Jews don’t need more security. They need a country willing to treat Jew-hatred as the threat it is.

On Thursday, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove an explosives-laden truck through the doors of Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, rammed it down a hallway, and opened fire with a rifle while one hundred and forty children were inside. Ghazali, a Lebanese immigrant, was killed by security.

The New York Times covered the aftermath with a headline that asked: “After Latest Attack, Some Jews Wonder How Much More Security Is Possible.”

That is the wrong question. It has always been the wrong question. And the fact that we keep asking it is precisely why we keep writing these stories.

Jewish institutions in America now spend $765 million annually on security, according to the Jewish Federations of North America. A typical Jewish organization devotes 14 percent of its entire budget to keeping its members alive. No other religious community in America is expected to finance its own survival. That figure is cited as evidence of communal sacrifice, but, in reality, it is evidence of societal failure.

When Jews have to spend three-quarters of a billion dollars a year on security, the problem is not Jewish vulnerability. The problem is a society that has learned to tolerate Jew-hatred.

That money represents resources diverted from education, community programming, and outreach because a hatred that should have been confronted and crushed decades ago was instead tolerated, platformed, institutionalized, and in some quarters, celebrated. That’s just the Jewish community’s direct spend; it doesn’t include the law enforcement resources mobilized every time a threat materializes, the school lockdowns, the emergency evacuations, the bomb squads. On Thursday alone, at least 30 law enforcement officers........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)