Not for the first time, Israel is the favorite punching bag for left-wingers and the far right. We remember how good it was to be Jewish in the aftermath of WW2. It turns out that it was an aberration. Before the war antagonism against Jews was at a high point, with Americans of German descent at the forefront, especially the German American Bund. On the radio in those pre-television days there were anti-Jewish propagandists like  Father Coughlin, who broadcasted antisemitic commentary. See NOTE below.

“Initially, antisemitic displays in the United States did not increase with the onset of the Great Depression. But after 1933, when a Nazi-led government came to power in Germany and Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurated a New Deal at home, the deepening economic crisis contributed to an explosion of unprecedented antisemitic fervor. Fueled also by the rise of Protestant and Catholic demagogues, deeply entrenched Protestant fundamentalism, and the widespread expression of antisemitic attitudes by respectable social and religious leaders, they illustrated how centuries of denigrating Jews culminated in the most savage accusations, and in some urban areas-especially New York and Boston-violent physical attacks. In the 1930s American antisemitism was ‘more virulent and more vicious than at any time before or since’ as rabid antisemites, almost without exception, envisioned an international Jewish........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)