Anti-Semitism On the Rise

Disclaimer: If you are sensitive to recent events of anti-Semitism, be mindful of that while reading this article.

I’m sure you are well aware of the this week’s acts of anti-Semitism which include bomb threats, knocking over headstones, and defending Pewdiepie and anti-Semitic memes. These past two weeks, eleven bomb threats have been targeted at Jewish community centers, or JCCs, and during January, sixty bomb threats were made targeting forty-eight JCCs. In the past week, over one hundred headstones were knocked over at Mount Carmel Cemetery. Pewdiepie recently made a video where he paid two men to hold up signs saying “Death to all Jews” which he called a social experiment. If you look up “anti-Semitic memes,” you might feel like breaking your device in half. This has been an ongoing problem for decades, but many anti-Semitic people feel more empowered since President Trump’s election. People online have been saying, “Hitler did nothing wrong” and “They deserved to die” and calling it a joke and a meme. Most of my family was killed in the Holocaust because they wanted to stay in Germany. As a Jew, I feel so offended and hurt.

Stuff like this doesn’t solve issues–what it does do is promote hate. Memes are supposed to make you happy or laugh or make you feel relatable, but this has gone too far. I feel like these next four years will be full of hate towards Jews from what we already have seen. An article written by CNN said, “In 2014 and 2015 the FBI tallied more than 1,270 hate crime incidents targeting Jews, far more than any other religious groups, and some Jewish leaders say the situation is getting worse.” Do you know how awful this is? Synagogues and schools have had swastikas drawn on their walls and people are in fear that their children’s school will get bombed all because they are Jewish. My mom was out to lunch with her friend and her friend had received a call saying that her son’s school had received a bomb threat and they were being evacuated. Her son is five years old. The Jews have had enough hate and I’m afraid that the current administration will only add to this hate and not act on it, even though President Trump did call the knocking over of tombstones “horrible.”

All in all, people need to be more open-minded and accept people whose religion is different.