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Standing Up Against Antisemitism is for Everyone
June 10, 2009 marked the first and last time I was surprised by the depths of human hatred. I was driving to D.C., returning to an internship at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, where I was working on the extradition of a Nazi war criminal. Just outside of Crystal City, I heard that a hateful 88-year-old white supremacist had walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and shot and killed Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns.
My blood went cold. I had worked in the museum around once a week for the preceding three months. I knew the librarians, the friendly guards, the researchers. And while I had spent over a decade learning about the past, I am ashamed to say I was unaware that Holocaust-era antisemitism was alive and well.
In the intervening years, I have written frequently about the alarming, worldwide rise of antisemitic hate, and the importance of studying the Holocaust as a means of combating all prejudice. The hallmark of every piece I write is a desperate call for people of all backgrounds to unite against hatred.
Since I have begun writing about antisemitism, I have become the target of antisemitism. Commenters attack me not for my ideas so much as for my “Jewishness.”
