Anyone who has studied the night of Nov. 9, 1938, will recognize the pattern in what has unfolded across France in recent days. During Kristallnacht, the mobs that moved through German and Austrian cities knew exactly which shop windows to smash and which synagogues to set alight, because someone had gone to the trouble of telling them where the Jews could be found. That same cold preparation has now resurfaced in the south of France, and we should have the honesty to call it by its name.
The French journalist Paul Amar, speaking on a national news channel, described what happened in Marseille with a clarity that ought to stop every reader in their tracks. “They came prepared,” he said. The rioters arrived carrying the addresses of town halls along with the addresses of Jewish shop owners, according to Amar, and on one street in Marseille, every business owned by a Jew was set on fire while the shops run by Muslims on that same street were left untouched. A synagogue in Paris has been vandalized. Churches have been targeted. The unrest that began in France has since spread into Milan and other parts of Italy, and I fear it will keep moving across the continent for as long as political leaders treat it as something other than what it plainly is.
For the past three years, many of us have warned that the Jewish people serve as the canary in the coal mine for Western society. We have said repeatedly that the movement marching under the Palestinian flag has very little to do with actual Palestinians, and I suspect a great many of those chanting in the streets would struggle to locate Gaza or Ramallah on a map. The cause has become a convenient banner under which hatred can travel freely, a ready excuse to intimidate Jewish communities, to burn churches, and to tear at the fabric of the countries that welcomed these protesters in the first place. Jews are singled out because of who we are and because of the strength we have shown in refusing to hide, and the people who set fire to those storefronts in Marseille understood that message perfectly well.
The German poet Heinrich Heine warned two centuries ago that a society that burns books will eventually burn people. The sequence playing out in Europe today follows that same terrible logic, beginning with businesses and moving on to churches and synagogues, and history tells us exactly where that road leads when nobody has the courage to block it. Europe has been duly warned, and it would be a tragedy beyond words if the continent once again chose to look away until it was too late.
Against this backdrop, I was stunned to read a post on X from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who looked at the scenes coming out of France and saw something to celebrate. “From the high schools of France to the streets of Madrid to the universities of Tirana,” he wrote, “young people were demanding a future they can believe in.” He framed the unrest as a righteous response to wealth inequality, dismissed concerns raised by Vice President JD Vance, and then urged Americans to follow suit with the words, “In America, let us listen to our young.”
I responded that I have rarely been so disgusted by a statement from a sitting member of Congress, and I stand by every word of it. Anyone who looks at organized mobs carrying lists of Jewish addresses and sees an inspiring youth uprising worth importing to America would do well to remember the last time Europe witnessed young people mobilized to mark and destroy Jewish property. That movement had a name too, and it was the Hitler Youth. Economic frustration has never been a license for violence, and social justice can never serve as a permission slip for antisemitism.
Several hours later, after the backlash had grown loud enough, the congressman posted a second message saying that he unequivocally condemns violence and vandalism and invoking his grandfather’s commitment to peaceful protest. Yet in that very same post he returned to romanticizing the anger of the young against what he called “the unholy alliance of wealth and power.” Nowhere in either statement did he find room to mention the Jewish families in Marseille who watched their livelihoods go up in flames or the congregants in Paris who arrived at a desecrated synagogue.
But Khanna showed his true colors when he recently traveled to Judea and Samaria in Israel in what looked to many of us like a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation. It seems apparent that he was hoping to bait Israeli residents into a violent reaction that could embarrass them and the security forces protecting them. The U.S. Embassy in Israel made a point of noting publicly that he failed to coordinate his visit with the embassy, the Israeli military, or any of the authorities whose involvement would have made sense for a trip of that kind. He went looking for a fight and seemed eager to broadcast the result.
Israel must remain a nation of laws, and violence committed by anyone, including young people, deserves to be addressed by the proper authorities without excuse. Even so, the gulf between scuffles over olive groves in Samaria and violent riots that resulted in the burning of entire neighborhoods in several European cities is so enormous that placing them in the same moral conversation borders on the absurd.
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When a sitting congressman flies halfway around the world to manufacture outrage against Jews while simultaneously cheering on the mobs torching Jewish shops in France, he reveals a set of priorities that is deeply and dangerously warped.
Every leader who claims to care about a decent society needs to speak up now, loudly and without qualification. The violence in France and Italy amounts to the destruction of the very social order that protects minorities, workers, worshippers, and everyone else who depends on the rule of law to live in peace. Jews happen to be first in line, as we so often are throughout history, though we have never once been the last. American politicians who mistake this for a revolution worth emulating should understand that history will remember which side they chose when the fires were still burning.
Rabbi Steven Burg is the international CEO of Aish, a global Jewish educational movement. He formerly served as eastern director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he oversaw the Museum of Tolerance in New York. Find out more about him at Rabbiburg.com.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
