WASHINGTON (TNS) — With the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim at the Capital Jewish Museum Wednesday night, the tip of the Jewish genocide spear struck at the heart of Israel’s most stalwart ally. Jews are safe nowhere from the terrorists who shout “Free, free Palestine!”
Before the blood of two innocents spilled onto the Washington, D.C., sidewalk, near the National Mall, talk around the world was of whether Israel itself was the perpetrator of genocide. Amnesty International made the case last December that Israel’s decision to defend itself from a heinous attack that killed more than 1,200 Jews and launched from Gaza was a genocide against the Palestinians there.
Even today, to bolster that charge, government spokesmen and news reports alike cite casualty figures for Jewish actions that originate from the very terrorists who started this war and that do not differentiate between Israeli killing of Hamas terrorists and civilians caught in the crossfire. They’re nothing but propaganda.
Here are the facts: Were it not for the 10/7 mass murder and kidnappings, not a single American bomb would be dropped by Israeli warplanes on Gaza now. No Israeli troops would be there rooting around underground for captive civilians. Food, water and fuel would all be flowing to the Muslim enclave.
If the world cared one whit for genocide, there would be United Nations resolutions condemning the decisions to drive Jews from Turkey and Iraq and Syria and Jordan and Iran and Egypt and Morocco and Tunisia and on and on, all of which have happened in the years after Hitler’s Holocaust. But there are none, because the world too often turns the other way as Jews are killed or driven from their homes.
In America on college campuses, chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a call for the erasure of the Middle East’s most vibrant remaining Jewish population — echo through the halls that are supposed to be educating our future leaders. Indeed, the chant of the Capital Jewish Museum suspect, Elias Rodriguez, “Free, free, Palestine” was the calling card of moderate protesters uncomfortable with the murderous tinge of “From the river to the sea.”
I guess we can see how moderate.
In our home — what we like to think of as the most tolerant place on the planet, where anyone can become an American — Jewish people have faced a rising tide of antisemitism. According to an April report by the Anti-Defamation League, there were more than 9,000 incidents of anti-Jewish harassment, vandalism and assault here in 2024. That’s up more than 800% over a decade. While antisemitism is often associated with the far right, the twin epicenters of this tide of hate in America are in liberal New York and California.
The United States is home to the world’s second largest Jewish population after Israel. With the weight of history upon us, we have a responsibility to keep them safe here and in Israel.
In the wake of this horrible violence, President Donald Trump has said all the right things, but last week when he toured the Middle East, he didn’t do anything. The incitement to hate all things Jewish found in the state media and schools throughout the Middle East and often funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates wasn’t even on the agenda. Qatar’s funding and hosting of Hamas was a footnote to the deal-making and Trump’s decision to accept a $400 million plane from the Qatari royals.
The murder of two Jewish kids about to embark on a life together mere blocks from the United States Senate and the White House ought to wake us up to the hate that has found a home among us. This hate is a problem for both the right and the left.
For starters, Trump should make combating it a higher priority than airborne luxury.
(Dave Mastio is a national columnist for the Kansas City Star and McClatchy newspapers.)
