The Jews you know and the Jews you don’t are NOT okay, and with each passing day and every violent antisemitic attack, your silence breaks our hearts.
Your silence enables Jew hatred to flourish. For 20 months, we have watched in horror as Jew hatred has spiraled out of control.
We’ve witnessed the hatred masked as support for Palestine, as free speech…
We’ve watched Jews being targeted, harassed, and assaulted on university campuses and in a growing number of public spaces…
We’ve seen Jewish-owned homes, businesses and Jewish institutions vandalized and damaged…
We’ve been begging you to say something. To do something. Anything to show that you care – that you are just as upset about Jew hatred as you are about the persecution of other marginalized minorities. To show the Jews in your circles that they’re in your thoughts and acknowledge that they might be hurting. Something… Anything…
You might be surprised by all of the increasingly violent and deadly attacks on Jews, but we’re not. We are horrified, but not at all surprised. We predicted this from the start. We’ve been telling you this would happen if no one stood up to put a stop to it in the beginning, if you continued to minimize what was happening or pretend it was simply about “ending the war/Ceasefire now/Freeing Palestine”…
If you keep responding to our pleas for help by essentially saying “All lives matter”…
If you make a distinction between Jews and “Zionists” (showing me that you’re still allowing Jew haters to define Zionism for us) and somehow twist that into justifying or downplaying these acts…
If you keep seeking out and platforming those you believe to be “good” Jews like Neturei Karta, JVP, Naomi Klein, Norman Finkelstein—who are not at all representative of the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Jews—and dehumanizing the rest of us…
Maybe you’re afraid to get involved…
Maybe you think it’s not your battle…
Maybe you’re concerned that speaking out against Jew hatred will cause people to think you unequivocally support everything the Israeli government does, even though any smart, rational person should understand that attacking Jews because of the actions of the Israeli government is wrong…
Whatever your reasons, silence is still silence, and Jews don’t have the privilege of deciding whether or not to get involved.
Your silence is killing us. Figuratively. Literally.
