WSJ: Amalek Comes to Pittsburgh
Eleven Jews were murdered Saturday in their synagogue. I knew five of them.
There are not so many of us Jews in the world—something like 0.2% of the population—so we pride ourselves on punching above our weight. We introduced some of the foundational ideas of Western civilization: the sanctity of human life, uniform morality, freedom, concern for the downtrodden, the weekend.
Sadly we are also above average in attracting evil people who hate what we stand for. This murderer, like all anti-Semites, resents the ideas that we carry in this world. Concern for the downtrodden? Who’s more downtrodden than a refugee?
The archetype for all anti-Semites is Amalek. His cowardly specialty was picking off the old, weak and infirm stragglers at the back of the Exodus pack. Saturday’s murderer was Amalek brought to life, as he mainly killed old and mentally challenged members of all three of the resident congregations.
For a couple of years, I was the head of a congregation that merged with Tree of Life; for many years I was a late-arriving regular at the Shabbat morning service that was attacked. I knew five of the people who were murdered. They were more than good and lovely people. They were the stalwarts who would show up on time and help out.
Rose Mallinger, 97, would always be there, sitting next to her sister. Saturday she was next to her daughter Andrea who, like the whole family, is possessed of a permanent smile. Andrea was shot. Rose was murdered.
Cecil Rosenthal, 59, knew my wife from childhood. He had special needs and a youthful exuberance. His younger, thinner brother, David, had a more serious mien and spoke less. He too had special needs. Like his older brother, he was murdered.
Irv Younger, 69, was a sweet man with a shock of white hair who would do anything that needed to be done at the shul. Murdered.
Jerry Rabinowitz, 66, was a member of Dor Hadash, a synagogue that rented space in the social hall. A family doctor, he escaped the initial assault and returned to help the survivors. He was murdered.
Jerry Rabinowitz was one of the victims of the #PittsburghSynagogueShooting. He was the doctor of my friend Michael during the 1980s AIDS Crisis. In a time when doctors refused to treat HIV patients like humans, Rabinowitz would hold their hands. May his memory be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/1okNuzMg10— ariel💕 (@harsh__babe) October 28, 2018
JPost Editorial: Never again
The shooter, Robert Bowers, has an active life on alt-right and antisemitic social media platforms, where he frequently engaged in Jewish conspiracy theories and trolled Jewish groups.
As the tragedy unfolded and Israelis became aware of the news after Shabbat on Saturday night, there was a sense of experiencing a death in the family. Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett announced that he would depart immediately to Pittsburgh, meet the local community and participate in the funerals of those killed in the attack.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video message Saturday evening saying, “The entire people of Israel grieve with the families of the dead. We stand together with the Jewish community of Pittsburgh.”
Opposition leaders like Avi Gabbay and Yair Lapid emphasized that although the attack took place in a Conservative synagogue, when Jews are targeted, the attacker is not looking at affiliations.
“If you are murdered for being Jewish, you are Jewish,” said Lapid, in a dig to those in Israel who do not recognize non-Orthodox Jewry as valid.
There is no Right or Left when determining how it’s possible in 21st Century America – built upon the foundations of religious freedom and equality for all, where Jews have enjoyed unprecedented opportunity and enjoy unlimited access to all forms of American society – that there are still people who are intent on completing Hitler’s Final Solution.
In the aftermath of Saturday’s horrendous attack, while the victims’ bodies were still warm and identities unknown, there were those who couldn’t restrain themselves from immediately pointing fingers.
Brendan O'Neill: The militarisation of anti-Semitism
And still people are downplaying the seriousness of anti-Semitism. Even now. Even following the worst attack on Jews in American history. Even after the slaughter of 11 mostly elderly Jews at a bris, the celebration of the birth of a child, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
This time they are diminishing the scale and depth of anti-Semitism by pointing the finger of blame for the Pittsburgh massacre at President Donald Trump. No sooner had Robert Bowers allegedly executed his act of racist mass murder than anti-Trump commentators were describing it as the bloody offspring of Trump’s supposedly white-nationalist worldview and his divisive rhetoric.
This slaughter was the ‘inevitable result’ of ‘Trump’s vile nationalism’, said the Nation. Inevitable. ‘Trump didn’t pull the trigger on Jews in Pittsburgh, but he certainly prepped the shooter’, says a writer for Haaretz. Hateful violence like this is a consequence of Trump’s rhetoric, says British columnist Mehdi Hasan: ‘He preaches hate. He incites violence. He inspires attacks.’
This rush to blame Trump for a massacre of Jews is not only profoundly cynical, where the militarisation of anti-Semitism is pounced upon to the cheap, low end of scoring points against a politician people don’t like.
It also has the effect of whitewashing the true horror of anti-Semitism in the 21st-century West. It is in itself a form of apologism for the new anti-Semitism to the extent that it dehistoricises and depoliticises it by presenting it as little more than a function of the new right-wing populism.
It presents violent anti-Semitism as yet another thing unleashed, or at least intensified, by Trump and by the political turn of the past two years. And this dangerously distracts public attention – purposefully, I suspect – from the fact that anti-Semitism has been growing and becoming increasingly militarised for more than a decade now, among the left as well as the right and within Muslim communities, too.
President @realDonaldTrump: If you seek the destruction of Jews, we will seek your destruction. pic.twitter.com/ZXWVTm46xG
— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) October 29, 2018