JOHN PODHORETZ: Rather than protecting Jews, we’re being told to hide — again.
In 2023, three weeks after Jews in Israel were set upon by marauders who murdered 1,400 and injured nearly three times that many, in cities around the world and now in New York, the Jews outside Israel are under attack as never before in recent history — rather than finding themselves protected as never before.
No, they must stay inside.
Like Anne Frank, trapped for two years in an attic because any outdoor public breath would mean capture and death — and captured anyway because someone in the house below the attic ratted the Frank family out.
Stay inside.
Like the pianist Władysław Szpilman, played by Adrien Brody in “The Pianist” 20 years ago, who did not talk to another person for more than a year as he remained silent and all but motionless in a room in Warsaw after his family was deported to and slaughtered at Treblinka.
In my 62 years of life, I have thought every day of the blessing America has been to the Jewish people — a blessing unlike any my people have ever known.
And this, the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel, has been a blessing as well.
At this moment, though, the Jews had better hide.
I cannot tell you how terrifying this is.
As David Mamet wrote on Monday in, “How the Democrats betrayed the Jews:” “Many good German Jews in the Thirties ignored their brothers and sisters to the East, and later died with them. My generation, born right after the Holocaust, wondered: ‘Good God, didn’t you see what was happening around you? Are you literally willing to die rather than admit you were mistaken?’ The answer, today, to many liberal American Jews, is ‘Yes’. In response, the world’s Leftist media calls for the chastisement of Israel and support for Palestine, while those who consider themselves mere ‘liberals’ moderate their cowardice by calling for a ‘ceasefire’ — which is to say, a pause while Hamas re-arms. This is where the libel of the hospital bombing is instructive. It is, quite literally, another example of the West’s oldest, most reliable, and most permissible sick entertainment: the call for Jewish extinction. The invitation, here, is no different from that of the carnival barker: thrills, chills, and excitement galore.”
UPDATE:
