Anti-Semitism in America

Maybe I missed it, but when Jeremiah Wright’s protégé was elected president no one was worried about an increase in anti-Semitism. Heck, Wright’s protégé was supported by Louis Farrakhan and no one worried about having someone associated with anti-Semites in the White House.

Of course, the Obama years have seen an increase in anti-Semitism. That includes violently disrupting Jewish activities on campus. In some cases Israeli speakers are being uninvited because of the threat of violence. Just yesterday the Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick was uninvited from the University of Texas at Austin.

To be blunt about it, in the Age of Obama, no one cares.

On November 3 USA Today reported on the rising anti-Semitism on American college campuses:

Anti-Semitic activity on U.S. campuses continues to be on the rise. A 2016 study conducted by the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that seeks to combat anti-Semitism on college campuses, found the number of incidents involving “the suppression of Jewish students’ freedom of speech and assembly” doubled from last year.

“We’re really concerned for this new year,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHA’s cofounder and director. “(Anti-Semitic behavior) really tends to completely shut down and obliterate the presence, the opinion and the safe space for one particular group. It’s not a matter of incivility, it’s a matter of intolerance.”

As reported by Newsweek, more than a dozen Jewish student events were violently disrupted this year at schools coast to coast, including Boston University, University of Maryland and University of Florida. And on the University of California campuses, anti-Semitic graffiti reading,

“Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber” has appeared on the walls of buildings, and a UCLA student’s impartiality on a judicial board was questioned due to her involvement in the Jewish community.

The AMCHA study found campuses that have an active Students for Justice in Palestine chapter are seven times more likely to have incidents targeting Jewish students, Rossman-Benjamin said. A Brandeis University report also found that universities in New York and California are “hotspots” for this type of activity.

“Jewish students are marked as being Zionist unless they specifically stand up and say otherwise,” Rossman-Benjamin said. And when it comes to Jewish students, she says, “Nobody stands up for them.”

It’s the Age of Obama, my friends. I say good riddance.