They Would Still Say It About Jews; They'd Still Say It About Others Too

The Army is investigating its own lead chaplains in the elite 101st Airborne Division after they summarily terminated (with no explanation) the division's longstanding Jewish lay leaders. The chaplains had refused to ever attend Jewish services despite multiple invitations, and at one point tried to block the Jewish leaders from hosting Passover services because they'd occur on the same day as Good Friday. At the moment, Jews at Fort Campbell, Kentucky are left without any Shabbat and High Holiday services for the first time in decades.

Meanwhile, the top-polling Republican candidate for the California Senate race (and second overall in the Golden State's frankly idiotic top-two "jungle primary") is a raging antisemite who's calling for a government "free from Jews" and running on a campaign of "counter-semitism".

I group these together because I think they're both examples of discrimination that many people would use as an example of the sort of thing "we'd never tolerate if it were happening to Jews." But they do happen, and they're happening now. They're also not unique to Jews -- other minority groups, such as Muslims and immigrants and Blacks, face their own iteration of such bigotry, in the public square, right now.

As Faulkner wrote: "The past is never dead. It isn't even past." These things we say nobody ever says, or believes, or does? They're still done. They're still done to Jews. They're still done to others too.