By Peter Burrows, 2/3/20. elburropete@gmail.com - silvercityburro.com

Over the past two years, there has been an appalling increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes in New York City. By one estimate, such crimes increased by more than twenty percent last year to over 1850 incidents, and that’s just the reported ones. This means that on average, at least five times a day a Jew in New York was verbally or physically abused.

You haven’t heard much about these hate-crimes because almost all of the attacks against Jews have been committed by black people, and the liberal media follows an unwritten rule to avoid mention of the criminal’s race if the criminal is black. That unwritten rule is finally being challenged.

The Daily Caller had a story headlined, “The Media Can’t Keep Ignoring The Racial Element of the New York Pogrom,” by David Benkof, 12/31/19, in which the author wrote, “Right now, the problem is overwhelmingly black New Yorkers attacking Jews.” (A pogrom is an organized attack against Jews.)

He added, “For months now, African-Americans have been assaulting visibly Jewish residents (and) the only way to tell that the perpetrators are overwhelmingly black has been to look at mug shots and video footage of the attacks.”

Michael Benjamin, a black Jew, wrote in the New York Post, “New York’s epidemic of anti-Semitic attacks is horrifying. It’s also maddening that city leaders won’t address the elephant in the room — that the suspects in these heinous acts are black.”

If New York’s Jews had been attacked by whites, you can be sure the coverage would have been 24-7 with the blame put squarely on Donald Trump. No matter, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to do that anyway, claiming at a press conference last June that antisemitism is a “right-wing movement.” He backed off on that a little, saying, “The violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.”

For once, some of New York’s liberals didn’t buy into such a moronic cliche. Councilman Chaim Deutsch, a Democrat from Brooklyn with constituents who have recently been attacked, said, “I don’t agree with the mayor—I have not seen any white supremacists coming in here committing these hate crimes.”

No problem, because it’s still Trump’s fault. On a Sunday Fox News show last December 29, de Blasio said “an atmosphere of hate” has been “emanating from Washington” the past few years. By implication, Trump has somehow encouraged black people to attack Jews.

This was too much for Dov Hikind, a Democrat and founder of Americans Against Antisemitism: “When you have the Farrakhans of the world (and) members of the United States Congress – Tlaib, Omar, AOC – indulging in hate speech and getting away with it -- within the Democratic Party there’s a double standard. (T)he mayor of New York City has continued to call the hate ‘coming from the right.’ All the hate in New York is coming from the left.”

Repeat: “All the hate in New York is coming from the left.” We know that’s true because that’s what NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC have been saying for months, right? (Sarcasm, libs, sarcasm.)

What we are seeing is the politics of hate coming home to roost for the Democrats. For decades, the Democrats and the media have demonized anybody who doesn’t agree with them as hate-filled bigots. As Hillary Clinton said, half of Trump supporters are a "basket of deplorables, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it."

Unfortunately, many Democrats actually believe that. There is no evidence supporting that contention, but when have liberals ever needed evidence to support what they “know?” Democrats are like Alfonso Bedoya in ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,’ slightly altered:

“Evidence? We ain’t got no evidence! We don’t need no evidence! We don’t have to show you any stinking evidence!”

If Trump voters were half as bad as the Democrats and the media would like them to be, the evidence would be on display every day. The news would be filled with stories of hate crimes committed by all those evil-white deplorables who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them,” to quote a former president.

Instead, the news is about Jews being attacked and the media are reluctant to tell us who is doing the attacking. Why, some might even say that the media is guilty of (GASP!) racism. As columnist Ben Shapiro explained, “White supremacists attacking left-leaning Jews fits a desired narrative. Black teenagers beating up Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg doesn’t. And so the left ignores the WRONG TYPE of anti-Semitism.” That is, blacks get a pass because they are blacks.

Gosh, Hillary, you said Trump supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it,” but you didn’t specify that they are anti-Semites. Well, of course they are, but maybe you didn’t want to mention anti-Semitism because so many black Democrats are anti-Semites and you didn’t want to risk offending that very important Democrat constituency?

More sarcasm,``` libs, but there is some truth there. Keep reading.

The Democrat Party is all about identity politics, with key constituencies identified by race, gender, lack of gender, sexual orientation, ethnic identity, religion, “you name it.” All are “victims” of something that electing Democrats will put an end to. This is primitive, tribal politics. It’s inherently divisive because to be a victim, there must be a victimizer.

Some Democrat tribes are large, such as black Americans, some are small, such as Jews or gays. Blacks have greater victim status because, after all, most Jews are white people. And here is where it gets tricky for the Democrats. Black anti-Semitism has been around for a LONG time. This is what black activist James Baldwin wrote in Commentary magazine back in 1948, over 70 years ago:

“The Negro's outlets are desperately constricted. In his dilemma he turns first upon himself and then upon whatever most represents to him his own emasculation. Here the Jew is caught in the American crossfire. The Negro, facing a Jew, hates, at bottom, not his Jewishness but the color of his skin. It is not the Jewish tradition by which he has been betrayed but the tradition of his native land. But just as a society must have a scapegoat, so hatred must have a symbol. Georgia has the Negro and Harlem has the Jew."

This is despicable, then and now, from “the Negro” or from anybody. No political party should tolerate such an attitude, but the Democrat Party does. Proof: Google ‘Obama Farrakhan photo.’

This raises the question: Why do most Jews continue to support the Democrat Party? More on that in Part Two.