So, I gotta’ ask: why has – to the best of my limited knowledge – not a single voice within or outside of the local Jewish community come forward to the police or any other relevant authorities to file an official complaint, and – at the very least – call these guys out publicly for clear, recorded, contextual incitement to mass murder?
In a shocking video presented by the invaluable MEMRI, “Two disturbing videos have surfaced involving California-based Muslim preachers in which both are heard spewing anti-Semitic vitriol as well as issuing implicit calls for violence against Jews. The videos, which are not dissimilar in content and shrill to those which have emerged from Gaza, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab Mideast, reveal the extent to which anti-Semitism is deeply embedded in large segments of the American Muslim community.”
Folks, this is not “crying ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater.” This is handing out gasoline, matches, and rags to confirmed and wannabe’ arsonists – who see it as a sacred vow and duty to fulfill the classic ditty, “Khaybar, Khaybar, al-Yahud – Jaish Muhammed Sa Yahud! – [remember] Khaybar, Jews – Mohammed’s Army is Coming!”
These malevolent ragefests – excuse me, “sermons” – are an obscene call to his followers to commit violence against Jews, as Jews, anywhere – including immediately beyond the walls of the hall where he spoke.
Besides a boilerplate press release by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, why are there not a thousand protestors outside his home and offices, 24/7, calling for his dismissal – if not arrest – as would almost certainly be the case if he were calling for mass murder of blacks, gays, or any other minority?
“Wake up! It is time to be a Muslim…” said Mahmoud Harmoush, over a week ago at the Islamic Center of Riverside, CA.
So he’s “woke”. But where are the perma-“woke” “intersectionalists” who always seem to be ready to hit the streets, cops, and passers-by over the outrage de jure, but never to defend liberal Jews who are always ready to defend them?
I’m “woke,” they’re “woke,” but why, in the name of all that is civil and decent, aren’t the Jews now being directly threatened with death-by-terrorism, “woke?”
Yes, the SacBee reported on it, but, besides CUFI, why is there not a single local TV reporter, newspaper columnist, or public figure in the area, state or nationwide willing to take a public stand?
Are outright calls for the “annihilation of the Jews” just “taken out of context,” just rhetoric, just another anodyne “free-speech” football?
Watching from abroad, the (seemingly) deafening silence among Jewish leadership is shocking, dismaying, and despair-inducing.
Have American Jews, when faced with a clear and present danger, lost all sense of righteous indignation and their will to live – or just their minds?
“Get Woke,” today, Jews, before you get woken up by others, tomorrow.
A self-declared “recovering reporter,” Dave Bender is a four-decade resident of Israel and lives in Tzfat, where he welcomes photography clients
