The Jewish Boycott in Philadelphia: Shades of 1933/1938

I have one question for the folks who organized a bike boycott of Jewish businesses in Philadelphia on Sunday, which just happened to coincide with the eve of Kristallnacht in Germany, when the (original) Nazis went on a frenzy of attacking Jewish shops and synagogues across the country on the night of November 9-10, 1938.

If the stated reason for this boycott is that you are so upset about the situation in Gaza, why don’t you take your protest to an Israeli consulate or other government entity? Why do you have to target Jews and their businesses?

The obvious answer is because these people despise Jews to begin with. They don’t want to put a Jew out of business because they oppose Israel. They want to put a Jew out of business because they hate Jews.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that what predictably turned out to be an ugly spectacle occurred on the eve of Kristallnacht. I am guessing that they wanted it to happen on a Sunday. Maybe they figured the businesses would be closed on Monday the 9th. As things turned out, the police managed to keep a volatile situation from really getting out of hand. Three arrests and two police reportedly slightly injured. Compared to what we have been seeing in places like Paris, that’s not too bad.

Nor do I think they gave any consideration to how eerily similar it is to the April 1933 Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses all across Germany. Only this time instead of uniformed SA troops standing in front of Jewish shops and intimidating would-be customers, Philadelphia police were there to protect the customers and the businesses because the city and its leaders stood up and did the right thing, condemning this hateful, anti-Semitic action by people pretending to care about other people in Gaza. Other Philadelphians came out with Israeli flags to counter-protest and lined up to patronize the shops in question. There was disorder to be sure, but the Storm Troopers and their Palestinian flags did not rule the day in Philadelphia. That was the part that was not ugly. That was the part that the city can take some pride in even if it suffered a black eye from the actions of the boycotters.

What does it take, how many times do we have to see unruly mobs from Europe to the US, taking over city streets with their dopey checkered keffiyas and their Palestinian flags, fighting police, assaulting Jews, breaking and destroying things before people wake up and realize who the bad guys are here? The whole world should have realized it once and for all on October 7, 2023, when the monsters of Hamas literally invented new ways to horrify decent-thinking people everywhere. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Give the Devil his due. The pro-Pal movement has an enormously successful propaganda machine, well-stocked with thousands of willing Western dupes in our media and our universities, all-too-ready to indoctrinate our young, impressionable and gullible youth into believing that Israel is the Bad Guy here and the Palestinians, even Hamas, are the innocent and noble victims. Take these fools in Philadelphia, for example. Then again, if they sincerely believed it, they should take their protest to the Israeli embassy or the closest consulate, not Jewish businesses. That tells me they are acting out of hate.