In 2023, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (EEAAO) was the movie of the year.

Feted as a metaverse comedy, amid much fanfare, the plot boiled down to the female protagonist’s fear of an IRS investigation, while also worrying about her multi-generational family’s reaction to her daughter coming out as gay.

The movie won seven of the eleven Oscar nominations it garnered, but this author found the movie somewhat overwrought and headache-inducing. 

Sadly, however, the title perfectly captures the ugly anti-Semitism that has erupted, sometimes violently, over college campuses, in the media, and incredibly at some manufacturing companies. 

What began as covert propaganda in government schools, grades K-12, has now reached its zenith as even many college Marxist professors and administrators have participated in the anti-Israel protests mayhem. 

American companies are being threatened with boycotts if protestors' demands are not met. McDonald’s, for example, where free burgers were passed out to Israeli soldiers, drew protests for that and has been threatened with boycotts. It responded to these boycott threats, by buying back all the McDonald's franchises established in Israel. One hopes the Israeli sellers, forced to sell, got great prices and that no Jew goes through a McDonald’s drive-through ever again.

Many Jewish people are dazed and confused.  How could this happen and how could this happen so fast, they ask.

Many Jews became aware of the large tranches of Arab money funnelled into U.S. colleges and universities, by the dawn of the 21st century.  But they didn’t realize just how successfully those cash infusions had transformed entire departments at those universities.  Therefore, the unfathomable torrents of hate spewed at Jews after Israelis were brutally attacked by Hamas, on Oct. 7, 2023, has shocked and rocked the Jewish community to its core.

Security at Jewish houses of worship has tripled, volunteer work missions to Israel are filled as soon as they are announced, and the various denominations within Jewish observance have coalesced to fight back.

Although many Jewish thinkers write of American Jewish fear, that is far from the whole story. Many, many American Jews are outraged and are exhibiting a predilection for self-defense, and a deep urge to push back. Jews, for whom guns have been a four letter word, are flocking to gun ranges for lessons, target practice and the purchase of guns for self-defense. Such behavior would have been unimaginable prior to October 7.

The past two weeks have witnessed  an organized, non-organic anti-Israel parade of  protests, and demonstrations on college campuses.  Many of the protestors are non-student professional agitators, which is especially troubling.

The news is awash with information that a network of professional agitators visited various college campuses weeks ago, and taught willing student/non-students on how to take over college buildings and set up protest encampments. Uniform tents, seen on various campus encampments, afford solid proof of  this coordination. 

At the very least, arrested students should be expelled.  Otherwise there is no recourse for their illegal behavior, not to mention their harassment and disruption of others.

American education has done a failing job in defining the meaning of “free speech.”  Free speech covers the ability to espouse unpopular viewpoints, without fear of reprisal.  However, it does not cover illegal trespassing in public buildings, closing bridges thereby inconveniencing others, nor does it cover overt acts of aggression.

 Unfortunately, ugly anti-Semitism has not been confined to the United States. The Annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report, published by Tel Aviv University and the Anti Defamation League “ADL,” inexplicably detailed a spike in antisemitic attacks during the first nine months of 2023, prior to the October 7 attacks. However, after the attacks, antisemitic attacks spiked globally and in some instances quadrupled.

The same study cited increases in the United Kingdom, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Italy, Australia and Austria, to name just a few.

In Colombia, its president, a former M-19 terrorist, broke diplomatic ties with Israel. Slovenia is considering breaking ties as well. Surely other countries will follow. 

Americans would be wise to recognize that this is an attack on the West as well as Israel.

We have already seen President Biden’s feckless delayed response. Biden equated the global raging antisemitism with Islamophobia.

Does anyone recall Americans or the world calling to kill Hamas?  No, I don’t think so.

Image: Quinn Dombrowski, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED