OpEd: They want to kill the Jews

Hi, my name is Larry. It’s not Lawrence. ‘Label’ in Hebrew. My mom would tell the story of her lineage of being a ‘kohen.’ A kohen has direct patrilineal descent from the biblical Aaron, brother of Moses. Once you marry out of the lineage, the chain breaks. My mom married an Ashkenazi, one of the peasant Jews, and the chain was broken with me.

My grandparents on my mother’s side fled Russia and Poland during the war. They escaped the wrath of Hitler but lost many relatives in the Holocaust. They had to hide their Jewish identity until they arrived safely on U.S. shores. The ‘Schlossbergs’ would settle in Brooklyn, New York. They had really large noses. I’m glad I didn’t inherit that nose. But you can tell they were Jewish.

It was mid-1964, with commotion in our house. The news that the KKK killed three Jews during Freedom Summer brought tears to my mother’s eyes. Michael Schwerner, James Cheney, and Andrew Goodman were killed fighting for equality in the South. “They want to kill all the Jews,” my mom said.

There were blackouts in New York in 1965–we were at the dinner table. The lights went out, and Mom pushed us all under the kitchen table and said, “Be quiet.  we are under attack.”.  Mom spoke of the stories she had learned from her parents fleeing Hitler.  Fear passed on from generation to generation.

Our family left Brooklyn two years later and moved to Cedarhurst, Long Island. My high school years were spent between Lawrence High School and Far Rockaway. I grew up with Jews, Italians, Blacks, and Puerto Ricans. We were a melting pot.  We jaunted to Miami, an 18-hour drive, dozens of times.  The first time I saw the burning flames and cross on the sides of I-95 sent chills up my spine.   The Ku Klux Klan is real.  My mom said they want to kill the Jews and the Blacks.

My college years took me to the State University of New York at Fredonia.  The small town university is a stone’s throw from Lake Erie.  Fredonia is in the heart of lily white America and I was one of the rare Jews. Many would say they ‘never met a Jew before, and asked where are my horns? Other yelled out the dorm window ‘Heeb’, ‘Heeb’, the equivalent of calling a black a nigger.   And. when I got my head beat in  they would yell ‘kik’, ‘heeb’. ‘jewboy’,.   I started to deny my Jewish heritage. Half/half I’d say. My dad was Italian, and I got a cross to wear around my neck.

When my college roommate asked me to be the best man at his wedding it was an honor. Bob always hung around with the tough guys on campus. Bill was one of those tough guys who often called me heeb — “you’re picking a heeb as your best man?” I never felt like I fit in.

I was told there could never be a Jewish president. And so far there has never been a Jewish president. Al Gore picked Joe Lieberman for the Vice Presidential ticket in 2000 and lost.  Lieberman was an Orthodox Jew and many spoke against having a Jew just a heartbeat from the presidency. Gore lost his home state of Tennessee to George W. Bush. Many blamed the Jew on the ticket. If Gore had carried Tennessee he would have beat George W. Bush and became the 43rd president.

Fast forward to the 1980s and moving to a place called West Hollywood. A city founded by gays, Jews, and Russian immigrants. A city that supported equal rights for all and stood against oppression.   Yet, multiple mezzuzzah’s have been vandalized at my shop.   Nazi symbols have been etched into my storefront and so many others in West Hollywood.    But the politicians tell me that I have white male privledge.

The Jews are being slaughtered and it takes three days for the City of West Hollywood to put out a muted note to condemn the attacks. Three council members force ICAN, the Israeli American Civic Action Network, to pull the movie J’Accuse from being shown during National Holocaust Day.  Our Mayor Sepi Shyne and co-council member Chelsea Byers take an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel and hide the trip from the public.  The Mayor and City Manager have not moved our flags to half-mass in honor of the innocent victims.

Hamas is killing innocent people. They are beheading babies. They are mass murdering innocent civilians.

Right here at home there is not a single Jew on the social justice task force.   And Ms. Sepi Shyne talks a big game about equity but has only one Jewish appointee out of 17-  a holdover from previous council member.  Sepi fights for women, life, freedom but shows little actionable words in support of the innocents in Israel.  Chelsea Byers founded a chapter of the Students for Social Justice in Palestine.  Today the same group,  the organization “Students for Justice in Palestine,” plans a day of resistance, saying Israeli civilians are legitimate targets.   Chelsea Byers has been mostly silent but the group she founded continues to advocate for the torture and murder of innocent civilians.

https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/10/11/students-for-justice-in-palestine-plans-day-of-resistance-says-israeli-civilians-legitimate-targets/

They want to kill the Jews.

There are large groups of people all over the world calling for the killing of Jews and elimination of Israel. Anti-Semitism and Anti-Asian hate are at an all-time high. According to Google, in 2023 there are approximately 16.1 million Jews in the entire world. By contrast, there are over a billion persons of African descent, two billion that identify as Muslims, and five billion persons of Asian descent.