(Jewish Group) Why So Many People Still Don't Understand Anti-Semitism
Most people do not realize that Jews make up just 2 percent of the U.S. population and 0.2 percent of the world’s population. This means simply finding them takes a lot of effort. But every year in Western countries, including America, Jews are the No. 1 target of anti-religious hate crimes. Anti-Semites are many things, but they aren’t lazy. They’re animated by one of the most durable and deadly conspiracy theories in human history.
This past Saturday in Texas, another one found his mark. According to the latest news reports, Malik Faisal Akram traversed an ocean to accomplish his task, flying from the United Kingdom to America in late December. On January 15, he took Colleyville’s Congregation Beth Israel hostage for more than 11 hours. When it was all over, Akram was dead and his captives were not. The hostages escaped after their rabbi engineered a distraction, drawing on security training he had received from the Anti-Defamation League and other communal organizations. Something else most people don’t realize is that many rabbis need and receive security training.
Speaking about Jews as symbols is always uncomfortable, and that’s especially the case when bullet holes are still fresh in the sanctuary. But the sad fact is, that’s why the Texas congregants were attacked in the first place: because Jews play a sinister symbolic role in the imagination of so many that bears no resemblance to their lived existence.
After Akram pulled a gun on the congregation, he demanded to speak to the rabbi of New York’s Central Synagogue, who he claimed could authorize the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman serving an attempted murder sentence in a Fort Worth facility near Beth Israel.
Obviously, this is not how the prison system works. “This was somebody who literally thought that Jews control the world,” Beth Israel Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker told The Forward. “He thought he could come into a synagogue, and we could get on the phone with the ‘Chief Rabbi of America’ and he would get what he needed.”
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This is a year old, and likely something posted here back then, but it is worth reposting given recent events.
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