Chicago’s Summer of Hate

Editor's Note: This article was written in August, 2014, but it is just as relevant today!

On a Shabbat morning in July, several Orthodox Jews in Chicago’s Pulaski Park neighborhood found sinister anti-Jewish leaflets on their cars’ windshields. The leaflets were handwritten in red and threatened violence to Chicago Jews if “Israel doesn't pull out of Gaza.”
 
That was the day before thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators, who came in busloads, staged a “die-in” in downtown Chicago in support of Hamas (whose charter calls for the extermination of all Jews). The protesters also marched in front of the Israeli Consulate where they chanted anti-Israel slogans and waved signs that read: “Zion­ism is Nazism,” “End the Pales­tine Holo­caust,” and “End Israeli Apartheid!”

Chicago, like other cities throughout America and the world, is experiencing heightened levels of anti-Semitism. And aside from this summer’s menacing anti-Israel rally and anti-Jewish leaflets, Chicago has seen a succession of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months.
 
In late July, a Chicago imam passionately urged Muslims in Chicago to wage jihad against Jews in Israel.
 
Also in late July, two men wearing what was described as “Muslim garb” targeted two teenage Orthodox Jewish girls in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood and chased them in what appeared to be an attempted abduction. Terrified, the girls ran away.
 
In June, a masked man waving a swastika invaded a kosher food festival at Chicago’s Anshei Emet Synagogue yelling, “All Jews must be exterminated!”
 
In May, Chicago’s DePaul University student body passed an anti-Israel divestment referendum. With the hostility and atmosphere of intimidation the anti-Israel divestment campaign created, Jewish students no longer felt safe on campus.
 
Also in May, a large group of students at a Chicago public school created a team called the “Jew Incinerator Clan” for the online game Clash of Clans. Their team description read: “Heil! Throw Jews into ovens for a cause. We are a friendly group of racists with one goal – put all Jews into an army camp until disposed of. Sieg! Heil!” They also bullied a Jewish classmate, telling him to “get into an oven and put on striped pajamas.” Several of the bullies were given only a one-day in-school suspension.
 
And in March, an intruder entered a Chicago Orthodox synagogue and took pictures with his iPad for a possible future attack before driving off in his pickup truck.
 
Carol Nuriel, a senior researcher at the Anti-Defamation League, said in a recent Arutz Sheva article that anti-Semitism is “always there in the background, waiting for an opportunity to burst forth.” And when that opportunity does burst, she suggested that Jewish communities should keep law enforcement informed of anti-Semitic developments.
 
Which is what the Chicago Jewish community has done.
 
In fact,Chicago police sent an email alert before Passover warning the Jewish community to “be alert in the neighborhood” … “walk in groups while walking to and from the synagogues” … “stick to well-lighted, well-traveled streets” … and “be alert of suspicious activity.”
 
The Chicago police were also stationed near Orthodox synagogues on Passover and Shavuot because of rising anti-Semitism.
 
This need for police protection of Jews and synagogues in Chicago during Jewish holidays is similar to the police protection the Jews of Brussels received after two Israelis were fatally shot at the Jewish Museum in May. The president of the Belgian Forum of Jewish Organizations, Raphael Werner, commented that the police protection is “…very good, it should be done, but it gives you a certain very bad sensation that you have to be protected in a free country, and still after what happened in the Holocaust that we have to be protected." 
 
The same could be said about the Jewish communities of Chicago and other American cities that require increased police protection.
 
Chicago is no stranger to virulent anti-Semitism. Just four years ago Chicago synagogues received bomb threats, and in 1999 a white supremacist went on an anti-Jewish shooting rampage similar to the one this year in Kansas City.
 
Yet Chicago is just one example of the exploding anti-Semitism in American cities this summer, which included the #HitlerWasRight hashtag trending on Twitter, tens of thousands of pro-Hamas demonstrators converging outside the White House and a South Florida synagogue being spray painted with swastikas and the word “Hamas.”
 
And in Europe it’s much worse.
 
The parallel between today’s anti-Semitism and the pre-Holocaust 1930s is obvious. But there’s one major difference between now and then. Back in 1939, the infamous White Paper during the British Mandate severely limited Jewish immigration to what was then called Palestine, effectively closing off Eretz Yisrael to the Jews in their most desperate hour.
 
But today we have the Land of Israel.
 
Today we’re living in the historic era the ancient prophets foresaw — the time of the ingathering of the exiles. For the first time since Solomon’s Temple stood, there are now more Jews living in the Land of Israel than anywhere else on Earth.
 
Perhaps this summer’s escalating anti-Semitic incidents in Chicago, the US and around the world are more Heavenly reminders that we now have a home to go to, that the long Jewish diaspora is drawing to a close and that the only future the Jews have is in the Land of Israel, the Land Hashem gave us.
 
Yes, Israel has been under attack. But throughout the world’s long bloody history of war, it’s only the Jewish Land of Israel that could miraculously absorb thousands of deadly missiles with extremely few casualties.
 
Could the same thing be said for communities outside of Israel?
 
It's time for Aliya – the sooner the better.