The Anti-Defamation League just announced that anti-Semitic incidents in the United States rose dramatically in 2015. Colleges and universities were responsible for some 10 percent of the events, which included harassment, threats, and vandalism. The ADL, which pays close attention to such matters, said it was “not clear what may have led to the spike.” Any first-year political science major could furnish a working hypothesis.
Not a single statement has issued from the Oval Office about attacks on Jews in the United States or on foreign turf. Indeed, early last year, when Islamic terrorists went on a killing spree in the French capital, President Obama condemned “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” The zealots were violent and vicious alright, but their shots weren’t random. They aimed to murder patrons in a kosher supermarket. In other words, they sought to kill a bunch of Jewish folks. Somehow, the president couldn’t bring himself to utter that word.
Nor has Obama referred to the uptick in anti-Semitic episodes in academia. Currently, the Left has a palpable presence on campuses, disinviting speakers who dare to articulate conservative views, shouting down defenders of the Second Amendment before they can make their arguments, demanding “trigger warnings” before students read books like Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, because literature that has been on the shelves for decades, and sometimes centuries, might disturb the frail sensibilities of today’s sophomores. Today, too, the low anti-Semitism of the Third Reich continues in the groves of higher education, often cloaked in pro-Palestinian rhetoric. The vocabulary of the academic Left brims with agitprop about “Zionist malevolence,” though many countries within rocket distance of the most liberal nation in the Middle East are notorious for the stoning of apostates, rape victims, and homosexuals.
Only the naïve, and the willfully ignorant, could fail to see another reason why anti-Semitism has increased overseas and in America. The ADL recently did a survey of religious and ethnic bias in 101 countries. Anti-Jewish sentiment was most prevalent in North Africa and the Middle East, where 74 percent of respondents expressed anti-Semitic views. In those countries, millions are taught that Jews are subhuman, or a dangerous and controlling force in geopolitics—or both. Now, many of those millions are pouring into Europe and America—legally or illegally—welcomed by governments that pay scant attention to their background. In the recent past, 56 percent of anti-religious hate crimes in the U.S. were against Jews. Some 18 percent targeted Muslims. Guess which received censorious comment from on high, and which were met with silence? George Orwell’s old counsel resounds with fresh truth: “To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.” That struggle has yet to be made by the Obama administration, and sadder still, by the Anti-Defamation League itself.
Photo by IPGGutenbergUKLtd/iStock