Marianna was also involved with the MHC News, the college newspaper, as one of the Copy Editors. Currently, she works as an Assistant Resident Director at the Rome campus for Loyola University Chicago.
- Qasem Soleimani: An Untouchable International Target - January 18, 2020
- XXI Century: The Reinassance of Anti-Semitism - January 14, 2020
By Marianna Maddock
In the past few weeks, there has been a strong wave of anti-Semitic acts of violence in the United States, which peaked with an attack on a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York.
Unfortunately, Europe is no stranger to these assaults. On the contrary, both in Europe and the United States, Jews are constantly being assaulted on the streets. In Slovakia, tombstones are desecrated, while in the Italian town of Schio, in the Veneto region, has refused to install brass plates to commemorate Holocaust victims saying that they would be “divisive”. This fear has even reached the extent of having a synagogue in Holland to stop publicly posting its times of prayer services.
Obviously, this intolerance mainly stems from right-wing extremists, progressive leftists, as well as other minorities. And what’s more shocking is the mere fact that these acts of violence have been legitimized by the nationalist rhetoric of several political leaders in the world, including President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Raised Roman Catholic, Giuliani claimed in an interview that he’s “more of a Jew” than Holocaust survivor George Soros.
Many other religious and ethnic groups have been harmed by the rhetoric. Let’s take China’s case in the Xinjiang Province. More than a million Uyghurs have been detained in “reeducation” camps in the Chinese Communist Party’s effort to contain and control the said ethnic group, all due to the Chinese officials’ concern that the Uyghurs might hold extremist and separatist ideas. Despite this, there is a particularly deceptive character to anti-Semitism spreading yet again which has a horrific history.
It is an extremely serious blunder to think that anti-Semitism is simply a problem for Jews – ethnic and religious intolerance is an existential threat that could hinder any minority group’s safety. It endangers us all.
- How should governments try to stop the horrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism?
- Why are these acts of anti-Semitic violence apparently being tolerated by certain political figures around the world?
Suggested Readings
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/after-monsey-will-jews-go-underground/604219/
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/24/politics/rudy-giuliani-george-soros-jewish/index.html
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uighurs-xinjiang
