Let's Start Calling it What it is...Jew Hatred

By Howie Silbiger

I am beginning to think we have created an impossible standard for recognizing Jew hatred.

Apparently it is no longer enough to attack a synagogue while Jews are praying. It is not enough to show up at another synagogue with a carton of eggs. It is not enough to vandalize a Jewish museum. It is not enough to get into an Israeli cultural pavilion with a knife. Even telling Jewish customers that there are simply too many Jews around still requires an investigation, a few government statements and presumably several days of discussion before everyone can decide exactly what it means.

New York, thankfully, may have finally given us a case simple enough to understand.

On Friday evening, Larry Montes walked into Central Synagogue in Manhattan during Shabbat services, which were being livestreamed. He disrupted the service, damaged religious objects, struck a 63-year-old woman and then spat at and head-butted a 65-year-old security guard as he was being removed. He was arrested immediately and charged with two counts of assault as a hate crime and criminal mischief as a hate crime, among other charges.

Then came his arraignment. According to prosecutors, Montes told police his actions were religiously motivated and referred to the Jews inside as “swine” and “fake Jews.” He was ordered held on $10,000 cash bail or $30,000 bond and is due back in court August 20.

Are we allowed to call that Jew hatred?

I ask because we seem to have developed an almost pathological need to find another explanation every time Jews are targeted. Maybe the attacker was mentally ill or maybe he was angry about Gaza. Maybe the synagogue has connections to Israel. Maybe the museum displayed an Israeli flag. Maybe the Israeli pavilion was political. Maybe the eggs were just eggs. Maybe the woman in France had a bad experience with Jewish tourists five minutes earlier. There is always an excuse or a simple explanation for people who desperately need Jew hatred to be anything other than Jew hatred.

It happened again in Philadelphia on Thursday night. A man was caught on camera writing what police described as an offensive message on the OY/YO sculpture outside the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History. As of late Sunday afternoon, police were still looking for him, his identity remained unknown and investigators were still determining his motive and whether the vandalism should be treated as a hate crime. The museum was also vandalized twice last August, including red paint thrown on the building and on a display showing solidarity with Israel.

I don’t know what was written because police have not publicly released the words, but local reporting described the message as anti-Jewish. So we have a Jewish museum, an anti-Jewish message and somebody making a special trip to put it on one of the museum’s most recognizable pieces of public art. I realize police have legal standards to meet and an investigation to conduct, but the rest of us are not required to pretend we have absolutely no idea what might be going on.

Then there is Saskatoon.

On August 1, while Jews were inside Congregation Agudas Israel for Shabbos services, police say a man arrived at the building carrying a carton of eggs and threw them at sections of the synagogue and at vehicles outside. Police released surveillance images, the public helped identify the suspect and, on August 13, 31-year-old Jayden Clarke of Dundurn turned himself in. He has now been charged with three counts of mischief under $5,000. The Saskatoon Police Hate Crimes Unit was involved in the investigation, although police correctly pointed out that “hate crime” is generally an umbrella term in Canadian law and that evidence of hatred can instead become an aggravating factor at sentencing.

Three counts of mischief under $5,000.

Legally, fine. I understand why the charge is called that. It still sounds absurdly small beside what actually happened. A man is accused of getting himself a carton of eggs, travelling to a synagogue on a Saturday morning while Jews were praying inside and throwing those eggs at their building and cars. We can debate motive in court. We can debate what can be proven and we can debate what section of the Criminal Code applies, but the reality is that the Jews inside the synagogue were terrorized and still had to increase their security.

That’s the problem. These stories get reduced to charges, statements and statistics, and Jews are left literally cleaning up the mess, both physically and emotionally. While someone cleans the eggs, removes the graffiti, replaces broken glass and calls the security company, Jewish parents calmly try to explain to their children why there are more security guards in front of the synagogue and, absurdly, why it is still safe to go there. All while the rest of the country gets to have a thoughtful discussion about whether everyone is perhaps being a little too sensitive and maybe Jews should just calm down.

Then there was Edmonton.

On August 3, a man with a knife got behind the Israel Pavilion at Edmonton’s Heritage Festival and, according to the Jewish Federation of Edmonton, lunged toward the kitchen tent and struck it with the blade before volunteers and security stopped him. Dancers preparing to perform were moved to shelter. Nobody was physically injured and the man was arrested. As of today, Edmonton police have still not publicly announced charges.

The apologists have tried to explain the attack away by pointing out that there was an anti-Israel protest happening nearby and that protesters were demanding that the pavilion be removed from the festival. Even if the knife-wielding maniac was a protester, that does not give him the right to commit a knife attack at a Canadian festival.

And then, as seems to happen at least once a week, someone attacking Jews is perfectly honest about their motives. A video from Les Deux Alpes shows the owner of a refreshment stand speaking to a Jewish customer. She tells him there are too many of them. He asks who she means. She responds that there are too many Jews and that people will get bothered by them.

The police were called after she refused to serve Jews.

The owner has since been questioned by gendarmes, and the Grenoble prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation for public provocation to hatred or violence on the basis of origin or religion. French reporting says she acknowledged making the remarks while giving investigators her explanation of the circumstances. No charging decision had been announced as of Sunday.

I am genuinely interested in what context could improve the sentence: There are too many Jews.

Were they standing too close together? Ordering too many drinks? Taking too long to decide what they wanted? Perhaps France now has a recommended maximum number of Jews per square kilometre, and nobody bothered to tell us.

This is where my patience disappears.

We have spent nearly three years being told to be extremely careful about connecting anti-Israel hatred to Jew hatred. Fine. I have no problem with being careful. I’ve been arguing for years that criticizing Israel is not Jew hatred. Heck, I do it all the time on my show. Opposing Netanyahu is not Jew hatred. I’ve said plenty of times that I think he has long since outlived his usefulness as prime minister of Israel. Demonstrating for Palestinians is not Jew hatred, unless you’re calling for the death of Jews or normalizing indiscriminate attacks on Jews, like the intifada. Nobody needs my permission to criticize Israel, and nobody should be labelled a Jew hater simply because they do.

But this ridiculous standard apparently only works in one direction.

When Jews say something offensive, people are remarkably capable of understanding exactly what they heard. Nobody requires a week-long seminar on historical context, emotional state, foreign policy or whether the speaker had a difficult childhood.

When Jews are the targets, suddenly everybody becomes a forensic linguist. What exactly did “too many of you” mean? What was the precise motivation of the man with the eggs? Was the Jewish museum targeted because it was Jewish or because of Israel? What caused a man to enter a synagogue?

New York’s attacker apparently made the mistake of being unusually specific. Prosecutors say he actually told police it was religiously motivated and called the Jews inside “swine” and “fake Jews.” Apparently this is what we now require. Maybe future Jew haters should be issued a form to complete before attacking us so there is less confusion afterward. Check the appropriate box: Jews, Israel, Zionism, mental illness, random vandalism or “motive still under investigation.” Then perhaps we can skip the three-day argument.

What really bothers me is how completely ordinary all of this has become.

Let’s read that list again without the language we use to soften it.

A man attacks Jews inside a New York synagogue during Friday night services, and prosecutors say he later admitted that the attack was religiously motivated.

A man brings a carton of eggs to a Saskatoon synagogue while Jews are praying and throws them at the building and their cars.

Somebody writes an anti-Jewish message on a Jewish museum.

A man with a knife gets into the Israel Pavilion at a Canadian cultural festival.

A woman in France refuses Jewish tourists access to her business and explains that there are too many Jews.

And this is barely news anymore. That, more than anything else, scares me.

Not because I think we are in Germany in 1938. We aren’t, and throwing Holocaust comparisons into every discussion doesn’t make an argument stronger. What scares me is how quickly behaviour that would have horrified people a few years ago has become another story to scroll past.

Another synagogue. Another Jewish institution. Another investigation. Another security guard. Another politician saying this has no place in our society.

Except it obviously does.

Maybe instead of telling Jews that hatred has no place here, our governments, institutions and neighbours could start asking why the people who hate us seem to feel increasingly comfortable proving otherwise.

And maybe, just maybe, when someone looks directly at a Jew and says there are too many Jews, we can stop pretending we need a committee to figure out what she meant and start treating it for what it is: Jew hatred.