When I first saw the news of an attack at Temple Israel in Michigan, I felt a familiar, sinking despair lodge itself in my throat. My father, one of the strongest, proudest Jews I know, had his Bar Mitzvah at the Tree of Life Synagogue. Watching this man break down in tears when I was 16 years old was, in the worst sort of way, a formative experience that fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life. The idea of a repetition of that horror, this time aimed at children, made me sick to my stomach.

By no other means than divine providence, the explosives that would have potentially killed over one hundred Jewish children failed, and the only casualty of the attack was the assailant, a waste of carbon whose name is too profane for me to type without feeling the need to amputate my hands. This is a miracle, and one I am deeply thankful for.

But there is a sharp distinction in how the American public reacted to the bloodbath in Pittsburgh and the attempted bloodbath in West Bloomfield. The former was met with near universal condemnation, unqualified offers of support for the Jewish community, and the shooter’s motives only discussed in the context of hate crime charges. The latter was met with a collective shrug, elected officials discussed the “trauma” this man had from the death of his family, reportedly Hezbollah members, in Lebanon, and the New York Times, one of the most prestigious newspaper in the United States of America, found it necessary to provide soft justification for the attempted homicide of dozens, possibly over a hundred, of Jewish toddlers, because the synagogue which housed the preschool had connections to Israel. Let me repeat that: the most prestigious newspaper in the most powerful nation in the world was justifying the murder of babies, because those babies happen to be Jewish.

As I write this, I am in a bomb shelter. If I die from an Iranian ballistic missile, my loved ones will be allowed to grieve me in peace without my neighbors trying to contextualize my murder. If I die in this shelter, the Israeli media will say I was 23, that I loved science fiction, fashion, and the color blue, and that I was murdered by a missile fired from Tehran. My parents would be allowed to sit shiva without being asked about ‘root causes.’ In America, they would be asked to ‘contextualize’ my death before my body was cold.

This is not an indictment of the American government. That would be simplistic to fix: in a democracy, the will of the people matters, and change would come at the ballot box. No, this is an indictment of the American people, who, due to a combination of Qatari propaganda, misinformation from Gaza, far-right influencers, their seemingly endless capacity for ignorance and their unending adoration of violence, are hurtling down the same path as 1930s Germany. Like in Germany, there are righteous gentiles among them, and the Jewish people will always remember and honor their courage. Sadly, like Nazi Germany, while those righteous gentiles are immense in their courage and moral fortitude, their numbers are far too diminutive to make a change or avert the storm that is to come. The American people have turned against the children of Israel, and our only option for survival is to take our talent, our education, and our creativity, and leave the people of the United States to rot from their own bigotry.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)