A broad, spirited and effective mobilization of over 1,000 people in Philadelphia pushed back an attempt by Hamas supporters to shutdown six restaurants that are owned by Jews Nov. 8. The resounding victory set a sorely needed example. It showed a willingness to stand up and defend Jews, and to oppose forces calling for the destruction of Israel, a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms.
Hundreds took to the streets to protect the Jewish-owned outlets and hundreds more lined up for hours to eat at them, far outnumbering the mask-wearing, Jew-hating group. The determination to take on the antisemites won support from working people and strengthened confidence that Jews can and must be defended, and reactionaries taken on and defeated.
Echoing the filth spewed by the Nazis, organizers of the pro-Hamas group reviled the Jews they targeted, calling them “disgusting humans.” In 1930s Germany, the Nazis declared “Don’t buy from the Jews!” In Philadelphia, the antisemites shout, “Zionist establishments must go! Not in our city!”
The date the Jew-haters set for their action was no coincidence. It was the eve of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a state-sponsored pogrom against Jews in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland organized by the Nazis the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938. During that slaughter 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed and at least 91 Jews were killed. Pogroms like this will happen again. Jew-hatred is a feature of the imperialist epoch and even more of its decline.
As the social upheavals and wars bred by capitalism grow, Jews will be increasingly scapegoated by the rulers for the financial ruin facing layers of the middle class and the spiraling prices and mounting joblessness workers confront. Jews will be blamed to divert attention away from the real source of the problem — capitalism.
The ruling class will turn to fascist thugs when it fears its power is threatened by rising struggles of working people that point to the need — in the eyes of millions — to end the capitalists’ class rule. Fascist goons will be unleashed in bloody assaults targeting Jews, other oppressed nationalities, trade unionists and communists, as they were in the 1930s, to try to prevent workers from coming to power.
The victory in Philadelphia shows what is possible. But Jew-hatred is spreading and increasingly “normalized” as part of politics in the U.S. And workers’ main defensive organizations — our unions — are not yet mobilizing to lead the opposition to this evil. Workers cannot rely on the capitalists’ government, or their Democratic and Republican parties, to fight Jew-hatred. Unions can help organize, join and win support for actions to defend Jews.
From its founding, the Socialist Workers Party has stood on the frontlines in this battle. A resolution it adopted in 1938 says the party “has the duty of exposing the real aims of the capitalists, hidden behind the smokescreen of anti-Semitism and thereby inoculating the masses against the poison; it has also the special task of mobilizing the real defense of the persecuted Jews, a defense of necessity based on the might of the organized working class.”
The SWP continues to act on that course, a vital part of building the revolutionary working-class party that’s needed to lead millions in making a socialist revolution and lay the foundations to wipe out Jew-hatred for all time.