Even in times of rising antisemitism, we must decry hate in our own community
"People like us, we don't do things like that."
I wanted to write about joy today, because my daughter is coming home for Thanksgiving, and it’ll be the first time our family has been together for Turkey Day since 2019.
But two incidents prompted me to write this instead, because despite rising antisemitism, I can’t stay silent about the hatred I see being spewed by some in my own community.*
The first incident was the tragic shooting at the Q nightclub in Colorado Springs, where a young man killed 5 people (Daniel Aston, Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Ashley Paugh, Derrick Rump) and injured over 17. The shooting came on the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, and that is not an accident. There has been a steady stream of anti LGBTQIA hate being spewed forth on a variety of platforms - including by people who proudly declare themselves “Patriots” and “Christians.” But that is for other people to write about. I’m specifically talking about Chaya Raichik, the Jewish woman behind “Libs of Tik-Tok.”
Rather than using social media for good, Raichik has used it to spread hatred, particularly of LGBTQIA people. Her inaccurate claims about children’s hospitals led to hospitals, doctors and nurses receiving death threats and harassment.
Some of the claims about Children's National, Boston Children's and other hospitals were pushed by the Libs of TikTok account, which regularly reposts videos and social media posts from LGBTQ people, teachers, schools and other institutions. The clips are sometimes taken out of context and framed to fuel outrage or ridicule of LGBTQ and anti-racist causes, in what the account owner has described as "exposés" of "the crazies."
Raichik also posted the locations of Drag shows and other LGBTQ story events, which were subsequently targeted by violent far-right extremists - ironically, the same kind of groups that believe Jews are behind the Great Replacement of white people, and who traffic in the most vile antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Having spent time lurking in such spaces to research Some Kind of Hate, I can’t help wondering if Raichik has any comprehension of how quickly they will turn on her the minute she’s no longer playing their useful, hate-spewing fool.
As I’ve written before, rhetoric has consequences - and the consequences of hate rhetoric are often deadly. We of all people should know that, which is what makes Raichik’s actions even more abhorrent. What’s more, she seems to revel in the title “stochastic terrorist” in her twitter bio, as if it’s a badge of honor to spread ideas that encourage disturbed, angry young men with AR15’s to kill innocent people.
She does not represent the ideas of Judaism I was taught - and I’ve engaged in Jewish learning in spaces ranging from Orthodox to Reform.
The other incident that prompted me to write today happened over the weekend in Hebron. Yes, I’m about to step on the third rail of Israeli/Palestinian politics. (*Puts on flak jacket*)
I was in synagogue for an aliyah on Saturday, because my father’s yahrzeit is this week. The parsha was Chaye Sarah - the death of our matriarch. Sh
e was buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. The site is sacred to both Jewish people and Muslims, as we are all children of Abraham.
This morning I read about the violence that Jewish worshippers perpetrated against both Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.
A soldier stationed in Hebron on Saturday said that he saw hundreds of Jews throwing stones at Palestinian homes over a two-hour period.
“We tried to gain control over the situation and every time, Jews showed up and threw stones and we didn’t manage to catch them,” he said. “At the height of the incident, hundreds of Jews came and started calling us Germans and spitting on us.”
The testimony from Palestinian residents is heartbreaking. Yes, I know there have been Palestinian terror attacks in Israel, but that doesn’t excuse behavior that is reminiscent of the kind of pogroms my great-grandparents and grandfather came to the US to escape.
The Cave of Machpelah was the site of a massacre by Jewish extremist Baruch Goldstein in February 1994. Although Goldstein’s actions were decried by mainstream Jewry world-wide, the extremist Kahanists (who since the last election are part of Netanyahu’s government) laud him as a hero, in a Jewish religious nationalism that is as disturbing to me as the Christian Nationalism spreading here in the US.
Back in 2015, I wrote about racism on the Israeli right. I quoted Seth Godin’s daily email:
The most powerful thing we can do to earn respect from those around us…is to call out one of our own when he crosses the line. “People like us, we don’t do things like that.” This is when real change starts to happen…
Hate speech has potentially deathly consequences no matter whose lips (or keyboard) spread it. We have an obligation to speak out about it when it is one of our own. ESPECIALLY when it is one of our own.
I’ll leave you with what the Chief Rabbi of the UK, Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Sacks, said after the shooting in 1994, which resonates still:
“Such an act is an obscenity and a travesty of Jewish values. That it should have been perpetrated against worshippers in a house of prayer at a holy time makes it a blasphemy as well… Violence is evil. Violence committed in the name of God is doubly evil. Violence against those engaged in worshipping God is unspeakably evil.”
* I promise to write something funny and happy later this week. For real.
I read about the terrorist attacks in Jerusalem this morning with deep sadness. All I can think about is the saying, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."