‘Never Again Is Right Now’
A lynch mob overran an airport in Russia’s southern Dagestan region on Sunday, chanting “Allahu Akbar” and searching for Jewish passengers on an inbound flight from Israel. The attack injured at least 20 people (two critically) and came a day after similar scenes outside a nearby hotel rumored to be “full of Jews.”
The Russian riots became the latest examples of antisemitic violence since the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel killed more than 1,400 people.
Once considered a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing persecution, the U.S. is now confronting its own rising tide of antisemitic violence. The number of antisemitic incidents in America—a metric that includes reported incidents of vandalism, harassment, and assault targeting Jews—rose to 312 since Hamas’ massacre from 64 in the same period last year, the Anti-Defamation League reported last week. And Western Europe has experienced similar surges amid massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In London, where thousands have taken to the streets to call for “intifada,” authorities recorded 218 antisemitic hate crimes from October 1 to October 18 compared with 15 in the same period last year.
The demonstrations and antisemitic incidents underscore the increasingly blurred lines between people who claim to oppose the actions of the Israeli government, those who call for death and destruction to befall Jews in general, and the latest, potentially lethal strain of antisemitism taking hold in liberal-minded countries: anti-Zionism—a movement that rejects the state of Israel’s right to exist.
