Why Do the Media Overlook Anti-Semitism?

Brooklyn’s oldest synagogue glows on Shabbat night, filled with congregants and security guards. Photo: Lucas Paschke

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By LUCAS PASCHKE

I was on my way to the Avenue P subway station in Brooklyn after school when time seemed to come to a halt. To my left was a police cruiser with officers unaware of what was going down. To my right were two men. One was wearing a gray tracksuit and holding a bag out in front of him. The other was a Jewish man, struggling to wiggle free. The man in the gray tracksuit had just stolen his belongings. Hardly three feet from the attack, I clenched my backpack, hoping that the officers would notice. 

Though they’re a mere 2.4% of the nation’s population, as reported by the U.S. Census, Jewish Americans often face situations like these. Anti-semitism has plagued the country since the first Jews landed on the shores of New Amsterdam in 1650. The NYPD’s latest data shows that anti-semitic hate crimes in New York City were up 72% in January. Year after year, Jews are among the city’s most frequent targets of hate, according to the NYPD’s hate crime unit.

Last year, there were 198 anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city, the most of any group. For comparison, there were 131 hate-related attacks on Asian Americans and 38 on African Americans. This data is available on the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Dashboard.  

These astonishing statistics are some that you have likely never heard of.  But unfortunately, this lapse of information can be credited to our nation’s media, who downplay and sometimes outright ignore the amount of anti-semitic hate crimes that occur on a widespread basis.

On January 16, 2022, Malik Faisal Akram ran into Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and took a group of congregation members and their rabbi hostage for over 11 hours. Texas police eventually killed Akram – a victory for law enforcement that came with a sigh of relief from the nation. But the situation haunted me for weeks after I watched the reign of terror unfold on national television.

After the incident went down, special agent Matthew DeSarno of the FBI reported to the media that the attacker’s motive was “not specifically related to the Jewish community.” How could it be that an attack on a synagogue is not related to the Jewish community?

What the media did not widely report is that Akram called for the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national serving an 86 year sentence for the attempted murder of U.S. troops. Siddiqui, also known as “Lady Al-Qaeda,” is a well-known anti-semite.

But agencies like the Associated Press made no mention of this detail in their incident reports, as journalist Bari Weiss noted. Do Jews have to worry whether we’ll be the victims of yet another attack that the media will quickly forget about?

When you think of anti-semitism, you probably first think of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. This picture aligns with the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in October 2018 in Pittsburgh, when Robert Bowers, a white supremacist, ran into the synagogue during worship and shot 11 people. It’s easy to blame anti-semitism on right-wing extremists. Everybody is comfortable talking about hate when it’s coming from white supremacists.

But unfortunately, hate against Jews comes from many places, including other minority groups. As reported by Tablet Magazine, for most anti-semitic hate crimes in NYC, “the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic.” In fact, over half the anti-semitic attacks in the city are committed by people of color, according to NYPD data. The Tablet report goes on: “A close look at these cases reveals no apparent connection to neo-Nazis, the alt-right, Donald Trump, jihadism, the BDS movement, or any other traditional cause of anti-Jewish behavior.” This is surprising and concerning, and shows there’s more to anti-semitism than the simplistic explanation we usually get in the media.

This may explain why so many anti-semitic attacks are ignored in the news. Since the perpetrators of these crimes are often not white, the incidents contradict the “white supremacy” vs. “minority victim” mindset that commonly dominates politics. But it shouldn’t matter who commits the crime. Hate is hate.

Since the rebirth of the civil rights movement in mid-2020, Americans have invested in a strong push to fight oppression in the United States. But unfortunately, it seems that American Jews have been left behind in this effort, defined by the stereotypes that haunted our ethnic group for centuries. Both the left and right are responsible for this situation, and the media refuses to raise awareness.

In February, Whoopi Goldberg, a popular talk show host of The View, said that “the Holocaust wasn’t about race…the Nazis were white people, and most of the people they were attacking were white people.” Of course, the Nazis did view Jews as a race – an inferior one. Goldberg later apologized, but the damage was already done. 

Many have been “canceled” for less, but Goldberg said this on national television without significant repercussions. Goldberg made the common mistake of seeing oppression as a “race-only” phenomenon, completely ignoring what is happening to Jewish people, regardless of the fact that most are light-skinned.

There needs to be a significant reconciliation within left- and right-wing America about who Jews are. This applies directly to the media, who need to stop lobbying on behalf of a political viewpoint and instead report on real news – even if it doesn’t fit their political agenda or the opinions of their bases.

Meanwhile, cities like NYC need to focus their attention and resources more effectively to tackle anti-semitic hate crimes in the city. The city’s efforts so far have been downright lazy. America is not safe for Jews. We are people, just like anyone else, who deserve a safe place to live where we are not targeted simply for a set of beliefs that we follow.