Oct 26, 2023
Muslim & Jewish Americans Report ALARMING Rise In Hate
Muslim and Jewish Americans are suffering from huge increases in the sudden rise of harassment and assault in the wake of the Israel-Gaza war.
- 15 minutes
The Anti Defamation League and the Council
on American Islamic Relations have
both reported an increase in anti-Semitic
and Islamophobic harassment,
respectively, in the wake of
the horrific Hamas attack on Israel and
the ongoing violence of
Israel against Palestinians.
[00:00:17]
So let's start with the increase
in Islamophobia and
the hate crimes against Muslims, and
then we'll discuss the ADL's reports on
the increase in antisemitism as well.
So this from AP.
A spokesperson for the Council on
American Islamic Relations said Wednesday
[00:00:34]
that the organization's chapters and
national office had received 770
reports of bias related acts
between October 7th and October 24.
The national headquarters had 110
direct reports during that period,
compared to 63 for all of August.
[00:00:52]
I'm sorry, 63 versus 110 direct
reports versus 774 reports of bias.
That is a massive increase.
Now, of course,
I don't think anyone has or
could forget the brutal murder of a six
year old Palestinian boy here in Illinois,
[00:01:11]
but I'll just remind anybody who either
hasn't heard of this or needs reminding.
The reported accidents October 7th include
an Illinois landlord fatally stabbing
a six-year-old Muslim boy and
wounding the boy's mother, police say,
[00:01:26]
as well as the arrest of a Michigan man,
after, police say,
he asked people in a social media post
to join him in hunting Palestinians.
Now, that,
unfortunately wasn't the only Islamophobic
hate crime here in the United States.
In fact, it wasn't the only
one here in the Chicago area.
[00:01:43]
Spox, 32, reported that a 33 year old man
is accused of spraying pepper spray during
a protested skokie over the weekend.
Zevulen Ebert is now facing aggravated
battery and hate crime charges.
Now, Corey Saylor, who's the research and
advocacy director of the Council
on American Islamic Relations,
[00:02:01]
made this statement, says public officials
should do everything in their power to
keep the wave of hate sweeping the nation
right now from spiraling out of control.
And, of course, that wave of hate
sweeping the nation also includes
a massive increase in anti-Semitic
hate and anti-Semitic harassment,
[00:02:20]
as well as
the Anti Defamation League reported.
And as AP News wrote, the ADL Center
on Extremism reported in a statement
Wednesday that the organization
recorded at least 312 reports of
anti-Semitic acts between October 7th and
October 23rd,
[00:02:36]
compared to 64 recorded excuse me
during the same time period in 2022.
Those reports included graffiti,
slurs or non posting,
as well as physical violence, such as
a woman being punched in the face in
New York by an attacker who
the league said, you are Jewish.
[00:02:53]
And from a different report,
there was a man dressed in traditionally
Orthodox Jewish clothes in
London who was assaulted by a man who
targeted him based on his clothing.
That man was arrested and also found
to have a connection to a different
[00:03:10]
hate crime where he assaulted
a interracial couple on the basis
of there being interracially
married together in public.
Report continues on, the 312 reports
included 109 anti-Israel sentiments
[00:03:25]
spoken or proclaimed at rallies.
The Anti-Defamation League Center on
Extremism found to be explicit or
strong implicit support for Hamas and
or violence against Jews in Israel,
according to the statement.
Lastly, protesters at several of the
rallies use the slogan from the river to
[00:03:42]
the sea, Palestine will be free,
which the Anti-Defamation League and
other Jewish groups have criticized as
a call to dismantle the state of Israel.
Many Palestinian activists say they are
not calling for the destruction of Israel,
but for freedom of movement and
equal rights and protections for
Palestinians throughout the land.
[00:03:58]
And I'll say I have had a criticism
of the ADL for a long time,
that statements in support of
Palestinian liberation are often
categorized by the ADL as anti-Semitism,
which I disagree with.
I agree with the statements from
the Palestinian activists that they're
[00:04:14]
not calling for the destruction of Israel,
but freedom of movement.
On that note, though, it should be easy
for everybody to condemn instances
of anti-Semitism, instances of
Islamophobia that we have seen,
beyond a shadow of a doubt,
an increase of here in the United States.
[00:04:31]
We've seen the brutal murder of a child,
we've seen the assaults of
Jewish people in New York.
That's not disputed whatsoever.
And still there are people who
are unwilling to call out this increase in
hate, and that is disturbing.
There are elected officials who aren't
willing to listen to the concerns of these
[00:04:50]
communities.
I live in a majority Muslim community,
and people here are really scared.
People here are really scared.
My neighbors who are hijabi
are afraid to go outside.
I have a lot of friends who live in the
majority Jewish community in Rogers Park.
They're also scared, and they're
feeling left behind by the government.
[00:05:08]
They're feeling completely
ignored by the city of Chicago,
especially when we've seen so
many instances of hate crimes here in the
Chicago area and the surrounding regions.
People are terrified and there's been
very little response by local, state,
[00:05:23]
and the federal government.
We can't let what happened
post 911 happen again.
We can't let it happen to Jewish
communities, we can't let it happen to
Muslim communities, and
we're already seeing this rise in hate.
People need to be vigilant and
call it out wherever they see it.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah,
I certainly agree with that.
[00:05:41]
As to your statement about
the Anti-Defamation League counting pro
Palestinian statements as acts of
aggression towards the Jewish community,
I would say if the phrase
is historically one,
the slogan is historically
one that calls for and means.
[00:06:00]
Because words do have meaning still, the
annihilation of the state of Israel and
the full removal of Jews from that
area maybe find a new slogan.
Nazis can also rally and say,
Jews will not replace us, and
we mean just in our Christian club.
[00:06:15]
Or Nazis can rally and say,
it's about white power, and
then just say, no,
we just mean power amongst ourselves.
You could also just choose
a different slogan and
not use the one that stirs
up anti-Semitism and
hatred towards the Jewish community if
you don't want it to be misinterpreted.
[00:06:33]
Because, again, words have power and
phrases and slogans have history
that I think needs to be respected
if you don't want to amp up and
light a fire under an already
incredibly tinder box situation.
That's also why I think it's so essential
to be incredibly careful in the way we
[00:06:50]
cover these stories and
the way that we present these issues.
Because when there's a rush to judgment
and nobody's excusing an overreaching,
horribly aggressive response
that kills too many civilians,
innocent people in the Palestinian
territories, of course.
[00:07:10]
But when this is presented as
an issue of us versus them,
of Jews versus Palestinians,
that alone amps up so much hatred and
brings up so much more anti-Semitism and
Islamophobia.
Because it creates this divide in our
society, instead of what should be
[00:07:28]
a very obvious, non-controversial
stance of all people across the world.
Palestinians and Jews and
all who aren't part of those groups,
standing up against a terror
organization that's been designated so
by The US, by the European Union,
by the UK, which is Hamas.
[00:07:45]
Who unfortunately is in charge in Gaza
because they've been holding the Gazan
people hostage ever since they took
over in 2007 after Israel ended
its formal occupation in 2005 and
is withdrawn from those lands.
[00:08:00]
And it's an incredibly complex issue and
people boil it down to
divisive slogans,
it creates more hate, as you reported.
Almost a 100% increase in hate
incidents against the Muslim community,
[00:08:15]
388% rise against the Jewish community.
And that's just here in the States,
of course.
There was the murder of the president of
a synagogue here in the States just last
week, and huge increases of anti-Semitic
sentiments and feelings and crimes all
over the United Kingdom and France and
Europe and Latin America and North Africa.
[00:08:35]
London has reports of 1,300%
increase against the Jewish
community from the same time
period last year, just the two and
a half weeks since the terrorist
attack that occurred.
And so we really need to be careful.
[00:08:52]
We can speak against individual,
horrible incidents.
We can speak to protect innocent people.
We can speak to protect innocent lives.
But what we should not do is rush to
judgment calling a country defending
itself after a terrorist
attack worse than 15,
[00:09:09]
9, 11 genocide when they're responding.
Let's be more responsible and more
focused and talk specifically about let's
minimize the loss of innocent life,
while a country also, of course,
as any nation does,
has the right to defend itself.
We must, if we're going to be responsible
citizens, be much more responsible,
[00:09:28]
much more measured in the way that
we respond to incidents like this.
Because this is the social media war.
I've never seen a conflict that seems
to be so decided by social media.
The way the parties are even acting on
the ground seems affected by the sentiment
around the world.
[00:09:44]
And we need to all be humans together and
care about common humanity together,
and try to protect innocent Palestinian
life as much as we respect and care for
and grieve for the loss of Jewish and
Israeli life at the exact same time.
[00:09:59]
And make sure our words do
not conflate those issues and
don't make it us versus
them when it should be.
The world against
a terrorist organization.
>> Speaker 1: Now, I think that you and
I have a fundamental disagreement on
several points that you made, and I wish I
had the time right now to go through, and
[00:10:15]
I wish that we had a longer
form format that we can.
>> Speaker 2: Hit me on a couple of them.
Hit me on a couple.
>> Speaker 1: All right, well,
you said that it shouldn't be
referred to as a genocide.
I, however, am listening to and
believe the statements of Rod Seagal,
who is a Israeli historian and
a Holocaust expert who wrote an article on
[00:10:32]
Jewish currents,
who said that this is a textbook genocide.
This is the displacement
of a group of people,
the forcible displacement of a group of
people under threat of a bombing campaign,
under the threat of a ground invasion,
saying that they need to go in and
[00:10:48]
root out Hamas, but
they all need to remove them.
They all need to be transferred to
the south of Gaza, where, by the way,
they are still continuing to be
bombed in the south of Gaza,
the place they were told to evacuate to.
He classified that as
a textbook case of genocide.
[00:11:03]
And again,
this is not a radical agent of Hamas.
This is an Israeli historian.
This is an expert on the Holocaust
who said this in Jewish current.
That's one thing.
I already explained I disagree with
the characterization of the statement,
[00:11:20]
from the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free.
Again, it's not necessarily the best
format for us to go back and forth.
We do have to go to a break right,
right now.
But I'll let you respond.
Of course I'll let you respond.
>> Speaker 2: Let me just
respond to that quickly.
[00:11:36]
There's also the son of the founder of
Hamas, who that Hamas is a terrible
terrorist organization that
needs to be taken out and
is speaking forcefully in
support of what Israel is doing.
And again, it doesn't,
with all respect, matter what your
[00:11:54]
opinion is of a phrase that has
been historically used to stand for
the eradication of the Jewish homeland.
That's what it stands for.
You can't repurpose hate slogans and
say, well,
the words themselves don't mean that.
[00:12:09]
Yeah, maybe parsed separately, but you can
write a different rhyme if you want to
just support the Palestinian people.
It doesn't need to be one that gins up
hate and the calling for the annihilation
of an entire group of people from the
homeland the one homeland they're supposed
[00:12:25]
to have safe in this world, like any other
nationality gets to have in this planet.
And instead of being a safe haven,
it's one where terrorist attacks have
happened over and over and over again.
So this one person, this one Jewish
person, declares it to be a genocide.
[00:12:42]
Also, there was a speech at the House of
Lords yesterday where one of the lords in
the UK government specifically made a very
perfect case about how this is well within
Israel's rights.
And again, I'm no advocate for
the horrible loss of innocent life, but
[00:12:58]
proportionality does not need to mean you
only are allowed to harm the same number
of citizens it's about to proportionality
with the goal of the military objective.
Which is stated, in which the whole
world generally is behind,
[00:13:13]
is the eradication of Hamas.
As far as the governments of the world,
at least the Western world,
ones that share our values, is to not prop
up a terrorist organization that is trying
to literally eradicate people.
And so we all want peace, but peace can't
be found if you don't have a partner for
[00:13:28]
peace, and they are instead using
terror tactics to kill people.
And again, for the millionth time,
I am not in support of the horrible
loss of innocent life.
But it's an incredibly difficult
predicament because Israel either tells
[00:13:44]
them to stay and then Hamas uses them
as human shields and puts all of their
munitions and their soldiers in heavily
populated areas and more people die.
Or they warn them and say, Please,
not displacing them forever,
please leave to the south while we
have an incursion to try to get rid
[00:14:01]
of the group that's also
holding them hostage.
And then that's a problem, too.
I have not seen reports of
continued bombing in the south.
I don't believe that to be true.
I'm sure there have been errant
missiles that have landed incorrectly.
There is not a heavy bombardment of bombs
hitting the south where people are being
[00:14:19]
told to evacuate to.
And so there needs to be some way
that we don't continually pit this as
us versus them, but instead just can
unite against the terror organization.
I'm sure, Ray, you don't argue that
Hamas is not a terror organization and
[00:14:36]
is certainly not a partner for
peace with the Israeli people, do you?
>> Speaker 1: No, obviously,
I wouldn't say that.
Hamas is a terrorist organization, but
I think that to put it into the context
of the far right Israeli government,
which has continued to support Hamas
with the explicit goal of preventing
[00:14:52]
the establishment of a Palestinian state,
it's important to put it in that context.
>> Speaker 2: 100%.
Agree on that, 100%.
And that's what happened.
I disagree with it because Netanyahu
did that to stop a two state solution,
which is disgusting, and he needs to go,
and he should not be the leader of Israel,
[00:15:10]
which is also a big part of why Israeli
people have been protesting against him.
But at the exact same time, when you try
to work with the leadership of Hamas,
this is what happens when
even working with them.
So it's quite clear they
are not a partner for peace.
[00:15:25]
When you prop them up, give them money and
try to make them more legitimized, and
they go and slaughter your people
in a horrific terrorist attack.
Obviously, there needs to be a response,
and we all wish that response could be
better, but there still has to be change,
and I don't know a better way to do it.
[00:15:42]
And if you can suggest one,
I would love to hear it.
But if not, we're stuck between a rock and
a hard place and the oldest conflict and
most complex conflict
maybe in human history.
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