By Joe Lane
It’s been almost four years since I started working for The Daily Iowan. In those four years, I have written countless columns about anti-Semitism and what it means to be a Jew today. I am, no doubt, beginning to sound like a broken record. So why, then, does it feel as though nothing has changed? Why does it feel as though things have gotten worse?
I don’t like jumping to anti-Semitism. I think it’s very easy for people to make comparisons to Hitler and to jump the conclusion that somebody is anti-Semitic because of any number of actions or statements. To me, anti-Semitism is when somebody hates me simply because I was born to Jewish parents. That feeling of hatred — whether acted upon or harbored deep within an individual’s psyche — is bewildering.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched with horror as Jewish Community Centers from around the country have experienced dozens of bomb threats. Three days ago, I watched my own such center in St. Paul, Minnesota, be evacuated because of a bomb threat, the Community Center that functioned as my daycare center. Two days ago, I woke up to a notification on my phone that a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis had 150 headstones damaged. Tomorrow may bring another unexplainable act of anti-Semitism.
As I said, I don’t like jumping to anti-Semitism. People make jokes that they think are funny, and people do things that they hope will get a laugh from their friends. For example, when — according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press — two different students drew two different swastikas in two different places on the University of Minnesota campus in the past two weeks, I question if they really hold a hatred for Jews in their heart or if they simply thought they were making a joke. But the reality is, it’s not a joke to Jews around the country and the world; it’s the start of something all too familiar.
The University of Iowa is no stranger to hateful messages, either. Following President Trump’s election, racist remarks were written on the door of a student in Burge Hall, for example.
I appreciate Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s dissemination of Trump’s ultimate condemnation of anti-Semitic displays. I sincerely do. But it feels too-little, too-late. It feels like Spicer has expressed his disapproval for anti-Semitism far more fervently than our president, and even that expression isn’t nearly enough.
When Trump asks for a friendly question and then proceeds to tell a Jewish journalist (who treated Trump with more respect than he deserves and certainly more than he dishes out) to sit down and fails to answer the question the journalist would have asked, he doesn’t prove to me that he condemns anti-Semitism. When Trump, who incites bigotry around the country and does little to quell it, tells me he’s the least racist, least anti-Semitic person I’ll ever meet, he provides me no confidence.
In writing, there is a principle known as “show, don’t tell.” The idea is that a reader will understand your argument and your story much more clearly if you show — through actions and words — that a character has a certain trait rather than just tell the reader. In other words, it’s better to write, “The man lived in a golden tower emblazoned with his name and cowered in his ignorance of those who are different from him” than “Donald Trump is a rich xenophobe.”
If Trump wants me to believe he condemns the recent rise in anti-Semitism, then he better start condemning anti-Semitism.
I don’t like jumping to anti-Semitism. But I do know it when I see it.
