“Last weekend, the front window of the Chabad of Bushwick (N.Y.) was smashed, even as the rabbi and his wife and children slept there for Shabbat. This is hardly the only recent attack in Gotham. According to The New York Times, “there have been four times as many crimes motivated by bias against Jews — 142 in all — as there have against blacks. Hate crimes against Jews have outnumbered hate crimes targeted at transgender people by a factor of 20.”
Why, then, has this spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes received so little coverage? The New York Times admitted: “it is to some extent because it refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy. During the past 22 months, not one person caught or identified as the aggressor in an anti-Semitic hate crime [in New York City] has been associated with a far right-wing group.”
In other words, the media care more about hate crimes when the perpetrators are white and when the victims aren’t. They care more about hate crimes that fit their narrative. And hate crimes against Jews don’t count as much, particularly when those hate crimes aren’t driven by white supremacy.
Why not? Why wouldn’t the left-wing media be interested in a narrative about an increasingly anti-Semitic America in the same way they’re fascinated by narratives about an increasingly racist, Islamophobic and homophobic America? Because Jews in America are successful financially and educationally; because, generally speaking, the notion that America is anti-Semitic is absurd. Everyone understands that America is ridiculously philo-Semitic. So if the Jews aren’t generally hate crime victims, what are we to make of the fact that every other group is targeted less often than Jews? Better to ignore anti-Semitism than to admit that perhaps America is incredibly tolerant and diverse.
Better for the narrative to prevail than the truth: that despite the presence of evil bigots in our midst, America is a pretty fantastic place.”
