Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
November 16, 2023
The oft-heard chants of “bring them home,” and “no cease fire,” that permeated the picture perfect Autumn air Tuesday in our nation’s capital presented a familiar tone conjuring up memories of another great gathering of the masses of G-d’s chosen people.
Myriad speeches given in support of an oppressed people simply wanting to live in peace; to live their lives without fear of intimidation, without fear of being silenced, without fear of being terrorized, and without fear of being slaughtered because we choose to live our lives freely as Jewish people around the world. Thousands of people carrying flags, banners, posters, and signs, then as now put forth that same message. The roughly 290,000 people who attended the rally against Antisemitism on Tuesday, November 14 did so peacefully, without incident.
Nearly 36 years ago, December 6, 1987, on a cold, bleak-looking, DC Sunday afternoon, about 250,000 people from around the globe, gathered in support of Soviet Jewry - a great concern for almost two million people trapped behind the Iron Curtain - refused permission to either live and worship as Jews, or leave the Soviet Union for the freedoms they yearned. Refuseniks, they were called in those days.
“Those days,” like it occurred in ancient times. Perhaps to the multitude of young people rallying in Washington, DC on Tuesday, 1987 IS ancient times. That said, it warmed the heart verily to see such a throng of young people gathered to fight a seemingly never ending hate - the vituperative evil of Antisemitism - prejudice against and/or hatred of Jews, simply because we are Jewish.
Jew hatred, in all its forms, verbal abuse, verbal and written tropes, mocking, bullying, threats via social media, physical threats, physical violence, vandalism, destruction of property and reputation, desecration of synagogues, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish owned businesses and homes, as well as murder, are fears Jews face on a daily basis. These fears are not just faced in far away places, chants of “gas the Jews” at an Antisemitic march outside the Sydney (Australia) Opera House, for example, but throughout the United States. This is most prevalent on the nation’s college and university campuses.
Since the October 7 invasion by the terrorist group Hamas of Israel and their slaughter of more than 1,400 innocent Israeli civilians, Antisemitism in the United States has not just risen, but pole vaulted an astronomical 388 percent. In “normal times” the Jewish people are subjected to nearly 60 percent of all hate crimes perpetrated in the United States - 60 percent upon a people totaling 1.7 percent of the nation’s population.
While the feckless Biden administration, feckless on so many levels, has given lip service to condemning Antisemitism it does so with the condemnation of Islamophobia with the very next breath. The two are not interchangeable, and acts of Antisemitism are six times more likely to occur than acts of Islamophobia.
The rally to support Israel and to bring home the more than 240 hostages of Israeli, American, Italian, Mexican, and a cadre of other nationalities that took place on November 14, just like the rally for Soviet Jewry in 1987, demonstrated the best of behaviors - peaceful rallying and chanting, sans violence, vandalism, graffiti, or arrests. The polar opposite has been the behaviors exhibited during the dozens and dozens of campus protests supporting Hamas, calling for the evisceration of Israel and the deaths of all Jews. Their rallying cry of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” calls for just that.
This, along with false information still on the social media pages of members of the US Congress - Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) - who still have yet to condemn the decapitation of Israeli babies by Hamas. Jews rallying in DC chanted “bring them home,” regarding the more than 240 hostages held by Hamas - many women and children - babies as young as, now, 10 months, and even an elderly Holocaust survivor.
Meanwhile, Hamas, the Palestinians who elected them in 2006, with nary an election since, and the thousands of campus denizens are calling for barbarism and death. Jewish students from coast to coast are frightened - afraid to go to class, dining halls, or just be on campus, either alone or in groups. (https://sanfordspeaksout.blogspot.com/2023/11/jew-hating-like-its-1938.html)
There is a kind of irony between the 1987 rally, in which I participated proudly as a University of Maryland senior - a volunteer to help the tens of thousands of visitors to their nation’s capital traverse the DC streets and Metro stations around the Mall where the rallies then and now occurred, and that of this past Tuesday.
In 1987 we rallied in support of Soviet Jews not allowed to leave the USSR. In 2023, while rallying against virulent Antisemitism on campuses, and for Hamas-held hostages to be released - given their freedom, there are hundreds of thousands of Gazans also not permitted to leave Gaza - by Hamas, not by Israelis. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as is their history, gives warnings to Gazans - telling civilians to leave northern Gaza - while the IDF roots out Hamas terrorists and searches for hostages, both above ground, as well as underground in the labyrinth of more than 300 miles of tunnels engineered by Hamas. This sophisticated system houses caches of munitions, armaments, AK-47s, under homes, hospitals, and mosques, as well as in hospitals, in schools, even in mosques, knowing Israelis won’t attack hospitals, schools, or mosques. These tunnels contain bathroom and kitchen facilities, sleeping quarters, and evidence that hostages have been or are still being held there. These tunnels even have a ventilation system strong enough to not asphyxiate terrorists who are burning victims alive.
It is Israeli troops helping Gazans flee Hamas. It is Israeli troops assisting with the humanitarian aid that, once they are gone, much of the aid will end up in the hands of Hamas, and not civilians.
Sadly, the supporters of Hamas, Palestinians, and so-called Palestine, are so radically indoctrinated with lies told by professors and the so-called mainstream media, their level of Antisemitic vitriol and violence stems from ignorance of epic proportions. Ignorance of real, true history about Israel, the Biblical, ancestral, historical homeland of the Jewish people. Ignorance of the facts that Israel is neither a colonizer nor an apartheid state. Ignorance of the fact that there was a cease fire on October 6, shattered by Hamas. And ignorance of the facts that if Israel were to lay down its weapons, Israel would cease to exist, but if Hamas set down their weapons, there would be peace.
Israel loves life and wants peace - witness the Abraham Accords during the Trump administration; while Hamas opposes peace, and worships death - witness their murderous behavior, or read their charter calling for the eradication of Israel and the deaths of the entirety of the Jewish people.
Peace and freedom - the rallying cries of the 1987 rally, and the 2023 rally. Sadly, a difference between the two, while then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush spoke at the 1987 rally, neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris would show their faces - either in person or via video from Air Force One. Biden chose Xi Jingping of the Chinese Communist Party over the Jewish people of the United States of America. Air Force One waits for the president, not the other way around. Had Biden or Harris opted to be there they would have been welcome. His lack of leadership (on this and so many key issues) sends a message loud and clear to the myriad college and university presidents - some of whom are Jewish - who have sat on their hands as Antisemitism runs rampant under their domain, while the slightest microaggression regarding pronouns et al, are punished with impunity. The time is now to step up, squash Antisemitism like the cockroach it is, and deliver a strong message that never again is NOW.
Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN. He last visited Israel with his wife in 2019.
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