With anti-Semitic violence, the skin color of those pulling the trigger doesn’t matter | Opinion

At around 12:30 p.m. Dec. 10, a plainclothes on-duty detective approached a suspicious van at Bay View Cemetery in Jersey City. He was shot dead. No chase ensued. The truck then drove slowly and deliberately 15 blocks away to the Jersey City Kosher Supermarket. Two African Americans exited the van with long rifles, crossed the street, paid no mind to the dozens of bystanders who began scattering, and opened fire on the deli — ultimately murdering three people including two Jews before nearby police officers put an end to the shooting.

Security footage shows that the perpetrators previously had canvassed this specific grocery store. One of the suspects evidently posted anti-Semitic content online and was also once a part of the Black Hebrew Israelites — a movement that has been labeled a militant hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Much more information may come to light. A live pipe bomb was found in their truck afterward — were they staging something bigger that the detective disrupted? — but it’s likely only Jews and Jewish media outlets that will pay attention. For the rest of America, the news cycle will have moved on (or has it already?) to more interesting discussion points on anti-Semitism: how President Trump invokes anti-Semitic tropes, believing them to be admirable traits. How his executive order intended to protect Jewish students from harassment and discrimination is really just an assault on free speech. Whether or not anti-Zionism is actually anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, Jewish blood is being spilled.

Jews have been sounding the alarm about rising anti-Semitism with increasing urgency in recent years. But somehow, we only find a captive audience when the hatred is motivated by white, right-wing bigotry.

Do you remember the incident, just three months after the latest white-supremacist assault on praying Jews, when a man pulled up in front of a Miami synagogue and shot yet another Jewish man, six times in the leg? Probably not. He was charged with a hate crime, but his skin was the wrong color.

Have you been following the steady stream of violent attacks against Jews and Jewish schools in the largely minority neighborhoods of New York and the surrounding area? Visibly Jewish individuals have been chased, punched, assaulted and stabbed. A rabbi was hospitalized this summer after a black man not known to him smashed his face with a cinder block. None of this can be traced to alt-right ideology, so it’s simply treated as a matter for local law enforcement.

How about on college campuses, certainly no hotbed of white supremacy, where anti-Semitic vandalism has become commonplace, and Jewish students report being ostracized, excoriated and silenced because they are identified with the state of Israel? This spring, Jewish students at Emory University awoke to eviction notices posted outside their doors by pro-Palestinian activists. As long as no one has been shot or murdered, the media appear more concerned with defending anti-Semites’ free speech than with listening to Jews who say they feel targeted because of their identity.

There is a pattern emerging, and it should be unsettling not only to Jews but also to anyone who cares about the health of our society. If we are only able to call out anti-Semitism when it comes from our political opponents, what does that say about where we are headed?

Zach Schapira is the executive director of the J’accuse Coalition for Justice.