https://themilitant.com/2018/11/03/join-in-denouncing-jew-hatred-a-deadly-threat-to-working-class/
Tens of thousands protest anti-Semitic assault, killings
By Malcolm Jarrett
Vol. 82/No. 42
November 12, 2018
PITTSBURGH — Tens of thousands of people coast to coast — and around the
world — attended vigils and other gatherings to protest the Oct. 27
murder of 11 Jews by ultra-rightist Robert Bowers at the Tree of Life
synagogue here, one of the worst acts of Jew-hatred in the U.S. in decades.
In the weeks before Bowers carried out his murderous rampage at the
synagogue in the historically Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood, he
posted a series of anti-Semitic slurs on the Gab internet site.
He had particular enmity for HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid
Society), which helped resettle Jews in the U.S. for over a century and
recently started aiding refugees, including Muslims and Arabs, from a
wide variety of countries. They work with one of the congregations that
meet at Tree of Life.
The last anti-Semitic screed he posted before taking an automatic rifle
and three handguns and heading to the synagogue said, “HIAS likes to
bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t stand by and watch my
people get slaughtered. Screw your optics. I’m going in.” As he started
shooting, he reportedly yelled, “All Jews must die.”
One of the first protest actions was a vigil organized by students from
Taylor Allderdice, a public high school in Squirrel Hill, just hours
after the shooting. Held at the Sixth Presbyterian Church, it drew over
3,000 people, filling the chapel to capacity. The police closed nearby
streets for the overflow crowd.
School officials had pressured students to not call the action. Emily
Pressman, an Allderdice student said they refused, and that students
said they needed to “act now.”
“There is no excuse for what happened today,” another student, Dakota
Castro, told the Militant. “It’s our job to fight it wherever it is.”
Wasi Mohamed, executive director of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh,
spoke at the vigil. He announced the creation of Muslims United for
Pittsburgh Synagogue, which has already raised $210,000 to aid the
Pittsburgh Jewish community in response to the tragedy.
The protests and commemorations around the world were marked by
solidarity with victims of Jew-hatred and by a wide variety of
explanations for the cause and solution for anti-Semitism.
Some 500 people attended a vigil at the JW3 Jewish community center in
London Oct. 29 to protest the Pittsburgh attack. There has been an
ongoing debate in the U.K. over Jew-hatred, especially by leaders of the
Labour Party, under the guise of criticizing the state of Israel.
“What begins with Jews never ends with Jews,” Marie van der Zyl,
president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, told the crowd.
Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Senate from
Pennsylvania, went to Pittsburgh after the massacre to express
solidarity against Jew-hatred and explain the stakes involved for the
working class.
“Working people and the entire labor movement should speak out against
this attack, and offer solidarity with the Jewish community here,” he
said in a statement released there Oct. 28 and printed in this issue of
the Militant. “The scapegoating of Jews for economic and social problems
is a deadly threat to the working class. It is used to turn working
people away from challenging the roots of the carnage we face — the
dog-eat-dog private-profit system that Democrats and Republicans work to
uphold.”
This mass shooting came at a time when we see an increase worldwide in
anti-Semitic attacks, a result of the sharpening class tensions under
the crisis of capitalism.
Liberals say problem is Trump
Liberals blame President Donald Trump, saying his politics spawn racism
and division. They also blame the workers who elected him, saying they
are all racists and reactionaries.
Some members and leaders of the Pittsburgh chapter of Bend the Arc, a
Jewish group organized to be part of the Democratic Party liberals’
“resistance” against Trump, issued an open letter claiming that the
attack “is the direct culmination of your influence.”
“Anti-Semitism and the widespread persecution of Jews represents one of
the ugliest and darkest features of human history,” President Trump told
the convention of Future Farmers of America in Indianapolis Oct. 27.
“The vile, hate-filled poison of anti-Semitism must be condemned and
confronted everywhere and anywhere it appears.” Trump, first lady
Melania Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner
visited Pittsburgh Oct. 30.
In his Jew-hating internet posts before the assault, Bowers had made it
clear that he wasn’t a supporter of Trump. “Trump is a globalist, not a
nationalist,” he wrote two days before the assassinations. “There is no
#MAGA [Make America Great Again] as long as there is a k–e infestation.”
He posted an image that showed Trump taking orders from a Jewish man.
Trump called for stepped-up use of the death penalty. Bowers, who was
wounded in a shootout with the police before his capture, faces the
possibility of a death sentence.
Hart responded in his statement, speaking out against the death penalty,
a tool the capitalist rulers use as part of their criminal “justice”
system to intimidate and attack the working class.
Pittsburgh Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers met Trump and the first
lady, taking them to the synagogue and to the nearby markers
commemorating each of the 11 victims of the killings.
Myers responded to Democrats and some Republicans who declined Trump’s
invitation to join his trip to Pittsburgh. “The president of the United
States is always welcome,” the Rabbi told CNN.
Where does Jew-hatred come from?
Some of the worst obfuscations in the much-needed debate about the roots
of this murderous expression of Jew-hatred have come from anti-Trump
liberals and middle-class “left” organizations.
“We have before us a fascist movement, an armed backlash aimed at black
and brown people, Jews, Muslims, women, the LGTBQ community, the media,
and also aimed at the left,” Dave Zirin wrote in an Oct. 29 article in
the Nation. It was reproduced on the website and newspaper of the
International Socialist Organization.
In fact, there is less racism, less sexism, and less anti-immigrant
sentiment among working people in the U.S. today than ever before. This
is a result of the mass working-class movement that overthrew Jim Crow
segregation in the 1960s and ’70s, and workers’ class-struggle
experiences with the capitalist rulers’ efforts to divide and attack
them since.
The targeting of Jews is not the same as racist violence, or anti-gay,
anti-Muslim or anti-women prejudice, the fight against which is also
important for workers and the union movement. As Cuban revolutionary
Fidel Castro explained in 2010, no one “has been slandered more than the
Jews,” adding that Jews are blamed for every ill of class society. The
capitalist rulers use Jew-hatred to take the eyes of workers off the
real cause of their problems — the capitalist class and system.
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Join in denouncing Jew-hatred, a deadly threat to working class
This statement by Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for
U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania, was released in Pittsburgh Oct. 28. The
Socialist Workers Party condemns the anti-Semitic assault and killing of
11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in…
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Workers need unions, solidarity, a labor party
Vote Socialist Workers Party in 2018
•Join in denouncing Jew-hatred, a deadly threat to working class
•Tens of thousands protest anti-Semitic assault, killings
•SWP: Push back limits on franchise! Restore voting rights to ex-prisoners!
•US capitalist rulers seek bloc against Tehran amid Middle East rivalries
Feature Articles •‘Women’s liberation is a vital part of the
working-class struggle for emancipation’
Also In This Issue •‘One job should be enough,’ Marriott hotel strikers say
•Women workers in Glasgow lead battle to win equal pay
•Solidarity boosts Ky. concrete workers strike
•‘Militant’ fights Florida prison censorship
•Socialist Workers Party Fund Drive Oct.6 - Dec. 4 (Week 3)
•Fall Campaign to sell Militant subscriptions and books Oct. 6 - Dec. 4
(Week 3)
Books of the Month •How fight to end Vietnam War transformed politics in US
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after
death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst
out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how
wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous
something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
