(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP) My mother survived the Holocaust -- only to have antisemitism land on her doorstep here.
I never showed my mother, a Holocaust survivor, the letter a self-proclaimed member of “Nazi Lives Matter” taped to the “We Stand With Israel” sign on our front lawn in December. Nor the note that followed a few days later reading “Fight Colonialism, Imperialism, and All Domination. Free Palestine.”
She was 81 and ill with kidney disease and diabetes, though since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack had been refusing my help in getting her something to eat by saying, “I have to be strong for Israel.” How could I tell her that the hatred she barely escaped as a baby in Nazi-occupied France had now literally arrived at her doorstep in Somerville, Massachusetts?
Mom died on Jan. 26, the morning after our City Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Nine months later, as Jews around the world prepare to mark the Hebrew anniversary of the attack on Simchat Torah Thursday evening, local and national Jewish groups have been fighting off a new effort to get the council to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel at its meeting that night.
So my grief over the loss of my mother remains intertwined in Israel’s ongoing wars with its enemies and the arguments about it flaring up in my own neighborhood. The singling out of Israel as the sole bad actor on the world stage and the questioning of the Jewish state’s right to exist smack of the same old antisemitism my mother, Helene Hirschberg Sokol, thought she’d escaped decades ago.
more...
= new reply since forum marked as read
