Leave it to Pamela Geller to warn that under President Obama, Jewish Americans will face immense persecution as it won’t be long “before we can’t walk down the street with a kippah or a Star of David.” She even suggested that the U.S. may soon ethnically cleanse Jews to create “Judenrein” areas. Perhaps Geller should ask the nearly 70 percent of Jewish Americans who backed Obama’s re-election why they voted for their own imminent demise.
What was once unthinkable is now not just thinkable, but entirely possible. When I was a child, I remember sitting in the backseat of the family car listening in on my parents’ conversation. I am not sure what led to the following exchange, but I never forgot it. My father said, “Nothing is forever.” And my mother said, “Nothing?” He repeated: “Nothing.” And my mother thought for a moment and asked, “Not even America?” He said, “Not even America.”
At that time the idea that America could fall was inconceivable to her (and to me). America – freedom – was forever.
But that is not so. And scarier still is the tenuous status of Jews in America. It’s hard not to draw parallels to persecuted Jews in once-friendly nations and their subsequent persecution, expulsion and slaughter. To think that Poland was once the Israel of Europe. Millions of Jews made Poland their home and had a long history there of over a thousand years. And in three short years … complete annihilation.
German Jews, meanwhile, were so very vested in the motherland they considered themselves Germans before Jews. They were war heroes for Germany in World War I.
How long do Jews have in Obama’s America? How long before we can’t walk down the street with a kippah or a Star of David? This is already reality for Belgium Jews, Swedish Jews and French Jews. Large portions of Norway are already Judenrein.
Proud Jews at Berkeley or the University of California Irvine can give you a glimpse of how things can turn, quickly, in America as well. Now that America itself has turned, everything is up for grabs.
