It could. But it probably won’t. Here’s why.
Violence generated by an anti-Israel protest outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles on June 23 has produced cries for more protection of places of worship. A piece by Forward senior columnist Rob Eshman has suggested that protests “in front of houses of worship” be restricted, if not prohibited. Sen. Tom Cotton and Congressman Steve Scalise have demanded investigations of the protesters by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. CNN pundit Van Jones has declared that the protesters were “trying to start a fight,” and noted Israeli writer Hen Mazzig has tweeted that he hasn’t “seen any Jewish people in America running up on mosques with Israeli flags.”
None of these learned and influential commentators mentions that a federal court recently penalized a member of an Ann Arbor, Michigan, synagogue $158,721.75 for trying in litigation to protect access to a synagogue from comparable deliberate antisemitic harassment. Professing dedication to “free speech,” the nation’s foremost defenders of religious rights chose to be silent when the congregant asked the federal Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court to overrule this patent injustice.
In September 2003 a cadre of antisemites had devised an ingenious style of harassing Jews who came on Saturday mornings to worship at Ann Arbor’s Beth Israel Synagogue. They chose to gather only at the hours of Sabbath services on the grassy sidewalk sections in front of the synagogue and brandish signs with mottoes like “Jewish Power Corrupts,” “Resist Jewish Power,” “Stop Funding Israel,” and “End the Palestinian Holocaust.”
By Nathan Lewin
