8 May 2 • 2019
jn
8 May 2 • 2019
jn

views

I 

attended an April 14th symposium by Wayne 
State University’
s Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic 
Studies and the Center for Peace and Conflict 
Studies at Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Township. 
titled “Beyond Fear and Hate: Recent Ramifications 
of Anti-Semitism.
” Its organizers publicized it would 
offer a “look at the nuanced history, 
contemporary trends and future 
outcomes related to anti-Semitism and 
other forms of group-based hate.
” I 
was there for the first two hours of the 
program.
The idea of studying anti-Semitism 
is good. We can’
t fight it if we don’
t 
understand it. One way to not battle 
anti-Semitism is to treat it as just 
another hatred. 
Anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred. It is a virus that 
mutates from generation to generation. It isn’
t just a 
stereotype or a resentment of Jews. Other groups are 
stereotyped, resented and hated, but for Jews there are 
no limits. Jews have been attacked for being both white 
and non-white, as capitalists and communists, of being 
too successful and too wretched, for being stateless and 
for having a state, for being too passive and for fighting 
too effectively. We’
re attacked for being whatever the 
anti-Semite hates. Anti-Semites project their own 
pathologies on the Jews. 
Anti-Semitism is the one form of bigotry that is 
regularly excused or whitewashed. Some writers have 
objected to the “weaponization” of anti-Semitism, 

which as far as I can tell means “shut up” if it’
s coming 
from your side of the political aisle.
One of the program’
s panelists suggested that the 
audience suspend judgment on Congresswoman Ilhan 
Omar and her anti-Semitic tweets until after we read 
her Washington Post op-ed. But it’
s clear that Omar was 
untruthful in writing, “When I criticize certain Israel 
government actions …
” She was not criticizing Israel 
government actions when she accused AIPAC and 
Israel of buying American support and accused Jews of 
dual loyalty. 
Only about half of the program was devoted 
to discussing anti-Semitism. The rest was on 
Islamophobia, racism and the current plight of illegal 
immigrants trying to enter the United States. Lumping 
all these issues together allowed the panel to trivialize 
anti-Semitism as just another generic hatred. Despite 
panelists’
 claims to the contrary, Islamophobia and the 
current treatment of migrants at our border are not 
equivalent to 3,000 years of persecution, expulsions, 
forced conversions, ghettoization, blood libels, 
pogroms, massacres and genocide. 
One audience member pointed out during a short, 
mid-program Q&A, no good is done by equating 
Holocaust refugees with today’
s Central American 
refugees in order to score easy anti-Trump points. 
Jews refused entry into the United States were fleeing 
genocide and sent back to die in Nazi concentration 
camps. This kind of comparison belittles the Holocaust 
and insults the memories of the 6 million.
European anti-migrant sentiment was also brought 

up. Yes, there is prejudice and anger among Europeans 
against migrants. There is also a tremendous increase in 
anti-Semitism being fueled by some of these migrants, 
and it is combining with native European anti-
Semitism. Jews are once again escaping Europe, but 
none of the presenters mentioned that.
One panelist gave excellent information on 
20th-century anti-Semitism describing Henry 
Ford’
s Dearborn Independent, the Protocols of the 
Elders of Zion, Father Coughlin and the blaming of 
Jewish immigrants for crime, a cholera outbreak and 
communism. Rather than expand on this important 
thread, he minimized it by insisting that there is a 
parallel between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. He 
went on to describe differences between left and right 
anti-Semitism, but without mentioning campus anti-
Semitism or the clear link between anti-Zionism and 
anti-Semitism. 
If the aim was to dissect anti-Semitism, this 
symposium was a missed opportunity. As an attempt to 
examine a wide range of hatred, it came off as a mostly 
superficial recitation of some bigotries based on the 
political leanings of the panelists.
With worldwide anti-Semitism rising, it is more 
important than ever to have a forum to examine anti-
Semitism in all its forms and include suggestions for 
battling it. Who’
s going to rise to that occasion? ■

Harry Onickel is a Ferndale freelance writer and literacy consultant. 
He is currently working on a history of anti-Semitism for high school 
students.

Don’t Dilute Study Of Anti-Semitism

Harry 
Onickel 

Muslim and Jews in America: Parallel Trajectories, Shared Future

essay

T

he beginnings of Jews and Muslims in North 
America has a similar though not identical time-
table and trajectory. Jews came to America large-
ly to escape political persecution and economic hard-
ship in search of religious freedom and 
a better life. The first Jews who arrived 
in North America were refugees from 
Recife, Brazil, where they had lived 
briefly under a tolerant Dutch rule until 
an earlier ban on Jewish settlement 
and immigration was reinstated by the 
returning Portuguese. Thereafter, the 
number of Jewish refugees grew steadi-
ly, reaching 3,000 by 1820, 300,000 by 
1880 and nearly 3 million by the eve of World War I. 
The first Muslims arrived not long before the first 
Jews, not as refugees but as African slaves. Historians 
estimate the number of North American Muslim 
slaves between 70,000 and 150,000, between one-fifth 
and one-quarter of the slave population when slav-
ery ended in the 1860s. In the 20th century, Muslim 
immigrants, like Jews, were impelled by violence, 
political persecution and economic hardship to leave 

towns where they had lived for generations and come 
to America. 
Once in America, Jews and Muslims embarked 
on a search for acceptance. Jews had an advantage, 
owing to their relative whiteness. While Muslims were 
lumped in with other people of color, Jews were seen 
by the white Protestant elite as less non-white than 
African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native 
Americans and Arab-Americans — provided Jews did 
not display their Jewishness too ostentatiously. 
Mass Jewish immigration to America preceded 
mass Muslim immigration by nearly a century. Jewish 
immigration from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian 
empires began at the end of the 19th century; com-
parable Muslim immigration from the Middle East 
and North Africa would take place nearly a century 
later. Allowing for this time lag, parallels appear. 
These massive influxes of immigrants transformed the 
Jewish and Muslim communities. American Jewry on 
the eve of this massive immigration was highly accul-
turated and Americanized. The several million Jewish 
immigrants from Eastern Europe re-invigorated and 
accentuated the distinctness of Judaism and Jewish 

culture in America. Similarly, the Muslim community 
in America for much of the 20th century consisted 
largely of African-American Muslims who, despite 
their religious affiliation, were seen as American 
and not a foreign presence. Only toward the end of 
the 20th century did the number of Middle Eastern 
Muslims eclipse the number of Muslim African-
Americans. 
Given these parallels, it is not surprising that the 
large influx of Jewish and Muslim immigrants elicit-
ed a similar backlash. Ostjuden, the often-derogatory 
term for Eastern European Jews, were denigrated 
as disease-carrying criminals (as Latinos are today). 
Amidst the “
American First” isolationist, anti-immi-
grant xenophobia that followed World War I, Jewish 
immigrants were demonized by fearmongers. The 
Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 effectively banned subse-
quent Jewish immigration — with catastrophic impli-
cations for Jews who would soon be trapped under 
Nazi persecution. 
This situation is not unlike the recent surge of 
Islamophobia that has appeared amidst another surge 
of “
American First” isolationist, anti-immigrant xeno-

Howard 
Lupovitch

continued on page 10

