As I sat in the serenity of my Jerusalem home Monday morning and watched images of Sunday’s pogrom in my former neighborhood of Los Angeles—after hearing from friends who had never been more scared in their lives and who were accelerating their plans to join me—I write this letter to my former Jewish neighbors and to my non-Jewish friends and countrymen—in the hope that it is not too late for them.
America’s majority—who remain decent, good people—need to understand a vital point. When antisemites threaten and assault Jews, it is never just Jews they are going after. Indeed, use of the words “Jews” and “Israel” is meant to tranquilize non-Jews, to signal that they are not the intended target. Somehow, Iranian rent-a-mobs screaming “Death to Israel” works like a charm to keep non-Jewish Americans from hearing the also daily chants of “Death to America.”
When vicious antisemites claiming not to be satisfied with U.S. foreign policy come to a Jewish day school in the San Fernando Valley to vent their hatred at little Jewish boys and girls; when a young keffiyeh-masked goon pursues my friends walking to their home in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood from which I escaped, saying “I’m going to do to you what Israelis are doing to Palestinians” while the LAPD stand on Pico Boulevard urging Jews to stop being a provocation, with nary a cop on the side streets where Jews are being threatened and assaulted; when all this occurs after the civil rights of Jewish university students were denied day after day, for months, with administrators openly or tacitly supporting the antisemitic mobs, including in testimony from Congress, America’s promise to its Jewish citizens has been shredded.
America’s Founding Father, George Washington, in his famous letter to a Rhode Island synagogue, made it clear that his Christian country would take a most un-European approach to relations with its Jews. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants – while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Today, American Jews are afraid.
American Jews are no longer safe on college campuses, in their synagogues and in their neighborhoods.
Laws meant to protect Jews’ civil rights are not enforced at a time when it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that authorities would jump to protect other groups from lesser provocations.
What is more, the dog whistle telling America’s antisemites that it is now okay to hunt Jews comes straight from the top—from President Joe Biden. Biden or his minions have been hectoring the Jewish state on a daily basis from at least January for its efforts to fight for our very existence. He has inverted all morality in propagating the lie that it is Israel that is committing crimes against Gazans after Gazans invaded Israel in the most heinous and well-documented butchery in history—this despite the fact that Israel has done more than the U.S. has ever done to safeguard the lives of civilians.
By placing sanctions on innocent—indeed, righteous—Israelis; by initiating unwarranted investigations of Israeli tourists for war crimes; by lowering the dignity of the office of president in calling Israel’s elected leader “a bad f**king guy,” the U.S. president routinely encourages the antisemitic mobs on the street.
There is therefore only one route that might possibly lead to the restoration of America’s broken promise to its Jews. Americans must reject Biden and his party at the polls. While there are Democrats such as Senator John Fetterman and Rep. Ritchie Torres who have stood up consistently for Jewish civil rights, party leaders such as Senator Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi have repeatedly sided with their antisemitic grass roots. The party must therefore be rejected and salvaged under another name and under the leadership of decent people.
It was once commonly thought that even if the lesser of two political candidates won, the republic would survive. That is no longer the case. America can survive the departure of its Jews, but it cannot survive the “Death to America” policies that have been snuck behind the façade of antisemitism since the Democratic Party first articulated its intention to “fundamentally transform” the U.S.
Antisemitism, as counseled by Barack Obama’s church minister Jeremiah Wright over a period of decades, is the first flourishing of that transformation. Failure to quash the Obama-Biden Democratic Party will render America unsafe for non-Jews too.
Gil Weinreich is a writer living in Jerusalem. His latest book is A Torah Guide to Personal Finance.
