The massacre committed at the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday by Robert Bowers, 46, an avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist, is the worst attack against the American Jewish community in history. It pierced the heart of the nation and tore at the core of the national consciousness.
But make no mistake, the attack by Bowers was enabled and fueled by the hateful rhetoric spewed by President Donald Trump for nearly two years now. Extremists from all walks of life, from neo-Nazis to white supremacists to garden variety anti-Semites to everyday xenophobes, feel emboldened and empowered to act on their vitriolic beliefs by the hateful words Trump speaks.
President Trump is a gangster. Let’s just call it what it is. From his shady pay-to-play deals with foreign nations to his tax dodges to his cozying up to the world’s worst dictators and authoritarians, Trump is the classic example of a gangster. He values force, power and fear above all else, and uses his own power to bend people to his will.
Robert Bowers was 46 and lived alone in a middle class neighborhood in Pittsburgh that’s 30 minutes south of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, which is home to about one quarter of Pittsburgh’s Jewish population.
His neighbors described him as a loner who made no impression on them. But then we learn that he had 21 guns registered in his name. 21! You tell me how that makes sense in a democratic society.
Social media is where we learn of the real Mr. Bowers. Powers joined Gab, a social media site that bills itself as a refuge for extreme views that mainstream social media won’t allow. His biography on the site read “Jews are the children of Satan.”
Really? Because I’m a proud Jewish American. I’m the son of Deborah and Michael, and they are most definitely not the devil. So who exactly are you talking about?
The truth is that this attack tore at the heart of Jewish America. There are only 13 million of us Jews in the world, and 40% of them live in the United States. 50% are in Israel, and the other 10% are scattered across Europe and the rest of the globe.
So there really aren’t a lot of us, and we take stuff like this very seriously. We’ve survived slavery in Egypt, pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, and the Holocaust.
Yet after all those tragedies, we built a new state in the heart of the Middle East. We have contributed to the world a disproportionate amount of innovation and success in science, history, politics, the arts, and just about every other area of human endeavor.
So you know what that means? A lot of people are jealous. And jealousy quickly turns to anger, and, occasionally, violence. We saw this in Charlottesville, when white nationalists chanted “Jews Will Not Replace Us.”
And we see it now in Pittsburgh, where early Saturday, just before Robert Bowers barged into the Tree of Life synagogue and began massacring Jews, he posted on Gab:
I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.
WTF? First of all, who the hell are American Jews slaughtering? Last I checked, it was no one. Now if you want to get into Israel, that’s a different story. But these are American Jews congregating at their holy place of worship for a baby naming ceremony. So f you, you maniac.
Second, and what really gets me is, who the hell are “your people?” I mean honestly, what are we talking about? Uneducated and hateful neo-Nazis? Loners with no social life? Angry middle-aged white men? Any way you slice it, your people suck, dude.
Nine African-Americans were murdered at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, by a deranged young maniac, Dylann Roof, who thought he was protecting white women from black people.
And now this m-fer, this Robert Bowers, is taking aim at the American Jewish community, my community? I don’t freaking think so, a-hole.
Clearly, though, it speaks to brewing hatred of minorities in America by disgruntled white people who are angry that their position in the American hierarchy is slipping. After the shootings, Bowers told investigators and the police that he “wanted all Jews to die.”
Really dude? You want me to die? And my beautiful 17 year old and 15 year old nieces. And my awesome older brothers. And my 81 year old mother, my 83 year old father, and my 78 year old stepmother? You want us all to die? Well f you dude, f you. I want you to die for what you did to my people.
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I often write about how white people have an elemental fear of the Browning of America, spurred on by the large Hispanic influx, as well large Asian immigration. White people are afraid of losing their white privilege.
And Donald Trump, the master manipulator, has played on that fear by turning his nearly all-white followers into a burning, raging mass of Angry Caucasians With Grievances. It’s tragic, it really is.
Saturday also forced me to consider an age-old question within the Jewish community, both in America and the Diaspora. Are we white, or are we “other?” Because it seems like we’re white when it’s convenient for Christians, and then we’re not white when Christians’ latent hatred of Jews gets unleashed by a con man such as Donald Trump.
The other thing that really hurts me, and tears at my heart, is the age of the Jewish victims. Joyce Feinberg, 75. Richard Gottfried, 65. Rose Mallinger, 97. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66. Cecil Rosenthal, 59. Irving Younger, 69. David Rosenthal, 54. Bernice Simon, 84. Sylvan Simon, 86. Daniel Stein, 71. Melvin Wax, 88.
Notice anything? They’re mostly senior citizens, living out what should be their final years in peace and dignity, surrounded by family and friends.
Instead they’re dead. Killed by a psychopath named Robert Bowers.
My grandmother was 90 when she died, and my grandfather was 94. They lived their lives to the fullest, and right up to the very end, despite various physical ailments, they had their wits about them. They were intellectually and emotionally engaged with the world.
But the victims in Pittsburgh will never get to live out those final years, like my grandparents did. Why? Because they were Jews, and because lots of people around the world hate Jews. That’s just a fact, pure and simple. It doesn’t matter how much we achieve, or how well we assimilate. A large portion of Western Christianity, and now Eastern Islam, will never accept us.
Deep down in our hearts, we’ve always known this. Donald Trump has simply done what no modern American president has done before. He has openly and freely encouraged hate against blacks, Jews, Mexicans, the LGBTQ community, and Muslims, to name just a few vulnerable groups.
He is evil incarnate, pure and simple.
Yet even in these dark days for America, there is hope. On November 6th, Americans will go to the polls for the midterm elections. The polls now says the Democrats will retake the House, although nothing is assured. The Senate seems a little more challenging.
But even if it’s just the House, the 60% of Americans who oppose Donald Trump will finally have a voice in Congress to speak for us and advocate on our behalf. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York has already said he will begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump on the first day after the Democrats take the House. No doubt many more Congresspeople will join him.
So on November 6th, little more than a week from now, I urge good hearted Americans who believe in justice, dignity and human rights to go to the polls and vote Blue down the line.
If we do this, maybe we’ll avoid more Pittsburghs, and we’ll move closer to getting this gangster Donald Trump out of office.
Because Lord knows we’ve had enough of him to last forever.
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