Editor:
One would hope that the NCJ would be as proactive against anti-Semitic hate precipitated by the Middle East conflict as they were during the anti-Asian rhetoric and assaults in Georgia. You printed one of my letters, and one of your own staff members weighed in with an article in support of Asian Americans (“The Awful Familiarity of Anti-Asian Violence,” March 25). I heard Palestinian supporters in this country chanting “Rape their daughters” and “Hitler was right.” If that isn’t hate speech, what is? American Jews are not a cool minority, especially in some progressive circles, due to the Middle-East conflict. Sort of like some nitwits blame Asian Americans for COVID. You would think the learned professor at Humboldt State University, prominent in the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and their “progressive” supporters at the Eureka Courthouse demonstration would stand in solidarity and remind folks they have no quarrel and condemn violence against American Jews. Crickets is all I hear. But I guess Anti-Semitic hate speech and assaults are not as grievous as those against Black folks and Asian Americans in some quarters.
John Dillon, Eureka
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This article appears in ‘Mission, Values, Vision’.
After 34 years of national and international news consumption, I have found that a disturbingly large number of categorized people, however precious their souls, can be considered thus treated as though disposable, even to an otherwise democratic nation. When the young children of those people take notice of this, tragically, they’re vulnerable to begin perceiving themselves as beings without value.
Though some identifiable groups have been brutally victimized throughout history a disproportionately large number of times, the victims of one place and time can and sometimes do become the victimizers of another place and time. I’m not one who holds much faith in the Bible, but I still give credence to the verse (somewhere within) stating that base human nature is indeed “desperately wicked”. And maybe even more so when convinced that ‘God is on our side’.
Still, in such times it is crucial that there be a deeper understanding of and empathy for one another, however very unlikely, even (or perhaps especially) when it’s across battle lines. Meanwhile, many racists (internationally) have to decide which ‘side’ they hate less thus politically support via social media: the Muslim Palestinians or Jewish Israelis.