I used to be an active social justice legislator, a progressive liberal activist for years.
On Oct. 7, 2023, I became just a Jew.
As coordinated protests cheering on Hamas sprouted like wildfires mere hours after the historic terrorist attack in Israel while families were still in hiding, our world went mad. Days later, protestors marched in downtown Clayton, the backyard of a large Jewish community, with chants and signs to “cleanse the world.”
Few people expressed outrage. That’s when I “knew.”
It wasn’t just me. Other longtime Jewish advocates working in the reproductive and social justice world across the country noticed former colleagues and friends also had gone silent or were joining the anti-Israel protests. I was blindsided, but others who considered their Jewishness just one part of their identity, saw the hate coming.
As college campuses became the hotbed of antisemitic targeting of Jewish students and faculty, we heard from those at Washington University attempting to get to class or home to their dorms without harassment and threats. I understand the terror. Last summer, alone in a glass front campaign office, I froze as a screaming protestor threatened me, just because I am a Jew.
But as Jews have done for thousands of years B.C.E., our resilience took over.
Last year, 36 St. Louis rabbis made national news by personally endorsing a congressional candidate. The Orthodox and Reform Jewish communities banded together, casting all differences aside, to elect a desperately needed pro-Jewish ally to Congress.
Many asked how we could join hands so easily. But Jewish hate does not discriminate. Hate doesn’t consider how we observe our faith or for what issues we usually advocate. We all are targets.
Anti-Jew hate is resurgent — more organized, more visible and more emboldened than at any time since the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Ninety percent of Americans say antisemitism has increased since the 2023 Hamas attacks, 77% of us say we feel less safe as Jews, and almost half of us have altered our behavior due to fears of being targeted, according to the American Jewish Congress 2024 survey.
Fast forward to today. More of us have joined hands with even more allies to fight back.
Rep. George Hruza, the sole Jewish Missouri legislator, is sponsoring HB937, which would codify the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism in state statute and provide data collection for antisemitic harassment and threats of K-12 and post-secondary Jewish students.
Putting Jewish protections into law used to be a “no-brainer.”
The State Department under President Barack Obama adopted the IHRA definition in 2016, as has every administration since. To date, 45 countries including 26 of those in the European Union and 40 states have done the same. In the past few weeks, Democratic and Republican governors have signed bills similar HB937 into law in Kansas, Kentucky and Tennessee with large bipartisan legislative support.
It should be a “no-brainer” for us too in Missouri, right?
Wrong. HB937 passed the Missouri House with robust Democratic opposition by a vote of 108-10-25. Never mind that IHRA language is bipartisan, universally and internationally accepted. Arguments by Democratic legislators in Kansas City, Springfield and St. Louis, those with few Jewish constituents if any, insist that IHRA limits First Amendment free speech rights.
Rep. Ian Mackey, D-Clayton, the only Democrat who argued in favor of HB937 in floor debate, asked over and over of his colleagues, “Where exactly in the bill does it suppress free speech?” He demanded they show him where they cannot criticize Israel’s government or violate their First Amendment rights as they claim.
Of course, they couldn’t.
Yet they repeated illogical arguments adding, “I’m against antisemitism, however …”
On final House debate of HB937, the bill was passed to the Senate, with 24 Democrats expressing disapproval by voting “present,” a procedure designed for those with personal conflicts with legislation. Mackey persuaded 14 in his caucus to vote yes.
Read that again.
Only 14 Democrats out of 52 in the House minority caucus were willing to take a public stand against anti-Jew hate.
Missouri’s IHRA law will pass, if not this session in the few weeks remaining, most certainly next year. It will be signed by our governor into law, joining all the other states.
My comrades keep telling me that Jews will survive because we have always survived, despite evil and unsurmountable odds. In my family of Holocaust survivors, it’s a hard lesson to revisit.
Yes, our world drastically changed Oct. 7, but so did we.
We found our voices and locked arms with allies.
And put our passion and love as Jews first.
