Hatred of the Jews unites far right and left

A few days ago, on the Media Diversified website, a writer called Nafeez Ahmed accused me of promoting genocide. I was apparently the “acceptable face” of “far-right extremist ideology” which remains “inspired by antisemitic ideology” and promotes “stereotypical negative tropes about Muslimised foreigners and minorities”.

Ahmed seized upon a piece I had written about the truly genocidal antisemitism coursing through the Islamic world. For stating that the Jews would defend themselves I found myself, as a Jewish person, accused of promoting genocide. This is as obscene as it is unhinged. For Jews are the principal targets of genocidal white supremacists.

Last Saturday a man called Robert Bowers allegedly walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue where the congregation was celebrating the sabbath and opened fire screaming: “All Jews must die.” Eleven were killed and many others wounded.

In New York that day, where I attended a synagogue guarded as a matter of routine by two armed police officers, grief and horror were compounded by two contradictory emotions. The first was shock that this could have happened in America, where Jews have felt so safe. The second was that, like Jewish communities in Britain which now have to be permanently under guard, American Jews have been dreading precisely this. That’s because of the toxic atmosphere of hatred, violence and hysteria. Antisemitism has exploded across the internet, social media and university campuses.

According to the US Extremist Crime Database, since 9/11 there have been 85 attacks by both radical Islamist and far-right extremists. This affects people across all faiths and cultures but Jews fear that they are particular targets. In Pittsburgh, this fear turned into horrific reality.

 Sickeningly, the attack was instantly turned into a political weapon. No matter that Bowers denounced Trump for being “a globalist, not a nationalist” — the very opposite of the left’s charge against the president. The left rose as one and blamed Trump for having incited the massacre through his nationalist rhetoric.