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June 6, 2014 3:30 pm
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It’s Open Season on the Jews

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avatar by David Mackler

Opinion

The scene of the shooting at the Jewish Museum of Brussels. Photo: Screenshot.

Last week was a difficult one for those paying attention to the threats encountered by global Jewry. While the U.S. media was understandably covering the shootings in Santa Barbara, there was minimal coverage of yet another shooting at a Jewish institution in Europe. The murders at the Brussels Jewish Museum resulted in the deaths of four innocents, but were met with little more than the traditional condemnation language. At roughly the same time, two brothers were violently beaten as they left a synagogue in Paris, again, solely for being Jews. This is no coincidence, but rather a pattern – and the muted objection that follows is merely part of that pattern.

Contrast this to the global condemnation of the purported deaths of two Palestinians during “Nakba Day” protests. These demonstrations are, by their nature, violent and endanger the lives of IDF soldiers because of Palestinian rock throwing, the use of Molotov cocktails, and shooting. Nonetheless, an edited video, the validity of which was rightfully called into question by the protesting Israelis, was all that was required to chastise the Jewish state. Meanwhile, the murder of Jews and the stone-throwing Palestinians are ignored or brushed over around the world. Why? Because it’s open season on the Jews.

The last fifty years have witnessed a gradual erosion of disdain for anti-Semitism and, with that, crimes against Jews have risen. The targeting of Jews has spread beyond the Middle East to India and Thailand, to Bulgaria, France, and Belgium, and to Seattle and Kansas City.

Now one of the final taboos of anti-Jewish rhetoric is becoming acceptable in the mainstream. For decades, Holocaust denial and revisionism wasn’t just shunned, it was ridiculed and even criminalized. Yet today, two-thirds of respondents to the ADL survey on global anti-Semitism either “never heard of the Holocaust or do not believe the historical accounts to be accurate.”

This is not just an international phenomenon, but a growing problem in the U.S. as well. Make no mistake, a certain climate had to be created to enable a teacher in Rialto, California, to deem it both acceptable and appropriate to assign eighth-grade students a “critical thinking” piece analyzing “whether the Holocaust was created for political gain or didn’t happen at all.” To formulate their arguments, these students were directed toward one particular source describing The Diary of Anne Frank and the Holocaust as a “hoax.” Similarly, in Albany, New York, a tenth-grade class was given an assignment to “argue that Jews are evil, and use solid rationale from government propaganda to convince [the teacher] of [their] loyalty to the Third Reich.”

Of course all of this has transpired while the Obama Administration continues to turn a blind-eye toward the intransigence, violations, and incitement from the Arab world against Israel. And having failed in its fantastical pursuit to restart the Oslo Process, the Obama Administration (namely Secretary Kerry) sought to assign blame to the Jewish State. Nevermind the increasingly hostile teachings taught to Palestinian children, the blatant violations by the Palestinians of their promise not to seek statehood outside of a negotiated framework, or the hypocrisy of claiming to seek self-determination while concurrently insisting on flooding the Jewish state with Palestinian “refugees”.  Such inconvenient truths pale in comparison to the absurdity of a “peace process” conditioned on the release of Palestinian murderers and led by a Palestinian “moderate” who has repeatedly asserted that his state shall be Judenrein (free of Jews) where selling land to Jews is so repugnant that it is punishable by death. Instead of criticizing Abbas, the Obama Administration did the opposite by immediately accepting a PA-Hamas government and offering to continue to fund that government, despite being a blatant violation of U.S. laws against providing material support to a terrorist group. Ignoring or overlooking such laws sends a message to the world: “the Open Season on Jews Continues!”

The warnings are everywhere, just as they were when Ze’ev Jabotinsky was ringing alarm bells throughout pre-war Europe. Decent people, not just Jews, need to recognize the double-standards that are being applied to delegitimize the one Jewish State and to question the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. We  must not limit our criticisms to the alleged “few bad actors”, but loudly object to the groundwork that continues to be laid that serves to immunize or numb us from such attacks.

And yes, this includes protesting the Obama Administration’s willingness to continue funding a Palestinian government that includes a known terrorist organization, as such funds will inevitably be used to murder more Jews both in Israel and around the world. If we fail to confront this threat now, the Open Season on Jews is going to end up being a very long one.

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