A vicious wave of anti-Semitism is hitting the United States
- Just since the first of the year, nearly 70 Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) have received bomb threats.
- Jewish cemeteries have been vandalized around the country — in St. Louis alone in recent days, more than 100 headstones in a Jewish cemetery were destroyed.
- Anti-Semitic attacks on American college campuses have nearly doubled, according to ADL.
Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders are speaking out, as they should. So are the President, senior administration officials and Members of Congress, denouncing these attacks and calling for action to protect the Jewish people.
Over the weekend, in a show of solidarity with the suffering of the Jewish people, Vice President Mike Pence — a devout Evangelical Christian — took his family and advisors to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
“Today, 11 Jewish community centers received phoned-in bomb threats,” reported the JCC Association of North America.
“This comes in the aftermath of three waves of bomb threats in January (Jan. 9, Jan. 18, and Jan. 31), resulting in, through today, 69 incidents at 54 JCCs in 27 states and one Canadian province in total,” the JCCANA reported.
“All bomb threats in both January and today have proven to be hoaxes, and all JCCs impacted have returned to regular operations.” Thank God.
President Trump — whose son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is Jewish, and whose daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism to marry him — has been criticized for not speaking out faster or more forcefully.
But today he responded strongly, calling anti-Semitism is “horrible” and “painful” and said “we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all its very ugly forms.”
“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” the President said, according to the New York Times.
Such hate-driven attacks against Jewish people (or Muslims, or Christians, or atheists or anyone else) are ugly and despicable. Let’s be faithful in praying for them to stop, but let’s also look for ways to take a stand against such hatred, and stand with — and care for — those who are suffering right now.
[I’ll provide updates in the days and weeks ahead.]
[NOTE: the image is the cover of Time magazine from the summer of 2002.]
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