Deadly hatred of Jewish people spreads again
THE murder of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue is a crime that will be felt in every Jewish home. And the shooter’s hatred is now seen in too many guises. Not in years has it been this dangerous — and lonely — to be a Jew, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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NEVER again, the world cried after the Holocaust.
The murder of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue is a crime that will be felt in every Jewish home. “All Jews must die,” yelled the shooter, Robert Bowers, as he stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue.
Sure, this was just one maniac — a white racist who’d damned President Donald Trump for not stopping the “infestation” of the United States by Jews. But Bowers’s hatred is now seen in too many guises.
MASS SHOOTING AT PITTSBURGH SYNAGOGUE
Just last week, Louis Farrakhan, leader of the US Nation of Islam, called Jews “termites” in his speech for the annual Million Man March, and sent the video to his 960,000 Facebook followers.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel last April warned of the rise of a “different type of anti-Semitism” — the usual neo-Nazis had been joined by Arab refugees.
In France, too, immigration has added to the danger. Last year, nearly 40 per cent of violence classified as racially or religiously motivated was committed against Jews, though Jews make up less than 1 per cent of the population.
And Jew-hatred menaces Israel itself. Last weekend some 15 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza, most by Islamic Jihad terrorists.
But Jews are not menaced only by their traditional enemies. Many in the Left now back the radical Muslim campaign against Israel, and with such passion that it can resemble anti-Semitism.
In Australia, academics push for boycotts against Israeli Jews, and protesters have picketed Israeli-owned stores.
Labor, appealing to huge Muslim minorities in many of its marginal seats, has meanwhile got too close to extremists.
Frontbencher Tony Burke even wrote to the Australian Embassy in Jordan in support of a visa application for Syrian preacher Mohammed Rateb Abdalah Ali al-Nabulsi, without bothering to check that the sheik had publicly declared: “All the Jewish people are combatants.”
Sadly, Jewish schools and kindergartens here now need armed guards.
In Britain, pictures have emerged of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at a wreath-laying ceremony for terrorists who killed Israeli athletes in the 1970s, though Corbyn said he was there for victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike on the Tunisian HQ of the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Yes, all this is many miles from another Holocaust. But not in years has it been this dangerous — and lonely — to be a Jew.
Originally published as Deadly hatred of Jewish people spreads again