“...And Everybody Hates the Jews”

I don’t understand why so many people are anti-Semitic. I’m not referring to the Palestinians or Muslims around the world. Nor the right-wingers in Europe. But the many people in our own country who secretly – and overtly – feel a special antipathy towards Jews.

You hear it during the political campaigns, when questions are raised about Obama’s support for Israel. You hear it at the fringes of the McCain-Palin rallies where the neo-liths rail against the Jews who “control Hollywood and Wall Street.” (As the number of foreclosures continues to rise, that ugly voice will grow louder and less secret.)

The insidiousness of the anti-Semitism is like the poor white trash hatred of blacks. An example of it surfaced at the middle school in a suburb of St. Louis. A group of students participated in what they called "Hit a Jew Day." It is reported that only a handful actually hit Jewish children, but a bunch more egged them on and taunted the victims.

We all know that children can behave badly in a heavily-peer culture, but the seeds of such behavior are planted and cultivated – or at least not uprooted – at home.

The very purpose of schools is to repair the damage done by incompetent parenting, but all too often teachers are reluctant to confront such attitudes, because they share them or because they are afraid of confrontations with parents.

Such ignorance and bigotry should not be countenanced. Edward Yashinsky, a Polish poet who survived a Nazi concentration camp only to die in a Soviet camp said, “Fear not your enemies for they can only kill you; fear not your friends for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent who permit killers and betrayers to walk safely on the Earth.”

The students, their parents, teachers, administrators, and school board members, should all spend a day learning about the Holocaust.





NB: The title is a line from a Tom Lehrer song.
 

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