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The Supreme ruled that discrimination is protected speech. As the children of Holocaust survivors, we understand where this leads.
(JTA) — When the U.S. Supreme Court sided last month with a Colorado web designer who refuses to do work for same-sex couples because of her religious objection to same-sex marriage, it risked opening the floodgates to a host of discriminatory acts under the guise of First Amendment freedom of expression.
Most of us thought that we had made progress in eliminating government-sanctioned bigotry. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 6-3 majority opinion in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, saying that her refusal to serve a same-sex couple is “protected speech,” reminds us, however, that discrimination endorsed by the high court remains a clear and present danger, first and foremost for the LGBTQIA+ community, but also for the rest of us.
As a daughter and son of Holocaust survivors, we tend to understand social and political events through the prism of the destruction of European Jewry. The Jews were deprived of their rights in Nazi Germany immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933. And we know that excluding Jews and others from commercial and civil life was one of the earliest stages before their eventual annihilation.
The 303 Creative case forces us to contemplate the possibility that white supremacists, antisemites, Islamaphobes and other hate-filled individuals and groups will now be allowed to recast their bigotry in First Amendment or religious freedom terms. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, the decision “threatens to balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other groups from many services.”
With this new ruling, what is to prevent a devout Christian who believes that Jews killed Jesus from selling wedding dresses only to brides who accept Jesus as their savior or from refusing to print bar mitzvah or Ramadan invitations? What about a white supremacist caterer who believes that interracial marriages violate his or her religious beliefs? Will his lawyer use this SCOTUS decision to construct a clever First Amendment or Free Exercise defense that allows him to get away with not serving such couples?
We are reminded of Gregory Peck who, masquerading as a Jew in the 1947 film “Gentleman’s Agreement,” is turned away from a “restricted” resort, as so many Jews were in real life. Jackie Robinson, Louis Armstrong and other African-Americans were denied entry into hotels, restaurants and other central institutions of American society until the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s put what we thought was an end to such nefarious practices.
A previous generation of jurists also thought that legally sanctioned discrimination was accommodating sincere religious beliefs. “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red,” wrote County Circuit Judge Leon M. Bazile of Caroline County, Virginia, in his now notorious Jan. 6, 1959, ruling sentencing Mildred Loving, a woman of African-American and Native-American descent, and Richard Loving, a white man, to one year in jail for violating Virginia’s miscegenation laws.
Judge Bazile continued by saying that God placed the races on separate continents. “And but for the interference with his arrangements there would be no cause for such [i.e., interracial] marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
It was not until June 12, 1967 — more than eight years later — that the Supreme Court overturned the Lovings’ criminal conviction and declared Virginia’s prohibition of interracial marriages to be unconstitutional.
Do we now have to worry that the Court in the future might validate some version of Judge Bazile’s bigotry under the guise of the First Amendment?
Americans are witnessing the legal legitimization of an “us vs. them” society. It comes at a point when the LGBTQ+ community was just beginning to gain legal ground. Now, the community is again legally seen by many as “the other.”
We don’t believe it is alarmist to say that such delegitimization may be the beginning of a process of dehumanization. History has taught us that when we no longer see others as equal to ourselves, we grant license to bigots to treat such individuals as less than human.
Why are we compelled to speak out and feel strongly that all of us have an obligation to speak out? Because of the warning for the ages that German pastor Martin Niemoller taught us, a warning which we, present-day Americans, ignore at our peril:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
We are here to speak out for and stand with the LGBTQ+ community and for all who may eventually be adversely affected by this misguided ruling. For all we know, it could be us.
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The post The Supreme ruled that discrimination is protected speech. As the children of Holocaust survivors, we understand where this leads. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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