It has been said that antisemitism is the oldest form of prejudice and hatred, predating most major religions.

One of the bravest women I have ever met is Ayaan Hirsi Ali and she has spoken at length in several forums about its deadly rise and what it means.

I met her in 2007 at the Martin Luther King dinner held by the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE) which awarded her the award of International Sisterhood due to her efforts to protect the interests of Muslim women suffering from the demand of vaginal mutilation and forced marriage by Islamic Sharia law. At the time, she was a Dutch* parliamentarian and an atheist.

Today she is an American citizen, a Christian, and is still on tour at universities warning about the dangerous rise of antisemitism due to what she dubs the 'Islamism’ behind it.

I have written several columns on antisemitism from the perspective of a Catholic’s experience witnessing it from individuals expressing their bigotry confident that I shared this antipathy. I never did because I grew up in the barrio when I had Jewish neighbors who were beyond wonderful.

I went to Catholic school, taught by nuns, who always reminded us that Jesus and the Apostles who founded our faith were Jews, Three popes have written encyclicals  warning Catholics not to believe in the false charges against Jews and asserted that this heinous hatred was politically motivated. It is a grave sin for Catholics to engage in pogroms or antisemitic violence but when have Catholics ever paid attention to the pope unless he was as woke as Pope Francis? {May he rest in peace.}

Although my columns may have triggered some hate mail, I was not forced to hide like Ms. Ali because criticizing Islam has been a dangerous act of courage since 9/11.

President Bush made a........

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