November 24, 2018
Out of the Shadows
The US mid-term elections may have ended one-party dominance in the US Congress, but has the one-party train stopped in its tracks or has its hate freight already left the station?
It is a divided outcome in a divided country. Continuing is the pattern of mass shootings with its terror epidemic stalking all across the United States. 307 is the latest score in 2018.
Significant has been the carnage inflicted on Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue where they fell prey to a terror attack carried out by a white male shooter – constituting the vast majority of such killers. Pittsburgh’s Muslims volunteered to protect the traumatized Jewish community, raising $190,000 for victims’ families and funeral expenses.
The American people were indoctrinated to fear that Muslim perpetrators would be at the forefront of “violent extremism” inside the United States. Its net impact, if not intent, was to demonize and de-legitimize the growing US Muslim presence. This projected demography dread first prominently appeared in a cover story of the respected Jewish journal, “Moment” in June 1991, urging vigilance.
During the ’90s, the notion of “Green menace” was magnified and correlated with the intellectually fraudulent concept of “clash of civilizations,” which sought to pit Christian West against Muslim East.
Within the mainstream American Jewish community, there is an admirable legacy of civil rights activism forged by the horrors of the Holocaust and general indifference to its sufferings. When it mattered, both the US and Canada turned their backs on Jewish refugees seeking sanctuary in 1939 – a fact just openly acknowledged by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who issued a belated apology on November 7.
Not enough have adequately absorbed past lessons. When anti-Muslim bigotry was brewing, many took their eyes off the ball and were insufficiently cognizant of its blowback side effects. Unheeded were the early warning signals of the old xenophobic hate being revived under a different label. Unchecked, and not being adequately denounced, the contagion festered and metastasized.
In the past two years, anti-Semitism has surged in America, with vandalism and hate crimes erupting in unexpected places. During this November, for example, in the greater Washington area, the elite Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, has, according to the WashingtonPost of November 2, seen “several anti-Semitic incidents” because, the news report added, the school has “a significant population of Jewish students.” Just recently, a swastika was found drawn on a high school desk.
The blowback to anti-Muslim animus has now, in effect, morphed into emboldening and energizing anti-Semitism.
During the upsurge of European fascism, German theologian, Martin Niemoller, warned against the dangers of apathy and on the imperatives of remaining morally engaged: “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”
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