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Until recent years, many Jews in America believed that the worst anti-Semitism was there, in Europe, a remnant of the old country.
American Jews were welcome at universities, country clubs and business boards that formerly excluded their grandparents. They married non-Jews, settled in mixed neighborhoods, and in 2000, the first Jew ran for vice president with a major party ticket.
So the Saturday massacre of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, by a man who told the police when he surrendered, that he "wanted all Jews to die," was for many a shocking alarm clock.
"This kind of harm reminds me of the Holocaust and the way people can be so cruel, that there is still so much trouble in the world," said 91-year-old retired cantor Moshe Taube. the Beth Shalom congregation in Pittsburgh and survivor. of the Holocaust.
But he did not come out of nowhere, experts said in anti-Semitism. As Jews felt unprecedented acceptance in the United States, the climate became increasingly hostile and intensified in the two years since the election of Donald J. Trump as president. And this comes at a time when attacks against Jews are also on the rise in Europe, with frequent anti-Semitic incidents in France and Germany.
Hate in the United States was highlighted last year as white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, with rows of men carrying torches and chanting: "The Jews will not replace us ".
Swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti have appeared in synagogues and Jewish homes across the country. Jews online are subjected to vicious insults and threats. Many synagogues and Jewish day schools have stepped up their security measures.
The Anti-Defamation League has recorded a 57% increase in antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2017 compared to the previous year – bomb threats, assaults, vandalism and anti-Semitic posters and documents found on the United States. university campuses.
A spokesman for the Anti-Defamation League said that prior to Saturday's shooting, the most lethal anti-Semitic attack in recent US history dates back to 1985 killed a family of four in Seattle. He had mistakenly thought that they were Jewish.
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In 1999, in Los Angeles, white supremacy attacked a Jewish community center filled with children, leaving five wounded. More recently, in 2014, a white supremacist fired at a Jewish community center in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, killing three people.
"I'm not a little chicken who always shouts:" It's worse than ever! "But now, I think it's worse than ever," said Deborah E. Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust history at Emory University in Atlanta. and author of a forthcoming book on anti-Semitism.
Ms Lipstadt said that she did not want to be perceived as alarmist, because in some ways, "things have never been better" for Jews in America.
But she compared anti-Semitism to an infection with herpes that slumbers and resurfaces in times of stress. That does not go away, no matter how "acculturated" Jews have become in America, because "it's a conspiracy theory," said Ms. Lipstadt, whose trial victory against a Holocaust denier. 39 Holocaust in England was featured in the movie 2016 "Denial. "
What has changed, experts say in interviews, is that conspiracy theories and "dog whistles" that resonate with white anti-Semites and white supremacists are disseminated by institutional sources, including the president and members of Congress. Weird statements about Jews have moved from the margin to the establishment.
Among the most recent examples are conspiracy theories not based on George Soros, a wealthy donor of Democratic Party causes, and a Jewish emigrant from Hungary who survived the Nazis.
October 5th President Trump on Twitter that the women who arrested Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator to convince him to vote against Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh's proposal to the Supreme Court were "paid by Soros and others". At a rally in Missoula, Montana on October 19, the president told the crowd that the media preferred to interview protesters paid by "Soros or someone else."
Mr. Soros was also accused of funding the caravan of Hondurans and Guatemalans fleeing the north on foot across Mexico – another claim without any factual basis.
One day after the discovery of a pipe pipe at Mr. Soros' home in Westchester, House Representative Kevin McCarthy wrote in a tweet: "We can not allow Soros, Steyer and Bloomberg to BUY this election! Go out and vote Republican on November 6th. "
Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, are also Jewish billionaires. After the discovery of new explosive devices in the homes and offices of other Democratic leaders and supporters, McCarthy removed the tweet.
Anti-Semitism has also become a hot topic in many American university campuses, with Israel as a detonator.
Leftist activists, sometimes including young Jews, are calling for the boycott and divestment of companies doing business in Israel or the occupied territories. Traditional Jewish groups now call these campaigns anti-Semitism. The dividing line between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism is a growing source of friction in many colleges and capitals.
In Europe, Jewish leaders have faced an open hatred of Jews, sometimes linked to animosity towards Israel.
In France, Jews are increasingly confronted with attacks and insults from members of the country's large Muslim community. In March, Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, was stabbed in her apartment by a young man who shouted "Allahu Akbar". Prosecutors have described it as an anti-Semitic hate crime.
In a study conducted in 2015, 42% of French Jews surveyed said they had been insulted or assaulted by Muslims.
In Germany, anti-Semitism remains a daily phenomenon, sometimes taking the form of criminal attacks against Jews or Jewish institutions in the country, but often in more occasional insults or the questioning of life. the country's commitment after the Second World War "Repeats the Nazi holocaust.
One of the most important antisemitic attacks of this year, in which a young Syrian man hit a man wearing a skullcap on the street of a trendy district of Berlin, led the head of the main Jewish organization in Germany to put warns Jews against wearing the public display of their religion in public.
A demonstration of support for the Jews of the country drew thousands of people to the streets, but a few months later, in the midst of violent neo-Nazi demonstrations in the city of Chemnitz (east), masked attackers threw stones and bottles on a local Jewish restaurant and shouted. Antisemitic insults, said the owner to the police.
Nadine Epstein, editor-in-chief of Moment, an independent Jewish magazine in the United States, said that in 2014, the magazine had devoted a special section to anti-Semitism, interviewing a wide range of scholars. and leaders in the field. She stated that her conclusion was that anti-Semitism, while persistent, was primarily a problem in Europe. But "it was not really a problem in the United States," she said.
"Four years later," she added in an email, "we live in a very different world where nationalism, and with it anti-Semitism, is gaining momentum, stoked by the rhetoric of a 2016 presidential candidate. It's been under construction ever since, and now that we're on the eve of the first national elections since mid-term, we see the consequences of such dangerous rhetoric. "
Moment magazine has now a web page to monitor anti-Semitism in the world, something that Ms. Epstein said never imagined doing.
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