I am a Jew.
Some would say that is unnecessary information, that as a writer my ethnic and religious identity should not matter, and man do I ever wish that were true. I wish it didn’t matter, but as the past few years have taught me, it matters to the world.
Last week, Russian-American journalist Julia Ioffe wrote a profile on Melania Trump for GQ Magazine. After it had been published, Melania Trump expressed her disappointment with the piece, and that was enough to set off the Trump-supporters in a direction we have only before seen inklings of. Anti-Semitism poured out through tweets and memes and emails, commenting on everything but the very contents of the work. You see, Julia Ioffe is Jewish. And that matters to the Trump supporters, as it seems to matter to the world.
Ioffe herself called the barrage of anti-Semitic slurs “unsettling”. “I started the day off having a sense of humor about it but by the end of the day, after a few phone calls like this, with people playing Hitler speeches, and the imagery, and people telling me my face would look good on a lampshade, it’s hard to laugh.”
A few days before that, the British Labour party found itself in the midst of a growing scandal, starting with prominent MP Ken Livingstone calling Hitler a Zionist before going on a now famous rant laced with brash and unapologetic anti-Semitism. As if this was not bad enough, his party-pals and colleagues came to his defense and in doing so revealed a bigger problem within Labour, blaming the scandal on “Israeli media” and expressing views that would make Himmler blush with delight.
I am a Jew, and as such I am used to crazies attacking me on social media or random anti-Semitic slurs being flung my way — it doesn’t freak me out anymore as I have come to expect it as part of my professional life. What does scare me is seeing obvious racism being used by the powerful and the influential, from Trump to Corbyn, and while they are pleading ignorance others are allowed to wield this darkness in their name. Trump and Corbyn are of course not unaware of what their supporters are doing, saying and tweeting. But they are working within the realm of plausible deniability – thus owning none of the responsibility for making anti-Semitism “clean” again, and that leaves those of us affected by this hatred aimlessly fighting the puppet, rather than addressing the smiling puppeteer.
I am a Jew, and every day saying that gets a little bit scarier. Anti-Semitism is no longer the chosen expression of the marginalize. But 71 years after we stood at the gates of hell and promised “never again” it oozes from parliaments, opinion pages and public forums. This Wednesday I will, alongside million of other Jews, commemorate the Holocaust remembrance day Yom Hashoah, and this year it pains me to say that history has never felt closer, as remembrance keeps slipping away.
Years ago, we vowed to remember and that means that everyone with a voice would use it for truth and protection of the values we hold dear. What I see today, from Corbyn and Trump and many other leaders across our globe, is a silence so deafening that it is bound to break my heart. This silence allows the darkness to fester; this silence is a selling of our collective soul.
There is a reason that the camps are still standing, that some proof of the Nazi crimes was saved for posterity. Because even then, standing on the bones and bodies of my brethren, people knew that if we did not have physical proof, the Holocaust would be denied, and eventually repeated.
Now that we have the proof, and some few remaining survivors here to tell the tale, it is starting, nonetheless. That is a choice not to remember; that is hatred of and against which each and every one of us should be wary, and vigilant. I am a Jew, and I am scared that all this willful memory-loss will lead to an open season on me and mine.
I am a Jew and I am scared. And that should matter to the world.
Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a political adviser and writer on the Middle East, religious affairs and global anti-Semitism. Follow her on Twitter @truthandfiction. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
