OPINION:
In recent years, we have seen an avalanche of antisemitic screeds on social media, often in the guise of attacks on Israel.
Although only a few of the most radical influencers have actually called for violence against Jews, “influencer” Hasan Piker — known only by reason of his inane and inflammatory remarks — recently made a statement that summoned to the fore deeply embedded echoes of the past.
He said: “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.”
To put his outrageous statement into terms that Mr. Piker himself might understand, it is as if someone said to him and to his fellow Muslims: “If Muslims in America keep focusing on Mecca, there will be violent consequences against American Muslims.”
Mr. Piker would be yelling “Islamophobia” from the rooftops.
The notion that Jews who support Israel — the Jewish homeland about which Jews have been praying for millennia and toward which they have always turned in the course of prayer — could or should be the object of violence is a step too far. It is outrageously provocative and unacceptable.
For me, such threats inevitably conjure up the sad fate of my grandparents, whom the Nazis murdered in 1943. I suspect that when the Germans arrived in their small Polish town, my grandparents could not have imagined what would befall them, despite the rhetoric and overt antisemitism of the Nazi regime.
As vocal hate spread, my grandparents were alone, bereft of any form of protection. They could not count on their government to assist them. The agents of the state — the police — were not their allies. Resistance against the armies of the Third Reich and their collaborators was simply not possible.
Yet antisemites calling for violence must know that the atrocity that befell my grandparents will not be my fate.
First, I have the sad advantage of knowing what the depravity of humankind can do and what it did to members of my family. It is no longer inconceivable that humans would endeavor to murder and dispose of a whole population on the basis of racial or ideological animus.
Second, we are not defenseless. We know that our government is prepared to protect us. Unlike the governments in Europe before and during World War II, which were either complicit in or passive bystanders to the destruction of the Jewish community, the government of the United States stands with us.
America is our ally, as it has been for generations, since George Washington assured the Jewish community of Newport that the United States would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
Living in the U.S. — a fundamentally tolerant nation that has been a precious home to generations of Jews and to which Jews have contributed so much — I am optimistic that the Jewish community will never stand alone. Supported by all who share the precious values of American freedom and tolerance, we know that we can weather the current crisis.
Mr. Piker and those who support him and his repulsive ideology should know this: If ever their incitement to violence against us moves into the realm of action, we will not be passive. The lessons of the past resonate far too strongly for that.
Should the hatemongers ever determine to carry out the threats they are casually disseminating, they will be met with resistance — and we are confident that our government will assist us in it.
I very much hope and expect that leaders of both major political parties make certain that anyone espousing hatred and inciting violence against the Jewish community will be castigated and ostracized. Should they fail to do so, Jews will not be victims.
Armed with the knowledge of past evil, we will not be led passively to another slaughter. We will resist, and I believe that with others and the support of our government, we will assuredly prevail over the purveyors of hate and violence.
• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality: Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights During the French Revolution.”
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