It’s an unavoidable, even urgent question. After deadly attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway, along with openly anti-Semitic rhetoric in the U.S. Congress and anti-Semitic imagery in The New York Times, the climate has clearly changed.Braunstein portrays anti-Semitism in the U.S. as a beast with three heads:
The world’s oldest hatred, which began a resurgence in Europe at the turn of the century... is a three-headed monster: it exists on the far-left, the far-right, and among Islamists.Actually, I don't think it's confined to just the far left. It seems to be mainstream among progressive students and faculty on many university campuses and becoming increasingly so among the Democratic caucus in Congress.
Braunstein quotes a non-Jewish woman who was a lifelong member of the (presumably British) Labour Party who quit the party because of its overt anti-Semitism. Paraphrasing Martin Niemöller, the Lutheran pastor who lived through the Nazi era in Germany, she declared that, "It all started on the campuses, and we did nothing because they were students. We did nothing when they joined the party because it was just the left-wing fringe, and now they’ve taken over my party, and it’s not mine anymore."
Could this be happening here? Many Americans, eager to avoid the appearance of anti-Muslim bias, seem reluctant to speak out against Muslim hatred of Jews. Progressives, not wanting to alienate useful allies on the left, are reluctant to speak out against the haters among their own number. The only anti-Semites who are not being ignored or given a pass are those on the far-right who are generally condemned by both liberals and conservatives.
The insidiousness of race or ethnic hatred must not be tolerated by anyone, however, and to the extent that it is, whether on campus or in the halls of Congress, it's a sign that we are slipping back toward the darkness of another Kristallnacht and 1938.
