(Jewish Group) How Reporting on Anti-Semitism Shapes Public Memory

[Behind the Aegis]

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Anti-Semitism is in the news again—or maybe it's more accurate to say that anti-Semitism and its associated assumptions never truly leave the news.

There was the February 7th Community Security Trust report that anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in the United Kingdom, the February 12th confirmation that such incidents also increased in France, and the uproar over House Representative Ilhan Omar's February 10th comments on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. (Though Omar subsequently apologized, her remarks, in the course of sparking a debate about whether they were anti-Semitic, have drawn attention to other examples of how anti-Semitic tropes often resurface in United States politics.) In response to the CST report in particular, a recent Deutsche Welle story declared that "Jewish communities across the U.K. will look at these latest figures with a great deal of nervousness."

But this claim shows a fundamental misperception about the intended audience for reports on anti-Semitism. Jews don't need to be told that anti-Semitism exists; Jews live in a world that never allows them to forget. Every time they attend a Shabbat service with an armed guard, every time they hear of yet another Jewish cemetery desecration, and every time they hear a conspiracy theory about George Soros, they're reminded that anti-Semitism is hale and hearty.

In other words, reports on anti-Semitism don't exist to inform Jews of what they already know—they exist to force non-Jews to acknowledge the world around them.

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Sadly, that last paragraph excerpted doesn't seem to register with enough people.