The Patriot Post® · Acceptable Anti-Semitism?

Last Sunday, a “Jews for Trump” convoy of hundreds of cars draped with American flags and Trump 2020 banners paraded from Coney Island in Brooklyn to the Trump Tower in Manhattan, prior to heading for a rally at Brooklyn’s Marine Park. The rally was organized by Boris Epshteyn, an adviser to the Trump campaign and co-chair of Jewish Voices for Trump.

And how did a city where 68% of registered voters are Democrats — Democrats who view themselves as some of the most “tolerant” people in the nation — react?

“Vehicles in the convoy were attacked at certain points along the route, some of which was documented,” World Israel News reported. “Eggs and rocks were thrown at cars, a car window was punched by an angry bicyclist and in one case a family of seven was pepper-sprayed on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. The suspect was arrested.”

That family of seven included four kids, and one member of the family stated they were driving down 5th Avenue in Manhattan with their car’s windows rolled down and sporting a Trump flag. A car pulled up alongside and spewed pepper spray into the family’s car. “Immediately the kids started crying and screaming and I jumped out of the car after I was peppered [sic] sprayed as well,” the victim said. The victim also said the attacker pursued him down the avenue trying to pepper-spray him again. At that point, his mother flagged down a cop who arrested the suspect. Following the incident, the man said that his kids were “left traumatized” and “coughing from” the residue.

Contemptible? Undoubtedly. Yet far more troubling — and far more indicative — was the fact that the man would only speak to Fox News on condition of his anonymity, because he feared his family could be targeted for reprisal.

A video shows the equally tolerant behavior directed at rally participant and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had his own vehicle pelted with eggs, even as “protesters” shouted obscenities including “F—ing scum,” “F—k you, Rudy,” and “You f—ing coward. Go back to f—ing Long Island.” Another video shows Trump supporters being attacked in Times Square, while yet another shows a Trump supporter being attacked and his vehicle vandalized by red paint while cops struggle to maintain order.

All of them show how comfortable leftists are with shutting down opposing points of view — even to the point of violence.

A spokesperson for the New York Police Department stated that 11 people were taken into custody. Six were charged with disorderly conduct, obstruction of government administration, and harassment. A seventh person was charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. Apparently still at large is a gang of thugs in Brooklyn that hurled rocks at cars from a Prospect Expressway overlook as the convoy passed beneath it.

According to the Associated Press, the Jews for Trump website indicated that Sunday’s rally was aimed at showing solidarity with “the beleaguered Red Zone community,” a reference to the coronavirus hot spots designated by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as areas where schools and what the city deems nonessential businesses are required to close to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. “The rally follows weeks of tensions in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods over the coronavirus restrictions,” the AP adds.

Perhaps those tensions have something to do with the capriciousness of Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who have both made it clear that “nonessential” applies far more forcefully to people seeking religious freedom than those protesting “systemic” racism.

On Monday, Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser and himself Jewish, called for Joe Biden to condemn the thuggish response to people exercising their First Amendment rights. “I really hope that Joe Biden, his campaign, will come out and condemn these anti-Semitic actions that were taken against Trump supporters and be respectful again,” Kushner stated.

That’s not likely to happen for a number of reasons. First, reports indicate that Biden has only one in-person event (in Georgia) scheduled between now and the election, along with several online events that won’t require him to leave his home. All of those will be tightly scripted. Yet more to the point, even though religious Jews support Trump by a margin of 83% to 13%, Jewish Americans overall, most of whom are secular, support Biden by a margin of three to one. Since neither camp is likely to see any mass defections at this point, it’s hardly necessary for Biden to weigh in at all.

Rudy Giuliani believes the Trump campaign should put the issue front and center. “I would love to have had a campaign commercial of it and put it on in the middle of America and say, ‘Who would you prefer for the next four years?’” he stated. “This group of foul-mouthed people who don’t seem to have a vocabulary beyond three words, or these very nice Jewish people who are driving in the car and not saying anything back and not doing anything other than exercising their right to say they’re for Donald Trump”?

Giuliani is naive. At the 2012 Democrat National Convention, party efforts to insert references to “God” and “Jerusalem” back into the party platform were met with a loud chorus of boos. Moreover, two different surveys reveal astonishing realities. In New York City, which has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, the first survey showed that nearly 20% of Millennials and Gen Z-ers believe Jews caused the Holocaust. The second survey revealed that nearly half of all Americans in the entire nation don’t know what the phrase “anti-Semitism” means.

Thus, ignorance is as great a pandemic as coronavirus — if not more so.

Yet far more ominous is the progressive mindset inadvertently revealed by Jewish comedienne Sarah Silverman. In her recently launched podcast, Silverman criticizes progressives for refusing to offer redemption to victims of the Cancel Culture. Victims, she explained, who will ultimately “go where they are accepted, which is the motherf—ing dark side.”

The arrogance is breathtaking. Silverman believes she and other progressives own the franchise on “enlightened” thinking to the point where everyone else requires their forgiveness, lest they be “canceled.”

Canceled to what degree? Columnist Jennifer Fitz, who finds Trump “abhorrent” but is “probably” voting for him anyway, offers a warning. “From the right, I continue to see the usual callous indifference to the lives of ordinary people, but it’s just indifference,” she writes. “The message I am getting from the left is that I am a target they mean to destroy.”

Jewish New Yorker Dov Hikind, who served as a Democrat state assemblyman for three decades, attended the Jews for Trump rally in Marine Park, and didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, gets the same feeling. “The values of this country,” he asserts, “are being destroyed by a small group of people on the radical left who are deciding what you can say, what you can believe in, and what’s right for everyone.”

Not just deciding. Enforcing — to the point of violence. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because those who know history have heard it all before:

“First they came for the Jews…” —Martin Niemöller