away, they did hide themselves from the rest of us. They blended into communities across the country and kept their beliefs quiet. They were members of the PTA and the Rotary Club, and no one ever knew. They met in secret and worked toward the day that they would be able to come out from the shadows and unleash their terror. This time, however, they planned on having support for their message.
We all know about Charlottesville and how it reminded many of us of that summer in 1978. Unfortunately, the wide-spread support for those who shouted, “Jews will not replace us” had grown quite a bit since 1978. What was most shocking, however, was watching the President of the United States attempting to convince all of us that there were, “good people on both sides.” That day, hate was legitimized.
To a Jewish person, those words were beyond horrifying and to this day, remind us of what is possible. Hearing our president condone that behavior sent chills down the spines of all good people and triggered memories of a time when 6,000,000 of us were slaughtered. As a people, we know how quickly that can occur. We understand what happens when hate is allowed to fester, and good people are convinced of bad things.
This time it is not only a Jewish problem. The people who marched in Charlottesville hated everyone. These aren’t just your co-workers and next-door neighbors; they are folks we have elected to public office and have put in positions of power. They have infiltrated every aspect of American life, and their agenda is the elimination of anyone who doesn’t think and act like they do.
The main tool that they use is misinformation. They spread hate by convincing people of things that aren’t true. They make people feel as if the world is against them and that others are responsible for their problems. The current situation in the Middle East has once again brought out the worst in people. In times of turmoil, people are always looking for a scapegoat and this time is no different.
Just two weeks ago, a 6-year-old boy was brutally murdered by his landlord in Illinois. He was killed for being Muslim. It’s important to mention that this came after Donald Trump told his supporters that the same people who bombed Israel are coming through our borders in record numbers, which created targets of the innocent people. This 6-year-old boy had his whole life taken away by someone who listened to rhetoric that convinced him he was doing the right thing.
He is not alone in his thoughts and there are many others willing to do the “patriotic” thing and kill to ensure their country is free of people they don’t feel belong here. The truth is, they are the terrorists. They are our very own home-grown version of Hamas. The only difference is that they are here, in our very own backyard. They are willing to kill innocent people and destroy over 200 years of progress because they’ve been lied to, and they feel their very existence is being threatened.
We must not let them succeed. We must not accept the killing of children, right in our own country. We must not allow them to divide us so that we will be easier to conquer, one by one, until they are the only ones left standing. That is their agenda, and it is real, and it is now. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the remaining Jews around the world vowed that never again would we allow that to happen. We would not allow it to happen to us and we would not allow it to happen to anyone else.
Each day that this war drags on, the level of anti-Semitism in this country increases. When a hospital was bombed in Gaza last week, multiple news outlets reported that Israel had launched the deadly missile. Later, we learned that it was not an Israeli missile at all, but instead, the result of a failed launch. That is not journalism. That is a glimpse into the depth of hate that has infiltrated the media in this country and around the world.
While many of those news outlets have issued half-hearted apologies for their lack of integrity, the damage had already been done. Despite evidence to the contrary, that widely circulated bit of misinformation has increased the level of hate even more. Those on the Left who mocked people on the Right for not fact checking are now guilty of doing the same exact thing.
It is important that we understand how quickly a war taking place thousands of miles away, in another part of the world, can land right in our own backyard. If we are not cognizant of that, the next 6-year-old child may be our own. Hate can consume people to the point that they know nothing else, so instead, we must spread love. Let the world, and your community, know that human lives matter, regardless of their religious beliefs or the color of their skin. If you know a family that is currently living in fear, let them know you’re thinking about them and make sure they know that they aren’t fighting this battle alone.
