Outrage spread rapidly via Twitter earlier this week based on the spurious claim that President Trump intended to label Jews “a separate nationality”—a move denounced as encouraging anti-Semitism or as itself anti-Semitic. Although correct information about the executive order that sparked the controversy is now widely available, one need not look far to find essays and editorials condemning it in heated terms. Liel Leibovitz notes that just as “our bien pensants were whipping everyone into a wild frenzy” over this imagined act of anti-Semitism, an armed couple attacked a kosher grocery store in a ḥasidic enclave in Jersey City, killing two Jews, one Gentile, and a police officer. The couple had brought with them multiple pipe bombs, and could easily have achieved far bloodier results. Leibovitz writes:
The shooting, we now know, was a premeditated attack, and one of the suspects was a black nationalist [a member of an anti-Semitic group styling themselves “Black Hebrew Israelites”] who had a long and proven track record of posting anti-Semitic screeds online.
Jews make up about 2 percent of the American population, yet were the victims of a whopping 57.8 percent of all religious-bias crimes last year, according to the FBI. Rather than vocally and unequivocally demanding that their Jewish constituents be protected, the politicians representing those targeted—from New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio to Senator Chuck Schumer—have been largely silent on this issue, while at the same time loudly and vigorously accusing the right of racism. Videos like [the] one shot at the scene shortly after the Jersey City attack and featuring local neighbors blaming the Jews for Jews being murdered are not likely to make any politician on the left take action, especially not someone like de Blasio, who has for years been kissing the ring of Al Sharpton, an anti-Semite best remembered for inciting an actual pogrom against the Jews of Brooklyn.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/295616/the-real-danger-to-jews