In this season of peace on Earth, good will to men, love and giving, a primer on antisemitism shouldn’t be needed. But that’s what was held earlier this week.
U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Highland Park, hosted an antisemitism roundtable at the Bernard Weinger Jewish Community Center in Northbrook with about a dozen collegians from the 10th Congressional District.
The congressman, one of 27 Jewish members of Congress, wanted to hear their personal experiences with growing instances of antisemitism at university campuses around the nation.
The students, eight of them from Lake County, attend Lake Forest College, the University of Wisconsin, University of Chicago, Loyola University in Chicago, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota and George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas horrific terrorist attacks which killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, hate crimes targeting Jews have spiked.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, the U.S. has seen an explosion of antisemitic events. The group has recorded some 1,481 antisemitic incidents, with 292 of those taking place on college and university campuses.
That’s nearly a 300% increase compared to last year, according to the ADL. Included in that soaring number of antisemitic acts is the vandalism at Am Echod Cemetery in Waukegan in November 2022. Suspects who spray-painted headstones with hate messages at the small cemetery on Grand Avenue, just east of Green Bay Road, remain at large.
According to a recent survey by the ADL and Hillel International, a Jewish student organization which is on about 850 universities, 73% of Jewish college students polled said they have experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism on their campuses this school year. They are not alone.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it, too, has seen an uptick in hate speech as the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza continues, where the Palestinian body count has risen to more than 17,000. Islamophobic hate emails, phone calls and social media posts have targeted Palestinians, along with Islamic centers, mosques and schools across the U.S.
Students at the roundtable all told Schneider of instances of antisemitism on their campuses. Some described tensions between Jewish and Palestinian students at their colleges. A recent study reckons that nearly 3 million Illinoisans are members of hate groups or align with them.
Into this crucible of hate struts former President Donald Trump, echoing Adolf Hitler and praising multiple dictators, including the brutal despot, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has repeatedly used the vile phrase, “poisoning the blood of America,” when talking about immigrants on the Southern Border. This while he’s on the campaign trail for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Hitler, the German dictator whose policies and rhetoric sparked World War II and who ordered the extermination of more than 6 million European Jews, used the term “blood poisoning” in his autobiographical book, “Mein Kampf.” The tome has been banned in Germany since 1945.
Yet, the former president, who faces four court cases in three states and Washington, D.C., uses that term when referring to immigrants and who knows who else. “They’re poisoning the blood of our country. That’s what they’ve done,” Trump said at the rally in Durham, N.H., according to The Associated Press. “They’re coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, from all over the world. They’re pouring into our country.”
In a 1990 Vanity Fair interview, Trump’ first wife, the late Ivana Trump, alleged the former president kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside in their Manhattan residence. An odd choice of reading for a businessman, let alone presidential hopeful.
Some may remember the Trump administration unleased a bunch of policies limiting immigration, including for people who entered the country illegally, were from some Muslim nations or sought asylum in the U.S. Most of those regulations were reversed by the Biden administration.
More Top Picks Best Chick Starter Kits For First Time Owners
That doesn’t stop Trump from railing about “poisoned blood” in the U.S. It sounds like he is taking a page from the hate book of the one-time Immigration Restriction League, which was founded in the early 1900s.
Then, those opposed to immigration were targeting Italians, Greeks, Jews and Eastern Europeans, which were termed “undesirable classes.” League members warned against, “absorbing the excitable blood from Southern Europe.” Sound familiar?
Back then, President Theodore Roosevelt and most right-thinking Republicans rejected the anti-immigrant tirades. In 1910, legal immigration peaked with more than 1 million immigrants entering the U.S. Seventy percent of those were Eastern and Southern Europeans.
Of course, Trump isn’t the only politician or public official to fan the flames of hate during this retrogressive trend of antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant. Somewhere along the line they, and quite a few among us, even those who have roots as immigrants, have lost our sense of civility.
Civility, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Rick Bragg once noted, toward even those with whom we do not agree, is an heirloom. ‘Tis the season where we should dust off that thought.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
X @sellenews