Anti-Semitism in Brooklyn

Lately, there has been a rash of hate crimes against Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. And yet, the Forward reports, no one mentions it. No one cares. In New York City, where large numbers of citizens are Jewish, no one stands up for Jews.

Troubling? Perhaps. Predictable? Of course.

The Forward reports:

And almost no one will stand up for us. Even when Orthodox Jews are brutally attacked, those with power limit their reaction to a single tweet. After yesterday’s attack in Crown Heights, New York City officials posted obligatory calls for tolerance, yet the lack of any real action is troubling. In June, at the Jewish American Heritage Month party at Gracie Mansion, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to immediately open an office devoted to combatting anti-Semitism; it’s two months and several anti-Jewish hate crimes later, and Jewish communal representatives are saying that they have yet to get an update on this. (The Anti-Defamation League is the notable exception in this case, offering a $5,000 reward for information.)

Tweets and press releases have yet to stop a single attack.

Why will no one speak up on our behalf? Why don’t people rush to call out these hate crimes? Instead, they wont even call it a hate crime. We have to hear them call it a mugging, or tell us it wasn’t due to the black hat or yarmulke — but actually due to a development, the schools, measles outbreaks, tax evasion, don’t you know.

Of course, you know why it is so. The reason is quite simple: the perpetrators of these hate crimes are invariably people of color. If they were white supremacists, the woke New York Jewish community would be up in arms. But, when it comes to people of color, woke New York Jews are more concerned with not being called racist.

It reminds us of the grooming gangs in Rotherham, England. The local citizens and the constabulary all knew that Pakistani men had been gang raping and sex trafficking high school girl. For years they looked the other way. Why? Because they did not want to be called racists.

Armin Rosen explains it in The Tablet:

There have been dozens of violent incidents targeting Jews in New York over the past couple of years, but few have produced images of blood-soaked religious objects, an especially visceral reminder of how any outward expression of identity can endanger Jews even in some of the most Jewish places in the most Jewish city in America. And yet the daily experience of anti-Semitism in the city is often more routine. Later on the morning of Gopin’s attack, an East Flatbush resident named Yossi Blachman tweeted, “My 12 year old was just at that park 2 hours ago. As soon as he gets there he sees an Anti Semite talk to his friend pointing at my son saying those F***ing Jews…. he was frightened and immediately left the park.”

He continues:

Yesterday’s incidents offer a snapshot of the city’s ongoing anti-Semitism outbreak. Jews of all ages are subjected to violent attacks, along with daily cases of more mundane forms of harassment. The incidents aren’t exactly a secret. It didn’t take long for Mayor Bill de Blasio to tweet about the attack on Gopin, announcing that the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force was on the case. Of course, this is about the bare minimum one could reasonably expect in reaction to an incident in which the attacker allegedly called his victim a “dirty Jew” before smashing him in the face with a large stone. Everyone knows that violence against Jews in the city has climbed sharply over the past couple of years, and yet City Hall has offered little in the way of a specific or organized response to the problem.

Led by Mayor de Blasio New York Jews are fighting white supremacy. They are fighting white Nazis. Meantime, the perpetrators are people of color:

 De Blasio has also repeatedly insisted that the attacks against Jews in New York are driven by a white supremacist movement connected to Donald Trump despite clear evidence that this is not the case and, in fact, many of the attacks are being carried out by people of color with no ties to the politics of white supremacy.

And,

On the national level, discussions of anti-Semitism rage without apparent reference to the violence in Brooklyn, which defies any easy categorization, has little apparent relationship with national politics or political figures, and involves members of racial minority groups rather than white nationalists or other more expedient villains. 

As the old saying goes, it is all about the narrative. American Jews are up in arms about white supremacists.They ignore people of color who spout anti-Semitic hatred or who commit anti-Semitic violence. It’s a sad portrait of weakness and cowardice.