Leftists Allowing — Encouraging — Anti-Semitism to Flourish

From Karol Markowicz, at the New York Post, "How liberals are allowing anti-Semitism to flourish" (via Memeorandum):

I first wrote about the uptick [of anti-Semitic attacks] in May. The reason the city’s liberal political class was ignoring it, I ­argued, is that the criminals don’t fit their picture of Evil Bigots. They aren’t, for the most part, MAGA-hat wearing white guys with tiki torches. In fact, many of the attackers are people of color, as investigative reporting by Tablet’s Armin Rosen and others has shown.

Imagine if they were white ­nationalists. How much faster would the mayor and other city leaders have taken action?

“A lot of folks were told it was unacceptable to be anti-Semitic,” de Blasio said in May. “It was ­unacceptable to be racist, and now they’re getting more permission.” The message was subtle but unmistakable: De Blasio was trying to pin the attacks in bright-blue New York on President Trump.

Hizzoner didn’t surrender the fantasy for some time. In June, he said: “I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.”

He left unclear how the Big ­Apple had come to be populated by ideological far-right types beating up on Jews. His comments ­underscored his inability to truly counter the type of street-level ­anti-Semitism spreading through the city.

Will he face the facts now? Or will Jews need to actually die, not just be pummeled, for our leaders to grasp the threat?

“Anti-Semitism is an attack on the values of our city — and we will confront it head-on,”

De Blasio tweeted after this latest round of violence against Jews. He has to stop beating around the bush. These attacks aren’t an ­attack on “our values.” They’re attacks on visibly Jewish people.

De Blasio needs to stop trying to find a “them” to be the opposite of his “us.” His juvenile obsession with having the right adversaries allows anti-Semitism to flourish.

I used to write about Europeans and their apathetic attitudes ­toward the Jew-hatred around them. Synagogues torched, Jews beaten — just another day on the Continent.

But now the demon is here, in America. Worse, it’s stalking Jews with increasing regularity in New York City, my city, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel. Hizzoner’s vague universalist rhetoric obscures this raw reality.

And it isn’t just his ideological blinders. The mayor has also helped create an anti-police ­atmosphere, in which the vigilant presence of officers is considered a bad thing. At an anti-police rally last month, there were signs calling for violence against the NYPD.

De Blasio’s response? He insinuated that the idea that there’s anti-police sentiment in our city is, yes, another right-wing plot.

In 2020 I don’t want to read ­another column like this one...