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Video Catches Latest Synagogue Attackers Red-Handed. Shatters Media Narrative.

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A group of African-American teens is wanted after an act of vandalism against a Brooklyn synagogue, according to the New York Post.

“A group of teens launched a metal pole through a glass window of a Brooklyn synagogue as members of the congregation observed the Sabbath on Saturday evening, authorities said,” the paper reported.

The unnamed synagogue is on Franklin Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

The latest incident comes days after another man was arrested for scrawling anti-Semitic graffiti in a synagogue in the same New York City borough.

These events — coupled with the Oct. 27 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh that left 11 worshippers dead — had congregants on edge.

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“People were praying inside at the time,” one of the congregants told the Post. “Everyone is upset already. So, this we don’t need this now.”

Security video shows the young men approaching the synagogue casually with one of them holding a metal pole. The young man handed the pole off to another young man in an orange sweatshirt, who proceeded to throw the pole through the window. The six individuals then ran from the scene.

Do you think the media's reporting on anti-Semitism is biased?

“Police are looking for four boys around the age of 16 after a witness reported the attack at about 5:45 p.m. Saturday,” the Post reported.

“The youths ran south on Franklin Avenue after smashing the window, police said. Officials estimated that the property damage exceeded $250.”

Now, we’ve mentioned that these teenagers — we’re assuming they’re teens — were African-American. This holds no special significance except for the fact that prejudice — and in particular, anti-Semitism — knows no boundaries.

Anti-Semitism is the ur-prejudice. Almost every other kind of hatred can trace its lineage back to hatred of the Jewish people. It also has an insanely wide distribution; it’s endemic to the far-left, the far-right and almost every identifiable group in between.

Yet, what does the mainstream media like to focus on when it comes to anti-Semitism? The right — or Donald Trump, the most pro-Israel president in recent memory, who’s now widely held responsible for the Pittsburgh shooting.

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It doesn’t seem to matter that the deadliest attack on Jewish people in modern American history was allegedly perpetrated by a man who hated Trump because he believed the president was a tool of world Jewry.

Anti-Semitism is the oldest, widest and deadliest bigotry our world has known. I wish I could say these past few weeks could be a turning point, but they won’t be — because we can’t even identify where anti-Semitism comes from.

I don’t know the political leanings of these six young men, if they were monolithic in any sense. I’m not even sure they knew much about Judaism.

I know that the other man alleged to have engaged in anti-Semitic vandalism in Brooklyn of late happened to be a liberal activist who volunteered for Obama. In Eastern Europe, right-wing Viktor Orbán has pumped minor-league anti-Semitic innuendoes into Hungarian politics. In Western Europe, left-wing Jeremy Corbyn has done the same thing in the U.K., using his leadership of the Labour Party as a vessel for the worst elements of anti-Israel sentiment.

In short, the world’s oldest hatred is insidious and polymorphous. And the reason it persists is that we would love to believe it’s always someone else besides Our People — usually, whoever we don’t favor, either politically or socially.

In this case, one can imagine how sick the media was when it became clear the synagogue wasn’t attacked by some angry white man with a certain red baseball cap.

This is why the Jewish people — both in Israel and in the diaspora — need our unwavering support. They don’t just need it this week, or through the midterms, or even for the next year.

Every one of us needs to make a commitment to extirpate this poisonous weed from the garden of humanity, and to make it happen within our lifetimes. That may not be realistic, but it’s the commitment we all need to make.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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