(From San Diego, CA) ISGAP, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, condemns the deadly white supremacist attack on the Chabad Synagogue in Poway, a peaceful suburb of San Diego. All of us at ISGAP pray for the victims of the horrific hate crime. We pray for the family and friends of Mrs. Lori Gilbert-Kaye. Lori Gilbert Kaye acted with heroism as she protected her Rabbi from the killer. We send our thoughts and prayers to all who have been injured and to their families. May they have a quick and full recovery.
It was only the malfunction of the automatic military-style assault machine gun, that hindered the murderer from taking and destroying even more innocent lives, all of this in a religious sanctuary.
Just in the 24 hours leading up to the attack at the Chabad Synagogue in Poway, the political discourse within the United States was instilled with hate. The former Foreign Minister of the Iranian Revolutionary Regime claimed in a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace, that the Israeli leadership was trying to trick the United States into war. This assertion did not mention the role of Iranian Regime invasions in the region or its human rights abuses within their own nation. Then, the infamous New York Times published a cartoon, using the very same antisemitic discourse and tropes as Zarif. The cartoon, of a blind President Trump with a yarmulke being led by the Jewish “dog’ Netanyahu, congers up vile stereotypes of Jews denigrated as animals (dogs, pigs, donkeys, etc.), which are commonplace in the rhetoric and ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Shite offshoot the Iranian Revolutionary Regime, as well as Nazi white nationalism in the United States.
This is a clear manifestation of the so-called “Red-Green Alliance” of the extreme left (New York Times editor) and the extreme political Islamist (Zarif) coming together to depict Israel and Jews as subhuman, animal-like, and somehow irrationally engaged in secret conspiracies to control the world and to bring about chaos. Their narrative was and is the very same. When one then reads the white supremacist manifesto, like the New York Times cartoon and Mr. Zarif a longtime representative of the Iranian Regime that openly calls for the extermination of Jews, all three use antisemitic tropes that can be found in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. In fact, it is important to note that the Protocols form a basis for white nationalist extremism and Political Islamist ideology. Their ideological views regarding the Jewish people and Israel are the very same, and is based on European antisemitism and Nazism.
As Professor Elie Wiesel always warned, the Holocaust did not begin with the railroad tracks and the crematoriums. The Holocaust began with words and ideas. The horrific deadly ideas of the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion laid the ground for the genocidal antisemitism in Europe – that was adopted by the Nazis – and later exported and is used by the Muslim Brotherhood today. It is these ideas that justified the dehumanizing of Jews, and their removal from society and murder.
Somehow today in the United States the discourse of these forms of antisemitism has entered rapidly into the mainstream. We as a people committed to democracy cannot tolerate such a dangerous development.
Today in the United States these tropes are being used and disseminated by the Muslim Brotherhood (CAIR being their U.S. front organization), student organizations on US campuses like Students for Justice in Palestine, and by extreme white supremacists who are also, for a series of reasons, being emboldened to “act”. Their goal is to insert this hatred into mainstream discourse. They are meeting with some success.
Recently the public discourse of tolerance and respect has deteriorated in the United States. Even people elected to the highest branches of political office, such as Congresswoman Omar, use persistently antisemitic tropes that are steep in a long bloody legacy of genocidal antisemitism. Congresswoman Omar plays a significant role in changing and poisoning public discourse, normalizing some of the most deadly antisemitic tropes against the Jewish people. Those who have espoused this hateful rhetoric, come from a political ideology that is not only deeply rooted antisemitism, but also work to weaken or destroy democracy. The deterioration of discourse and rhetoric leads invariably to actions.
It is time that a strong movement of people from different political perspectives, and citizens from all communities, come together to defend our basic fundamental rights as full and equal citizens in this great country of the United States.
As Elie Wiesel taught us. Antisemitism is not only a Jewish issue or issue for Israelis. This is a challenge to our basic democratic principles. Once this strain of hate is able to enter society it knows no bounds. History demonstrates this. Antisemitism begins with Jews – but it never ends with Jews as it will attack others and the very basis and values of our society.
