Recent Attacks

A report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) showed that anti-Semitic incidents increased by nearly 60 percent in 2017 marking the largest single-year increase on record. 2018 was even worse with a doubling of anti-Semitic assaults. The single deadliest attack against the Jewish community in American history took place on October 2018 when a gunman entered the Tree of Life Synagogue outside of Pittsburgh, killing 11 and injuring seven. Last April, a shooter entered the Chabad of Poway synagogue in Poway, California, killing one and injuring several others.

A partial list of recent anti-Semitic attacks in the US and Canada shows that this disturbing trend is gaining momentum:

• Three Hasidic Jews were violently mugged early Monday morning in two separate incidents in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 
• Police arrested a Las Vegas man on charges that he was planning an attack on a synagogue. An unregistered weapon and bomb-making materials were found in his home.
• A Brooklyn resident allegedly sprayed a Hasidic man with an unknown substance last Friday in Crown Heights and made anti-Semitic remarks. The suspect was arrested and charged with a hate crime.
• Tires on over 50 vehicles owned by Jews were slashed over the weekend in the predominantly Jewish town of Lakewood, New Jersey. All of the victims were Jewish. This is the second time this month that this type of attack has taken place in Lakewood. Police are treating it as a bias crime.
• Unknown assailants fired BB guns at an LA yeshiva ten days ago. 
• An attack ten days ago on two Jewish boys in Toronto is being treated as a hate crime. This comes one week after two anti-Semitic incidents in Montreal. Though anti-Semitic incidents are considered rare in Canada, 2018 marked an all-time high.

Anti-Semitism as Precursor to Messiah

Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi, a well-known mystic rabbi in Israel, noted in his weekly sermon that this rise in anti-Semitism will only get worse as the Messiah approaches.

“Anti-Semitism in the world is terrifying,” Rabbi Ben Artzi said on Friday. “The non-Jews in the world feel that the Messiah needs to come out and they are going crazy. The anti-Semitism will continue to increase. Even when the non-Jews attack other non-Jews it is a warning to the Jews. This will not cease until the last Jew comes to Israel.”

“Golden Age of the Exile is Over”

Rabbi Nachman Kahana is personally invested in the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land as part of the geula (redemption) process. Born in Brooklyn, Rabbi Kahana, he is the spiritual leader of Hazon Yichezkeil Synagogue in the Old City. He is the Av Bet Din of the Sanhedrin and, as a Kohen (male descendant of Aaron the Priest), established the Center for Kohanim which keeps a database of reliable Kohanim in Israel. His brother, Rabbi Meir Kahane, founded the Jewish Defense League and the political party Kach. His nephew, Rabbi Baruch Kahane, instructs Kohanim in the Temple Service and frequently serves as the Kohen Gadol in Temple reenactments.

“You have to start from the premise that the on the fifth of Iyar that a heavenly ruling came down to earth on the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Iyar, 5708 years after the creation of the world, (14 May 1948) the Jewish State was declared and the exile was finished. The Jews are coming back home and the exile would vanish little by little.”

“The punishment was over and the anger was over, the final big case of anger being the Holocaust. Now is the era for God to make us great in the Land of Israel.”

“The flip side is that the end of the Golden Age of the Jews in Exile was finished. There will be economic pressures, anti-Semitism, and other factors. With assimilation the Jews in exile will eventually disappear. The Jews have no future outside of Israel. You can’t have Jews in Israel and Jews in exile at the same time. We are either here or there.”

Rabbi Kahana referred to two verses from the Prophet Jeremiah:

Thus said Hashem: Restrain your voice from weeping, Your eyes from shedding tears; For there is a reward for your labor —declares Hashem: They shall return from the enemy’s land. And there is hope for your future —declares Hashem: Your children shall return to their country. Jeremiah 31:15-16

“If the Jews come back ‘from the enemy’s land’, they are not described as God’s ‘children’. Everyone is welcome but if a Jew comes to Israel because of troubles in the exile, because of anti-Semitism, he is accepted like a stepson. You need to come here because you want to come back to the land of the Bible.”

“This is going to happen and Israel should be preparing for a huge aliya. There is plenty of space that is being taken up by the Arabs. The Arabs had a caretaker status. They will go away but it will be the Arabs that cause it. The Jews will not throw them out because that is not the Jewish way. The Arabs in Israel belong to seven clans who were it not for the common hatred of the Jews, they would have killed each other off a long time ago.”

“It is important to remember that anti-Semitism in America is only in certain sectors of America. We have good friends in America,” Rabbi Kahana said. He warned that having allies in America was only a partial solution and the danger was still very real. “In Germany before the war, only five percent of the Germans belonged to the Nazi party but they moved the silent majority to horrible extents. They controlled the country. This can happen in America.”

Jews are “Stupid” When it Comes to Anti-Semitism

This assessment that an era is ending was shared by Rabbi Pinchas Winston, a prolific end-of-days author. 

“The Jews were spread around the world for the exile for a purpose: to spread the light of Torah,” Rabbi Winston told Breaking Israel News. “As God’s emissaries, they were afforded a certain level of protection. Now that the mission is over, or in a new stage, that blanket of protection is revoked.”

The rabbi noted that prophets usually preface their predictions by relating recent events that should have been known to everyone and their implications understood. 

“Jeremiah actually refers to the Jewish people as stupid,” Rabbi Winston said.

For My people are stupid, They give Me no heed; They are foolish children, They are not intelligent. They are clever at doing wrong, But unable to do right. Jeremiah 4:22

 “Stupid is not unintelligent or uninformed. God has patience for these,” Rabbi Winston said. “Stupid is when you know something but you ignore it.”

“The stupidest things the Jews do is downplaying the danger. Nothing has changed. A cursory look at history shows that anti-Semitism is the default, even in its most extreme forms. Nothing has changed but Jews in the U.S. think that that the Holocaust can never happen again so ‘Never Again’ now refers to the Mexican border.”

The New Anti-Semite: Not The Old-School Nazi

In a disturbing note, these attacks are intentionally being underreported by the media. An article in the New York Times in October 2018 documented this disturbing twist.

“No other American city is more closely associated with Jewish identity than New York or more adamantly imagines itself as the capital of liberalism’s most cherished values of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity.”

“Anti-Semitic incidents have constituted half of all hate crimes in New York this year, according to the Police Department. To put that figure in context, there have been four times as many crimes motivated by bias against Jews — 142 in all — as there have against blacks. Hate crimes against Jews have outnumbered hate crimes targeted at transgender people by a factor of 20.”

The article goes on to note that unlike other hate crimes in other parts of the country, hate-crimes targeting Jews in New York are rarely perpetrated by aggressors associated with right-wing groups. These attacks are more commonly carried out by ethnic minorities. As a result, left-wing advocacy groups and the mainstream media do not react as strongly, if at all.

“It is to some extent because it refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy,” the NY Times wrote. “When a Hasidic man or woman is attacked by anyone in New York City, mainstream progressive advocacy groups do not typically send out emails calling for concern and fellowship and candlelight vigils in Union Square, as they often do when individuals are harmed in New York because of their race or ethnicity or how they identify in terms of gender or sexual orientation.”

In short, because most of the attacks against Jews do not conform to a left-wing narrative and are, in fact, problematic to a narrative that portrays blacks and people-of-color as victims, they are sidelined by the media and politicians.

“Jews are busy looking for Nazis. Meanwhile, they are totally overlooking the new anti-Semites,” Rabbi Winston warned.