45.6 F
New York
Friday, March 29, 2024

What Kind of Iron Dome Can We Deploy Against the Hate in Jersey City?

Related Articles

-Advertisement-

Must read

It’s happening again, not in the same way. Not yet. But this is surely the prelude to the “fire next time.” And it is happening anywhere, anywhere at all.

By: Professor Phyllis Chesler

This article originally appeared on the Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) website (http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/24865) and is republished here with the express permission of the Arutz Sheva staff and editors

I remember getting out of a sick bed and taking a taxi to a corner in Crown Heights where for days, African-Americans perpetrated a pogrom in New York City.

The mayor did not stop them—not for three days. I watched and tried to remember what a late 20th century pogrom is America was like.

Well, it’s happening again, right before my eyes. Not in the same way. Not yet. But this is surely the prelude to the “fire next time.”

The video captured by Dov Hikind yesterday (see below) is shocking, awful. In it, a few barely comprehensible African-American civilians who live in Jersey City are on record saying that they don’t like the Jewish presence—no, not at all. In fact, they blamed the Jews, calling them Sh-T. One woman exclaimed that had the victims been Black, the police might not have come at all (this might be true but it’s not the fault of the Jews).

Someone else said the Jews were to blame for being there in the first place; their presence alone caused resentment—because they were …Jewish.

I was reeling from this video when The New Yorker jumped right in with a piece by Zach Helfand. He tells the story very much from the point of view of the African-Americans who feel left behind, invisible, and who envy the Jews because their sorrows seems to command media and police attention. Locals also fear the “gentrification” that might take place once another kind of citizen moves in.

Helfand describes hostility towards the “Hasidic influence” and their “insularity.” Their shul may have been violating zoning laws. (I bet everyone is up in arms about that!).

Helfand did not interview a single Jersey City Hasid—but was careful to interview a local, probably an African-American woman, who spent much of her “childhood on Stegman Street.” He closes with this: “(She) wondered how to balance her own feeling of neglect with the increasing possibility that a different kind of hate had visited the neighborhood…People died. That’s the sad part. I don’t care where you’re from…this is horrible.”

All day yesterday and part of today, no announcement was made as to who the killers were. Usually, that means that the politically correct narrative did not apply, that the Bad Guys were Muslims, or African-Americans or Black Muslims. In this case, they are Black Hebrew Israelites who believe that they are the original Jews. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has condemned them as a hate group. Also, one of the killers posted Jew-hating material online and both killers drove slowly and purposefully to the kosher market.

Is what I’ve written anti-Black? How, dear God, are we going to talk about (indoctrinated) Jew hatred among people of color? Among Muslims of color? Among faux-Jews of color? Jew hatred on both the left and the right? Jew hatred among Muslims in the Islamic world?

Is this too forbidden a subject?

Not as forbidden as the subject about how so many Jewish leaders, both in America and Israel have failed the historical moment.

Not as forbidden as discussing how many American Jews blame Israel for being attacked and refuse to bear the burden of understanding and fighting for the right of our only Jewish state to exist.

The rockets that recently fell again—again! on Sderot were barely reported in the world media. Oh, there is a connection.

What kind of Iron Dome can we create against hate in Jersey City? Against real bullets in Pittsburgh? In London? In Paris? Against hard and cowardly hearts the world over?

Addendum:

From the desk of Dov Hikind

Rep. of Americans Against Antisemitism Captures Antisemitic Tirade By Locals Outside Kosher Store Targeted By Terrorists

WATCH SHOCKING VIDEO

“While the Jewish blood of terror victims was still warm, local residents gathered outside not to show support, not to offer help, but to condemn Jews, blame Jews for their own deaths, and cheer it on,” said Hikind on the shocking footage. “The big story here is that not only was there a horrible terror attack motivated by antisemitism that occurred, but it happened in a context in which wishing death on Jews seems totally normal.”

Hours after reports of a Jewish-owned grocery store in Jersey City was involved in a shootout with heavily armed criminals, a representative of Americans Against Antisemitism took his camera and went to the scene. What he recorded and encountered when he got there shocked all of us. While it was becoming clear that a terror attack had unfolded, and that Jews had been murdered, local residents gathered outside to blame Jews for all sorts of problems including their own deaths, while others cheered them on.

Not only was there a terror attack to absorb at the scene, which would be enough for anyone to deal with, our representative had to deal with vile antisemitic vitriol from local residents who wished the Jews were dead and gone. Let that sink in.

What this clearly shows is that antisemitism is a MUCH BIGGER problem than anyone has hitherto imagined! It’s time for people of all persuasions to wake up, now! We’ve been warning for a while that antisemitic terrorism was coming, and here it is. And it’s worse than the attacks alone, now they add insult to injury, throwing salt on the freshly opened wounds, and surround those sites with antisemitic hate.

(Below the shocking video is one of the Jewish storekeeper whose wife was murdered in the attack handing out candies to black children for Halloween although it is certainly not a Jewish holiday). (Israel National News)

The writer is a Ginsburg-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, received the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, authored 18 books, including Women and Madness and The New Anti-Semitism, and 4 studies about honor killing, Her latest books are An American Bride in Kabul, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and A Politically Incorrect Feminist.

balance of natureDonate

Latest article

- Advertisement -