Rabbi Aryeh Spero, president of Conference of Jewish Affairs, stated today:
“Within the last 24 hours, groups of Muslims have physically attacked Jews eating in a restaurant in West Hollywood, Jews coming out of a bagel shop on the East Side of Manhattan, and have yelled ‘F— the Jews!’ from their cars on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. In the 350 years of Jewish residency here in America, we know of no case where Jews have been physically beaten up as Jews as is happening now. In California, Jewish worshipers this week were harassed while praying in the synagogue’s parking lot by ‘Mid-eastern looking men.’
“While those opposed to Israel may find all of this acceptable, since it is being done against people with whom they disagree, this type of physical violence against Jewish people is just as racist as when done against black people or Muslim people. This is the way it may be done in Lebanon or Iraq, but here in America we have never accepted the idea that one can beat up someone because of their race, in this case Jewish, or because someone doesn’t like their politics. This is the Beirut-ization of America, the importation of jihadist wild ways that do not belong here.
“We saw the beginnings of such violence,” stated Rabbi Spero, “perpetrated against Jews on America’s college campuses by groups such as ‘Students for Justice in Palestine.’ Until the recent un-vetted importation of people from Middle East terrorist states, such things did not happen on American campuses, nor in American cities. Simply because Israel is not popular in the ‘woke’ culture, and simply because Black Lives Matter and Muslim groups desire the elimination of the State of Israel, this does not give them free reign to destroy every noble and cherished principle that has guided this country. This is a destruction of our cultural ethos; this is the epitome of cancel culture.
“We at the Conference of Jewish Affairs call on the U.S. Department of Justice to find all those who have engaged in these violent and un-American activities against our Jewish citizens and to thoroughly investigate the organizations and imams who are poisoning the minds of these young people and, beyond question, instigating them to do that which might be acceptable back in the Middle East but is abhorrent here in America.” Rabbi Spero emphasized: “Because today’s ‘woke’ ideology provides victim status for certain groups cannot mean that those groups have a right to perpetrate violence and victimize others.”
Rabbi Spero concluded, “We at the Conference of Jewish Affairs would like to commend those non-Jews who in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami found themselves at the scenes of this terrorism and at their own risk stood up and rescued the unarmed and unaware Jews suddenly confronted by the jihadist mobs.”