When al-Qaeda crashed planes into the World Trade Center, did you notice how academics published position papers supporting the Islamic extremist group, and how the local Interfaith Committee commented for the record, "It's our foreign policy, stupid," justifying the taking of some three thousand American lives by the terrorist organization?

Do you remember how progressives waving al-Qaeda flags and wearing Osama bin Laden T-shirts drove through the main commercial areas of cities shouting, "Rape the daughters of American imperialists"?

Do you recall how the war in Afghanistan drew massive demonstrations on college campuses as student organizations tallied each dead civilian as a war crime and called for an immediate investigation by the United Nations?

Reflecting al-Qaeda's propaganda clichés, didn't college students and faculty demand the removal of American troops from sacred Saudi Arabian territory and, echoing Osama bin Laden's words, the return of Andalusia (Muslim Spain) to al-Qaeda because what once belonged to Islam always belongs to Islam?

Remember how groups of pro-al-Qaeda mobs stormed into restaurants with baseball bats, demanding to know who supported the war or if any of the diners had relatives in the military?

A young woman on the Vienna subway was reading a book on the American Constitution when set upon viciously by thugs.  When she complained to the police, they admonished her for reading a book about the Constitution, and since she was Austrian, not American, she had no basis for lodging a complaint for a hate crime.  The police sided with the thugs.  Recall the incident?

Of course you don't remember, because none of these things happened as described.  They did happen, however, if you substitute "Jews" for the victims and "pro-Palestinian thugs" for the al-Qaeda thugs.  The young woman on the Vienna subway was reading a book about Jews, and the Austrian police, having learned nothing from history, refused to deal with her assault.  Just don't read books about Jews, they said.  It's provocative.

So, what are the lessons from the progressive anti-Semitic outbursts in America in response to the war in Gaza, and the thuggery — shades of 1930s Berlin — where Jews were set upon for being Jews?

The message is clear.  Terrorism is odious in all its manifestations unless its targets are Jews, particularly those with the audacity to defend themselves.

Black Lives Matter — purportedly a civil rights group — sides with Hamas, a group designated as terrorist by numerous Muslim countries and even the United States and Russia.  Hamas's reason for existence is the obliteration of Israel and the elimination of Jews.

Jews who have nothing to do with Israel, who live in New York and Los Angeles and have been in America for generations, are set upon by thugs for policy decisions made in a country thousands of miles away.  Walking in midtown Manhattan while being Jewish can get you sent to the hospital.

The thin veneer that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism has been stripped away.

The sanctimonious chorus of pro-Palestinians and their progressive allies has reached a verdict: terrorism is good — if it aims at Jews.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the Haym Salomon Center.

Image: Beny Shlevich.

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