By Stephen Smoot
Would Columbia University, or any other institution of higher learning for that matter, allow the Ku Klux Klan to claim pieces of their campus, to obstruct classes, finals, and graduation ceremonies, or to menace, threaten, and even harm minority peoples who happened to come within their range?
Would blue state officials from Governors and attorneys general down to sheriffs and city police chiefs permit violence and disruption from the Ku Klux Klan or other historically anti Semitic groups?
The Ku Klux Klan has the Constitutional right, thanks to a case won by the American Civil Liberties Union, to hold rallies, to spread hate, and to march in the streets. That is part of United States Supreme Court case law. When they do so, however, the authorities hold them to the strictest standards of civil behavior.
And rightly so.
One step out of line and law enforcement breaks up the demonstration, forcing all to go home peaceably – or to jail as an alternative..
Make no mistake. The pro Hamas movement in its ideals, goals, and mission is at least as bad as the Ku Klux Klan. They make no secret of letting anyone in earshot know that they support the destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people.
Yet government authorities and law enforcement have been woefully, almost criminally, negligent in protecting Jews and civil society from their law breaking.
The keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag have grown as symbolic of anti Jewish sentiment and action as much as sheets, burning crosses, and the Confederate flag are seen by some as representative of racial oppression.
Jewish people worldwide have historically seen the United States as a safe haven from the hateful traditions perpetuated around the world. Jewish people fought in the War of Independence and figured on both sides of the Civil War. Ironically for the Ku Klux Klan, one of the men represented by the Confederate battle flag when he was Secretary of War was Judah P. Benjamin. That august personage also served the Confederate States as attorney general and secretary of state.
Perhaps nine Jewish men served as Union generals.
By the 1930s, two decades of the resurgence of the KKK and the rise of National Socialist Germany brought forth the first major antisemitic sentiments in America. Groups such as the KKK, the Silver Shirts, and the German-American Bund highlighted what they considered the bad treatment of Germany and its people after World War I and hoped to parley sympathy for Germans into hatred against Jews.
The lowlights came in the late 30s when the German-American Bund filled Madison Square Garden and many American city streets with angry losers shouting their hatred against Jewish people and institutions.
Too many American leaders in both parties swooned for antisemites, including Joe Kennedy and Charles Lindbergh. Even President Franklin Roosevelt cried uncle when asked to allow into the United States thousands of educated, hard working, and law abiding Jewish citizens expelled from Germany by the National Socialists.
The ships carrying them returned to Germany and most aboard died horribly in the Holocaust.
Jewish people have endured persecution, pogroms, and efforts to eliminate them for thousands of years. From the Assyrians through to the Babylonians down to National Socialist Germany and Hamas, Jews have always faced calls for their destruction.
Then Israel and Jewish people get rhetorically attacked by those who spend their lives in comfortable safety for defending themselves against absolute destruction.
Those who support the right of the Jewish people and state to exist need to speak up and speak continuously.
“Never again” is easy to say when social pressures against Jewish people are low level or non existent. Today, the destructive impact of Red China’s Tik Tok (whose algorithms pump divisive and destructive rhetoric over and above positive messaging) and bought and paid for “protesters” have made it costly for some to support Israel and the Jewish people.
But it costs much more to actually be Jewish in such an environment.