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Behind the Aegis

(53,834 posts)
Wed Mar 29, 2017, 05:48 AM Mar 2017

(Jewish Group) What Happens When Jewish Anti-Semitism Causes Terror?

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP!

he recent arrest of a 19-year-old Israeli with dual American citizenship who is accused of issuing bomb threats to more than 100 Jewish institutions around the world exposed a blind spot in our understanding of anti-Semitism. Sometimes a Jew can commit acts of anti-Semitism. Sometimes hateful acts come from within.

Jews, given our history, are accustomed to being targeted by someone else — marauding Christians, genocidal Nazis, Palestinian terrorists and the Ku Klux Klan, to name a few culprits. The exceptions, the times when a Jew terrorized another Jew, often occurred in a recognizable political context, such as the tragic 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a crazed ideological opponent.

But it is difficult to fathom the purpose behind the bomb threats that disrupted the operations and brought fear to nearly half the community centers around the country, places that serve Jews and non-Jews alike. It would only be speculation at this point to explain his motive.

That is why so many of us, myself included, initially traced the source of the JCC threats to the ultra-white nationalists who have emerged “out of the sewers,” to use former Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman’s words, since last year’s shameful presidential campaign.

It made eminent sense to see those threats on a continuum, which began with the well-documented harassment of Jewish journalists and grew into the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and Nazi-style graffiti on the walls of schools and universities.

Jews are used to viewing the world as “us” versus “them.” It’s an understandable impulse, ingrained by teachings, admonitions and raw experience.

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This comes as great joy to anti-Semites of all stripes, political affiliations, and religions.
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