This month has seen the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
It has also seen the worst global spike in anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.
According to Reuters, “In countries where figures are available from police or civil society groups, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany and South Africa, the pattern is clear: the number of antisemitic incidents has gone up since Oct. 7 by several hundred percent compared with the same period last year.”
Such incidents range from verbal abuse to threats to property attacks to assaults. Some are happening on our nation’s campuses. The editor of the Harvard Law Review, Ibrahim Bharmal, joined in accosting a Jewish student and blocking his way.
Anti-Semitism also extends into the administrative halls of our universities: Georgetown just hired the radical anti-Semite Aneesa Johnson as new assistant director of academic and faculty affairs, who posted about “Zio bitches” saying, “They’re dogs.”
Meanwhile, some Jewish businesses are being boycotted for the crime of being Jewish businesses. According to the Washington Post, more than 30 Jewish eateries and markets in Philadelphia are being hit with a boycott organized by a pro-Hamas group because they are “owned by Zionists.” Even some shops that aren’t owned by Jews are being boycotted for serving Israeli food, because according to the Philly Palestine Coalition, such food is “a means of erasing Palestinian existence.”
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But there’s something peculiar about all the media reports about the extravagant spike in anti-Semitism: They all carry notes about a supposedly concomitant rise in “Islamophobia.”
This is odd, to say the least.
What the hell does Islamophobia have to do with anti-Semitism?
The answer is: precisely nothing.
Precisely nothing, that is, unless you wish to suggest that response to anti-Semitism is linked with Islamophobia — that if you wish to oppose radical Muslim anti-Semitism, that is an aspect of Islamophobia.
Which, of course, is precisely what anti-Semites are suggesting these days.
Take, for example, Corey Saylor of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR is the most frequently cited group on “rising Islamophobia.” CAIR is a group that, by the way, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of Hamas front charity, the Holy Land Foundation. Saylor refuses to condemn boycotts on Jewish businesses; he told the Washington Post that “it is 100 percent on the table to criticize supporters of Israeli apartheid.”
CAIR itself accuses Israel of “textbook ethnic cleansing” and “war crime” for defending itself, trots out anti-Semite extraordinaire Linda Sarsour, and promotes the Hamas lie that Israel bombed a hospital (it was Palestinian Islamic Jihad). On October 7, the date of the Hamas massacre, CAIR National tweeted, “We join @USCMO and the American Muslim community in reaffirming our support for the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and calling for an end to the Israeli occupation, which kills hundreds of Palestinian civilians every year, subjects millions of Palestinians to racist oppression, and sparks the deadly violence that we see again and again, including today.”
On October 7, before any Israeli response, they also called for an end to American aid to Israel and the Abraham Accords.
We join @USCMO and the American Muslim community in reaffirming our support for the Palestinian people's right to freedom and calling for an end to the Israeli occupation, which kills hundreds of Palestinian civilians every year, subjects millions of Palestinians to racist… pic.twitter.com/eW4waBJGc2
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 7, 2023
The group has not offered a single word condemning Hamas.
Good thing the Biden Administration infamously invited CAIR to participate in its national anti-Semitism strategy back in May.
CAIR is, by any stretch of the imagination, a fomenter of anti-Semitism.
But that’s the point of focusing on supposed Islamophobia: the goal is to treat response to anti-Semitism as a form of Islamophobia. So Saylor claims that it is Islamophobia to publicize the names of students who sign petitions siding with Hamas, while claiming it is not anti-Semitism to boycott Jewish businesses.
Fascinating.
Columbia University is playing the same game. The President of Columbia University sent out a letter yesterday praising the “persistence and perseverance of the students” who have signed letters supporting Hamas, after their names and faces have been shown publicly. Opposing Hamas means Islamophobia, apparently.
The legacy media feel the same way. That’s precisely why, since October 7, the media have rushed to link anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, as though the two phenomena are part of a “cycle of hatred.”
That’s a disgusting and wrong take that excuses anti-Semitism through false charges of Islamophobia. But it’s extraordinarily common on the Left these days. One variation on the theme comes from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has emerged as one of the nation’s leading anti-Semites. She now accuses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of being an “extremist group” attempting to undermine American democracy and targeting “members of color.”
Yes, those wily Jews and their dirty shekels are clearly the problem as anti-Semitism spikes. They must be stopped.
The Biden administration is falling into the trap of linking anti-Semitism and Islamophobia — a link that has the purposeful goal of demonizing opposition to Hamas. Fearful of their own base, the Biden Administration announced yesterday a White House National Strategy to combat Islamophobia. Karine Jean-Pierre explained, “For too long, Muslims in America, and those perceived to be Muslim, such as Arabs and Sikhs, have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents.”
In actuality, Sikhs are targeted more often than Muslims, according to the FBI, despite representing just a few hundred thousand people in the United States; Jews represent around 60% of the victims of federally monitored hate crimes.
But Islamophobia is top of mind. Vice President Kamala Harris announced the new initiative yesterday.
Why is the White House playing this game? Because they’re attempting to buy back the support of Muslims across the United States who are enraged that the White House has sided with Israel instead of Hamas. The latest polls show that nearly six in ten American Muslims agree that “Hamas was justified in attacking Israel as part of their struggle for a Palestinian state.” The White House is trying to buy off the Hamas fans by jabbering about the supposed victimhood to which they are subjected.
It’s perverse. It continues to drive a false narrative that opposition to Hamas is opposition to Muslims — a proposition that Muslims themselves should reject, although precious few have done so publicly.
If the Biden administration feels the necessity to keep radical Muslims in their electoral coalition by pandering, that says something pretty nasty about their moral stature in fighting anti-Semitism, as they claim they wish to do.