An unfortunate side effect of The Jewish Link’s popularity is that it is sometimes read by people who neither understand nor have warm feelings toward the Jewish community. As anti-Zionist hateful rhetoric continues to uptick, we all have begun to feel less safe and secure as Jews living in America, and have had to invest in increased security for our events as well.
This past week, we have seen Jewish businesses and organizations having their ads maligned, and in some cases, abjectly misunderstood, by people whose primary drive is to defame Israel and the Jewish people.
These people are Jew haters. Last week a local agitator criticized an advertisement for an Israeli real estate event that seeks to sell property to American Jews. He not only maligned it, he misunderstood it as well. He called the ad “racist” because the event will be highlighting properties available in Anglo communities. He does not understand, nor would anyone he knows likely have bothered to inform him, that “Anglo” is a word used for people who speak English in Israel. These are people whose mother tongue is English, generally from England, Australia, the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and so on. This is important information for Americans buying real estate because if everyone in the entire neighborhood speaks only Hebrew, Russian, Yiddish, Farsi, Amharic, Arabic or any of the other wonderful languages of Israeli immigration, you might have an issue settling in when you make aliyah. It’s helpful to have a person or two to ask for help figuring out how to read the instructions on your washing machine or give you directions to the local stores.
People who ran with this false narrative about Israeli real estate also stated that the event was illegal under domestic and international law, because they believe all the property in Israel’s West Bank is “stolen” and therefore selling it to American Jews is “illegal.” In essence, this doesn’t make any sense. The Israeli Lands Authority and various international and domestic real estate agencies operate in many specific and legal ways, with the restrictions of more laws rather than fewer, because all land purchases must be made and reported to both home country authorities and purchase authorities in foreign countries. As many individuals are residents of other countries before they make aliyah, making sure everything is above board before a move happens is both commonplace and standard.
A three-minute missive about this ad consisting of lies and misunderstandings at the Teaneck Council meeting was turned into a post for Instagram and Twitter. After two days it has garnered 1.1 million views on social media, and its visibility was growing by about 50,000 an hour when we last checked. It is sad in this day and age that uninformed lies have gone viral and our advertisers have to pay the price by increasing their security budgets significantly. Everyone who shared the post is apparently getting their “Free Palestine” signs ready, maybe practicing their genocidal Intifada slogans when they come to protest, once again, Jews attending an event at a synagogue in Teaneck.
The fact is, we vigorously and emphatically support our advertisers who will be hosting this Israeli real estate fair. We ask you to join us at the event. We are proud to partner with real estate firms in Israel and we know that the experts this group brings are the best of the best. This annual event brings together 30 vendors, 90 housing projects, attorneys, and financial and mortgage advisers with specific understanding of international real estate law.
For the many Jews who live in Teaneck, we get the message these haters are trying to make. They don’t like us and they don’t want us here. They protest us every opportunity they find. They don’t want us to move to Israel either.
Luckily, Jew haters don’t make our decisions for us and we’re not afraid of their lies. We continue to enjoy our distinct history as part of one of the oldest faiths in the world. We live life with joy and we are proud of our identity. We learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Jews have just as much right to live here, in Israel or anywhere, as anyone else. The era of the weak Jew is over. Zionism is not a bad word; it simply means the belief that Jews have the right to determine their own future.
