The Symbol of Intolerance : Sanctimony and Islam

"The Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the White House, alongside congress and local officials, must speak out -- and speak out forcefully -- against this scourge of anti-Semitism impacting communities across the country."
"Members of our community must see swift and concerted action from federal officials to identify and capture the perpetrator or perpetrators who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in our communities."
David Posner, spokesperson, JCC Association of North America

Melanie Steinhardt comforts Becca Richman at the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia    Credit: AFP

"[The vandalism and bomb threats represent serious, unacceptable behaviour which the Department of the Attorney-General will] do what it can to assist in pushing back ... and prosecuting anybody that we can prove to be a part of it."
"We are a nation that is a diverse constituency, and we don't need these kind[s] of activities."
U.S. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions

The rising tide of viral anti-Semitism appears to be nowhere near abating. Democrats insist that the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States and his catering to the dark forces of the right wing has emboldened society's anti-Semites to come out of the sewers where they usually slither, undetected but for occasional poisonous attacks. Certainly, some of the followers of Donald Trump during the election campaign, even more unsavoury that himself, give a bit of credence to that theory.

On the other hand, because of his personal animus and distrust of Muslims -- where the Obama administration went out of its way to consult with the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, where the President of the United States would avoid speaking of attacks on Jews by Muslims at home and abroad as nothing but 'random attacks on folks', seemed to keep blatant anti-Semitic attacks to a minimum -- perhaps President Trump's statements and actions have created a backlash from within that community.

It is, after all, a community whose growing presence throughout Europe has been almost entirely responsible for the rising persecution and violence against Jews in France, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden and virtually across the continent where Jews have lived for centuries and Arabs more recently, leading to mass 'protests' by Arabs and Muslims slandering Israel and pillorying any Jews that support Israel as hated Zionists.

There have always been, from time to time, random episodes of anti-Semitism wherever Jews have settled in the diaspora. Where Jewish community centres, parochial schools and synagogues have been defaced, sometimes fire-bombed, and cemetery monuments upturned. These latest threats against Jewish community centres have taken on a deeper, even more malevolent tone of terrorism. Jewish cemeteries where hundreds of gravestones have been upturned and smashed have a pattern, appearing in various states across the country.

Where, a Jewish cemetery dating to the 1800s was the scene of another several hundred headstones overturned and damaged in Philadelphia, hard on a suburban St.Louis cemetery reeling from a similar desecration. The much-publicized involvement of someone like Linda Sarsour whose Hamas associations identify her sentiments and others of her ilk from the Muslim community taking to social fundraising sites profiling themselves as sympathetic to the Jewish community reeling from these attacks belie their otherwise Israel-bashing normalcy.

The "abominable crime" of desecrating graves for the purpose of demonstrating contempt for Jews is an old story brought to life in an excess of hatred reflective of an acceleration of an old brand. The safety and security of Jews in North America has not yet reached the critical levels of fear and potential danger now being seen in Europe which has become drenched in the weight of a growing population of Muslims among whom Islamists thrive.

Muslim authorities tend to ignore the rare moderates among them who plead for a cessation of the Friday sermons condemning Infidels, Christians and Jews to the fires of hell, to no avail. A religion that considers itself god's final and complete salvation for the human race, one which holds that only where Islam prevails is there peace, while elsewhere war prevails, and it is Islam's duty to bring peace to non-Muslim nations by waging the war of jihad cannot be anything but what it is: an intolerant, bigoted, hate-mongering fascist ideology.