I’ve been fighting a war against antisemitism since the age of 11, when my father strangled me and left me for dead for defending my Jewish mother against his antisemitic abuse. Due to the prevalence of social media, the war on antisemitism has become extremely more complex. Antisemitism is on the rise in a staggering way both in Europe and the United States, with the most antisemitic incidents worldwide taking place in the last 12 months, more than any other time in the last decade.
A perfect example is Amnesty International. On Tuesday, Amnesty International released a report concluding that the state of Israel has “perpetrated the international wrong of apartheid” against Palestinians. The accusations were made against Israel despite the nation defending itself in the May 2021 Gaza War against Hamas that targeted Israel’s civilians with thousands of rockets.
In the past five years, four out of 10 Jews in the United States have experienced antisemitism. The snowball of Jew-hatred is not occurring in a vacuum. Zionism has become the new form of antisemitism. I know, because in a 72-hour period of time, more than 2.1 million antisemitic comments were posted on our Jerusalem Prayer Team Facebook page. Facebook shut us down for several months because of it.
The comments were despicable, including statements like, “Hitler should have killed all the Jews,” and, “The Jews are pigs and monkeys.” A total of 58% of America’s hate crimes are against Jews, despite Jews only being 2% of the population of the United States. I live in the same community that the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue is in and was passing the building the morning when the attack occurred.
Who could imagine that an obscure synagogue in Texas surrounded by Bible believers would be such a target? There’s a term called gaslighting. It means lying to make people doubt their perception of reality. In other words, perception becomes their reality, not truth. Gaslighting was going on in the 1920s and 1930s in America as antisemitism grew in Germany. The results of it were immigration policies to keep the Jews out and, ultimately, the death of six million Jews.
They gassed them then. Now they’re gaslighting them. Many of these antisemites are Holocaust-deniers. You find them with white supremacist groups and virtually all of them have one thing in common. It’s Jew-hatred, the belief system that Jews are running the governments of the world.
My own father believed that. He used to say that the Jews are running America and the Blacks are ruining it. It’s a belief system that the Jews control the world. I was even told by the former president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the reason Iranians only lived to be 62 and Jews live to 82 is because the Jews send rats into their fields infected with poison. They eat the food and die 20 years younger. I said to him, “It’s not possible.”
He told me, “You should read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and you will understand it’s true.”
Whoopi Goldberg said during an episode of “The View” on Monday during a discussion about the Holocaust: “Let’s be truthful about it, because the Holocaust isn’t about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about.”
When corrected, she added, “The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, cause Black, white, Jews … everybody eats each other.”
Thankfully, Goldberg later apologized for her ignorant and antisemitic words. ABC suspended her for two weeks following the incident.
When the attack in Texas happened at Beth Israel, my phone rang. It was Rabbi Goldstein from the Poway synagogue in San Diego. He’s a dear friend and he was experiencing post-traumatic stress all over again as he heard what Rabbi Walker was going through. God-fearing Americans and especially Bible believers must show zero tolerance for antisemitism. To do anything less is cowardly. It’s like justifying a child molester or a man who has abused his wife who gives excuses for their unspeakable behavior.
On my birthday on June 30, 1984, Richard Wayne Snell, a white supremacist and Jew-hater, was headed toward my home to kill me in Colleyville, Texas. Why? Because he hated Jews. Snell had already killed an Arkansas State Trooper on the way. Thankfully, he was apprehended before he could reach my home.
I was named after my great-grandfather, Mikel Katznelson. He served in the same synagogue as the grandfather of late former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Rabbi Mitzner. My great-grandfather and his grandfather were burned to death in the same wooden synagogue with 2,000 Jews in Belarus, not far from Minsk.
The Holocaust was about racism. I’ve dedicated my life to fighting it and helping make the world a safer place for all Jewish people. {eoa}
Michael David Evans is a No. 1 New York Times bestselling author with 109 published books read by 38 million people worldwide. He was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in January 2022 for his lifelong work to combat antisemitism. He is the founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center and Museum in Jerusalem, the Corrie Ten Boom Holocaust Museum in Holland, Churches United with Israel and the Jerusalem Prayer Team, the largest pro-Israel social network prayer movement in history. Find out more at jerusalemprayerteam.org.
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