The prospect of antisemitic violence in America
By: John Stoehr (Alternet. org)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I said yesterday that the president was striking a statesmen's balance, which everyone needs right now, between the interests of Israel and the interests of the Palestinians who reside in the Gaza Strip while also blaming Hamas, the paramilitary terrorist group, for starting what is now a six-day-old war that has claimed over 2,500 lives on both sides.
Joe Biden and the leaders of four other liberal democracies, all European, have indeed elevated the difference between a paramilitary terrorist group and ordinary Palestinians. Building on that in his own speech Tuesday, the president made a point of reminding Israel's leadership that democracies such as ours must never meet "pure, unadulterated evil," which is how he described Hamas' attack, with pure, unadulterated evil of their own. Laws of war matter, he said.
Biden said this even as Israeli military forces sealed the border around the Gaza Strip while pounding it from above with munitions. One day later, a top Israeli general said they were preparing for a ground operation. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the US supports air strikes on Hamas targets. The administration is working on devising a means of escape for noncombatants, many of them children, fleeing for safety. How far Israel is willing to go remains to be seen, but at least one general has said "we will have to change the reality in Gaza." How far the US is willing to go along with that remains to be seen, too.
The president's statesman's balance is likely to be tested at home as well as abroad - thanks to the transparently fascist presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Biden never mentioned him in Tuesday's speech, but he implied that "indiscriminate evil" - in this case, that of a paramilitary terrorist group whose goal is murdering Jews - has the potential for happening here in the United States, as it did in Israel.
The prospect of antisemitic violence is why Biden said police around the country "have stepped up security around centers for Jewish life. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are working closely with state and local law enforcement and Jewish community partners to identify and disrupt any domestic threat that could emerge in connection with these horrific attacks."
"This is a moment for the United States to come together [and] to grieve with those who are mourning," he continued, adding that we should all be "real clear. There is no place for hate in America — not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against anybody. We reject — what we reject is terrorism. We condemn the indiscriminate evil, just as we've always done. That's what America stands for."
But even as the president called for unity against the "indiscriminate evil" of antisemitism, Donald Trump was using language drawn straight from antisemitic propaganda. In what's becoming increasingly common, the Republican frontrunner inveighed this week against immigrants who have crossed the border without authorization, accusing them, as he did in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, of "poisoning the blood of our country."
The head of America's oldest Hispanic civil rights group told the Post that this language, which he says is growing more pronounced as we get closer to the 2024 election year, is like "Nazi propaganda about Jewish people." Domingo Garcia said Trump is using "pages from the Hitler Nazi playbook … to divide Americans and engage in tribalism."
Garcia isn't alone. "Experts in extremism and immigration policy have compared Trump's 'poisoning the blood' remark to language used by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, in which he told Germans to 'care for the purity of their own blood' by eliminating Jews," the Post said.
Another expert told the Post that such "poisoning" and "pure-blood" language "has directly appealed to people in the past who have gone on to commit violence against minorities," the Post reported. The expert cited the 2019 El Paso massacre (the victims were mostly Hispanic) and the 2018 Pittsburgh massacre (the victims were Jews).
Not only is Trump reviving old antisemitic tropes, he's undermining Israel and the president's efforts to shore up support internationally. During an interview, Trump directly faulted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the worst acts of antisemitic violence in the Middle East in recent memory. "He has been hurt very badly because of what's happened here. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared."
And Trump praised Hezbollah, another paramilitary terrorist group. It's based in Lebanon and, like Hamas, is backed by the government of Iran. "Hezbollah is very smart," Trump said. "They're all very smart." (According to a poll taken in Israel, 86 percent said the Hamas attack was a failure of the country's leadership, and that Netanyahu should resign. However, it's one thing for Israelis to say Netanyahu was unprepared. It's another for a trader in antisemitic propaganda.)
Trump's comments follow a surge in antisemitism. According to one report, the Hamas "sparked a surge of online threats against Jews, intimidation of Jewish institutions and brazen displays of antisemitic symbols. Anti-Jewish threats on Telegram, a platform popular with Islamic State militants and white supremacists [my italics], surged by an alarming 488 percent in the first 18 hours of Saturday, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the oldest Jewish civil rights group in the US."
That's the part of the president's statesmen's balance that's not getting enough attention. He must stand against anti-Jewish jihadists abroad. He must stand against anti-Jewish white supremacists at home. Testing that balance is a transparently fascist presidential campaign.
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If someone put a gag on Trump anti-semitic threats would drop by half within minutes.
Exactly, very blue and wealthy Montgomery County MD started taking additional steps this week to guard against antisemitism there.
They are no stranger to antisemitism, Montgomery County Public Schools saw a significant increase in hate incidents, many involving swastikas, between 2021 and 2022. And in December 2022, the words “Jews not welcome” were spray-painted on the outside of a high school in tony Bethesda two days before the first night of Hanukkah.
The state of Maryland as a whole was the tenth highest [in] antisemitic incidents in 2022. So out of the whole country, the state of Maryland--and the majority of that was in Montgomery County.”
Who knew the Trumps rhetoric would resonate so in one of the bluest counties in a deeply blue state.
Lol… all those right wingers leading universities, ngos like BLM, journalists in the msm, etc cheering for terrorists.
You can always tell Johns rattled when he starts projecting problems left wingers have onto trump.
Ooops, saw the headline and figured this thing was about omar, tlaib, bush, cortez, and other idiots of the skwad.
68% of Jews in the USA vote Democrat.
Yes, and the Dems want to hold on to them.
Morning frosty...how in the heck do people know who votes for who over there??
Here people keep that to themselves..at this moment we are voting on a referendum and there is no way in hell anyone can tell anything about how people voted...
So where do they get this info from??
So? That doesn’t change the fact that members of the skwad routinely bash israel.
exit polls
Funny how the reich wingers always forget that MTG is a holocaust denier and anti-Semite, just like most trump supporters.
And yet elected democrats in congress openly support the killing of Jews.
Almost all the antisemitism these days is coming from liberal rich kid students at universities.
Whatever ya gotta tell yourself, Greg. Which liberal university was it that took 2 Billion from the Saudis?
From the NYT's Michelle Goldberg:
Prospect? It's not a prospect, it's a fact. Antisemitism exists all over the world, even in Israel, and the present war wasn't the start of it.