In "'Who's out protecting us?': Spate of anti-Jewish attacks in the US draws calls for more forceful response" (5/23/21), The Washington Post describes a series of violent attacks on Jewish citizens of America, most initiated by rabid pro-Palestinian mobs.

The Post states, "The most recent attacks ... were reminiscent of anti-Jewish protests and rallies in Charlottesville in 2017, and recalled grim memories of the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh the next year."

This is wrong, and it seems to be a political dig against a side with whom the Post doesn't agree, rather than an accurate depiction of what is really going on.  The violent attacks on Jews in America are more reminiscent of the pogroms in Europe 100 years ago — which caused the forebears of most of the Jews now in America to flee Eastern Europe by the tens of thousands.  Those pogroms were wreaked by mobs of local thugs who raped and pillaged Jewish towns (shtetls), murdering many in their path.

It was also why the founder of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, in the late 19th century, spoke about the need for a Jewish state — because host nations couldn't be relied upon to protect their Jewish citizens. 

Our current leaders' verbal condemnations of this mob violence — these present-day pogroms — are empty.  American Jews need real protection, and the perpetrators need to be prosecuted for hate crimes to the full extent of the law.

Image: Tom Hilton via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

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