Fatal DC shooting is grim validation for those who warned of 'Free Palestine' violence

[Mosby]

Two months after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in Israel, a man with a gun walked up the steps of a synagogue in Albany, New York, and fired into the air while shouting, “Free Palestine.”

Children were inside the building at the time.

It was, it seemed, nearly a nightmare scenario for those anxious about how protests against Israel’s war in Gaza could lead to antisemitic violence.

....

During nearly 20 months of vociferous protests against Israel, some have increasingly warned that anti-Zionism could motivate the same physical danger as white supremacy or extremist Islamic fundamentalism. On Wednesday night, the shooting offered a cruel validation.

“For those who wondered about the context of whether a particular chant was hate speech or anti-Semitic, this is what it looks like when physically manifested,” Sacha Roytman Dratwa, an Israeli military veteran who is the CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said in a statement.

"The murderer did not know his victims were Israeli, he just knew they attended a Jewish event,” he added. “When we say that the anti-Semites don’t hate Jews because of Israel, but rather, they hate Israel because it is the Jewish homeland, this is what we mean.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/fatal-dc-shooting-is-grim-validation-for-those-who-warned-of-free-palestine-violence/

[karynnj]

1. An interesting comparison is that Russia's attack on Ukraine

has been arguably a comparison to the attacks on Gaza although Ukraine did not attack Russia first via a terrorist attack that killed over 1000 people. Yet although there are Russian orthodox churches and Russian restaurants, the only thing that happened in the US is several restaurants in NYC known as Russian worked to make their Ukrainian roots known as their number of diners declined. Yet there have been attacks on synagogues and Jews in general in response to anger against Israel.

My thought is that the attacks on the American Jewish community which, at least in the non orthodox synagogues, has never supported Netanyahu or the settlements and might have included a large segment of supporters of a two state solution, comes from a well of not always latent antisemitism.

Another factor is the conflation of anti Israel, anti Zionism and being Jewish. Unlike any religion I can think of, there is a link between a religion and a current modern country. The idea that American Jews are responsible for Israeli actions or automatically support them is hard to deal with. It ignores that many of us voted against and protested American administration that we did not support.

In addition to increased fear that has necessitated increased security several times in the last decade, there have been many many efforts to find non divisive ways to talk about Israel at the synagogue I go to in one of the most liberal communities in the country. It also means that for many long term interfaith efforts with the Islamic community even when successful on some level, Israel was always the elephant in the room.