Is anti-Semitism on the rise? Does anyone care?
It’s been a bad 2017 for Jews. During the month of January, 48 bomb threats were called in to Jewish community centers across the country. Also last month, a neo-Nazi made national news by promising to hold a march in Whitefish, Mont., to intimidate the town’s small Jewish population.
It was thus unsurprising that two reporters were moved to ask President Donald Trump at Thursday’s news conference about a rise in anti-Semitism — and that many of us were aghast at Trump’s rude dismissal of the first reporter, an Orthodox Jew, and Trump’s unwillingness to take the question seriously.
But here’s the thing: As bad as 2017 has been for anti-Semitic incidents, 2016 wasn’t great, either. Nor was 2015, when the Anti-Defamation League reported 90 anti-Semitic incidents on campuses, twice as many as the year before — a slow drip that has continued into this school year.
A journalist could stay very busy writing about anti-Semitic graffiti in higher ed — and not at right-wing Christian schools, but at ostensibly liberal ones. Last August, students at Swarthmore College, the progressive Quaker college outside Philadelphia, found two swastikas painted on a stall in a bathroom of the main library. A week later, they found another swastika on a tree in the school’s woods. There have been reports of anti-Semitic incidents at Oberlin College, the University of California at Los Angeles, Brown University and Northwestern University.
You may not have heard about any of this or, for that matter, about the multiple cases of anti-Muslim vandalism on campuses last year. Indeed, given how frequently students come across hateful graffiti, to merit widespread media attention the provocations have to be particularly crass, or committed by fraternities or soccer teams.
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Excellent fucking question, especially given the "president's" recent lack of remarks.
= new reply since forum marked as read
