We’ve Seen This Hate Before
Americans do not know history and this ignorance poses an extreme threat to the safety and future of the Jewish community.
The October 7th massacre by Hamas in Israel showed the world the dangers of ignorant communities who were raised on hate. But 10/7 revealed that this level of witlessness is not limited to Gaza – it is on full display in the United States, too. When nations fail to understand and respect legitimate differences and are taught to divide the world into simplistic tropes, pluralism fails and things can get dangerous.
Only weeks ago, there was a photo of a young woman, protesting and wearing what appears to be a hijab and a Palestinian scarf in Cambridge, Massachusetts, outside of Harvard’s campus. Nearly all of the commentary regarding the young woman was focused on her sign—which stated “Free America from AIPAC” and had a swastika above the text—as well as Harvard’s disgraceful handling of attacks against the Jewish community. But something else was telling: her eyes.
The intense rage and hate in her eyes looked familiar; I’ve seen this intense rage and hate before. And it is the same spirit that led to genocide and the Holocaust.
During a League of Nations meeting in 1933, Jewish photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Eisenstaedt described Goebbels as cheerful and without a care. However, when Goebbels learned that Eisenstaedt was Jewish, Goebbels changed his persona. In Eisenstaedt’s own words, Goebbels, “looked up at me with an expression full of hate…He looked at me with hateful eyes and waited for me to wither. But I didn’t wither. If I have a camera in my hand, I don’t know fear.”
This image of Goebbels has haunted me since I first learned about the Holocaust in my early teens. While I can understand that disgusting racism thrives in many places around the globe, seeing the baseless hate emerging against Jews today represents a profound failure of our education system.
If our educational system were doing its job to authentically promote diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, students would understand that nearly all groups of Americans have faced discrimination at some point and that this nation is strong because so many diverse cultures and traditions are anchored by shared American values. Students would be empathetic to the historical struggles of various racial, ethnic, and religious groups. And students would know that despite various roadblocks, this nation remains a land of opportunity and upward mobility, and that hard work can and does pay off.
Instead, our youth are raised in a world where some groups are demonized while others are praised and encouraged to attack those who are believed to have power. The truth is the ubiquitous diversity, equity, and inclusion offices (DEI) along with historical ignorance and dangerous misinformation on social media platforms, have collectively created an incredibly dangerous world for Jews.
The identity politics of DEI offices promote a culture of victimization teaching that some are oppressors and others are oppressed, leading to a toxic campus culture where students shout down debate and discourage dialogue; at Berkeley last week, there was violence and the safety of Jewish students was compromised. DEI offices tend to believe that the world is divided between the oppressors and the oppressed, and almost any action taken to topple the oppressors is considered acceptable. Under this ideology, there is an unshakable belief that Jews are oppressors and that Israel is a “genocidal, settler, colonialist state.” A former DEI official found that “criticizing Israel and the Jewish people is not only acceptable but praiseworthy” and “if you defend them, you’re actively abetting racist oppression.”
These dangerous ideas have infected countless younger Americans. Data from a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll offers firm evidence of just how deep this indoctrination and dangerous misinformation about Israel and the Jewish community have become. Younger Americans, aged 18 through 24, who have grown up and been fully indoctrinated by diversity principles and are deeply ignorant about international history, hold shocking views that are notably divergent from those of older generations. When asked about whether the purported grievances of the Palestinians against Israel justify Hamas killing over 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping over 250 civilians, for instance, 60 percent of Americans 18 through 24 agree those genocidal actions could be justified. Nearly half of the same group support Hamas in the current conflict.
The nation’s failures in education represent an existential threat to the safety and stability of the country. No young person should harbor such hate as that protestor outside of Harvard displayed. Education is the antidote to extremism. It’s unlikely that anyone with an accurate understanding of history and the human condition could hold such vile feelings and views toward others in the abstract. As we enter the 2024 elections in earnest, we must make genuine education a key issue of the campaign. If not, we could be heading into a world where another Hitler-style persona emerges among us, and the consequences could be unthinkable.
