Are american jews ok?

Jun 3

Hello from Atlanta

I sent a message to a WhatsApp group of friends recently and asked if they're okay. They're all Jewish ex-South Africans living here in Atlanta.

The recent firebombing of a group of Jews in Colorado has me concerned that rising anti-semitism - couched in anti-Zionism or Pro-Palestine rhetoric - has exploded onto Main Street with implications for all of us.

At some point during the Biden administration it became fashionable to simplify complicated situations into mindblowingly daft paradigms that tried to explain the history of the universe in the language of victimhood; oppressed vs oppressor and colonized vs colonizer

It's the Meghan Markle interpretation of life.

At some point, the self-identifying victims considered themselves the doctrine-keepers of the orthodoxy ... and Jews are now fair game.

So what worries me about the recent isolated incidents against American Jews is that, yes, they're isolated but the widespread condemnation is not loud enough. And, yes, we've heard nudge-nudge, wink-wink justifications of 'Oh, they had it coming, after all look at Gaza.'

I think it's entirely possible to hold a number of positions on the issue; we can be outraged at the loss of life in both Gaza and Oct 7. We can agree that both Israel and the Palestinians have a right to exist and a homeland without green-lighting acts of Old Testament eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth violence on random Jews going about their daily lives in America.

I"m not the first person to say it but the America faces a real threat that radical Islam - made palatable by Free Palestine rhetoric - is becoming mainstream.

Kill a Jew! Save Palestine! Never has there been such a broad, middle class, progressive permissiveness to this.

What worries me about the ugliness of antisemitism in America is that it's an opening salvo to justified violence against anyone who's judged to be an oppressor or colonialist by radicalized victims idealized as freedom fighters.

Thank you for listening,