HOW DARE YOU.
Eighty-eight years ago this week, the Nazis burned synagogues and smashed Jewish homes and businesses across Germany and Austria. Jews were murdered. Around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
We call it Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass.
And when Jews remember and mourn what was done to their families and communities, someone inevitably shows up in the comments to ask:
“What about Palestine?”
Imagine. They can’t even have ONE DAY to honor their dead and say, “Never again,” without someone hijacking the moment.
And if your heart is as big as you keep telling everyone it is, why can’t you let them have that? Maybe even show them some compassion?
Surely all that love you claim to have can stretch to a Jewish family remembering relatives persecuted by the Nazis.
What exactly does a Jewish family remembering their dead owe you an explanation for? Their grief is not an invitation to interrogate them about Israel or demand that they justify their homeland’s existence. Show some basic human decency.
Then look at Philadelphia. On November 8, the day before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, activists held a boycott ride targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. They cited the owners’ support for Israel and denied deliberately choosing the date.
One restaurant owner’s grandfather had survived the Holocaust and witnessed Kristallnacht himself.
Imagine being his grandson, all these years later, watching people turn up to tell others not to buy your food.
Thankfully, hundreds showed up to support the restaurants. They stood in line. They bought food. According to the local Jewish federation, all six businesses sold out.
That is how you show solidarity. You show up when people are being singled out.
And to those who can’t acknowledge Jewish grief without adding “but Palestine”: spare me the lecture about your humanity.
Palestinian suffering does not require you to dismiss Jewish suffering. You can care about Palestinian children and still let a Jewish family mourn.
So why is that so difficult for you?
Imagine being so convinced of your own moral superiority that you feel entitled to turn someone else’s remembrance into a test they have to pass before you’ll show them compassion.
You want credit for having a big heart? Show it when there’s no applause from your own crowd.
Because I refuse to get used to this. The suspicion directed at Jews. The demands that they prove they’re one of the “good ones.” The old conspiracy theories being passed around by people who think a few videos have given them access to some hidden truth.
Jew-hatred never disappeared. Now it’s showing its face openly again, and far too many people are getting comfortable with it.
If you’re a human being who still has your sanity and your conscience intact, you have a responsibility to raise your voice against antisemitism.
In your own circles. In your comment sections. At your dinner table. Especially when the person spreading it is someone on your own side.
I stand with the Jewish people. With their right to live openly and safely as Jews. And with their right to a state of their own…a homeland they can return to, just as you and I can come home to ours.
If you have a problem with Jews being Jews, or with their right to have that home, and you expect me to smile politely and let it pass, you’ve got the wrong woman.
You’ll have to get through me first.
I will speak up. I will stand beside them. And I will not be intimidated into silence.
I will not leave them standing alone.
And neither should you.