Anti-Semitic attacks are increasing at an alarming rate in the New York area, and NBC New York seems to think Hasidic and Orthodox Jews have somehow created this problem by … living there.
In a now-deleted tweet, the media outlet shared a story and claimed “the expansion of Orthodox communities outside NYC” has resulted in “civic sparring,” and “some fear the recent violence may be an outgrowth of that conflict.” NBC New York deleted the tweet shortly after, but the story, originally reported and written by the Associated Press, itself isn’t much better. In fact, it might be worse.
The growing Jewish presence in New York’s suburbs “has led to predictable sparing over new housing development and local political control,” the article states. Some communities have even passed zoning ordinances to make themselves less attractive to Hasidic Jews, since they have “special needs” such as “housing for large families and residences within walking distance to a synagogue.” This creates “demands that are counter to many of the communities they’re residing in,” according to Rockland County Executive Ed Day.
That should have been the part of the interview where the AP’s reporter interrupted Day and pushed back on his incredible claim that Jewish needs are outside the scope of Rockland County’s responsibilities. Instead, the network went out of its way to justify what he was saying!
“In small towns everywhere, resentment against newcomers and ‘outsiders’ isn’t uncommon,” the story states. “Proposals for multi-family housing complexes in sleepy communities of single-family homes often trigger fervent opposition complete with lawn signs and rowdy town board meeting crowds.”
Civic disputes in Jewish communities are indeed a reality and should be reported as such. But to turn them into some kind of rationale for anti-Semitic violence is to insinuate that Orthodox Jews brought it on themselves — that they could have prevented these attacks by not engaging in said civic disputes and simply accept that they cannot live in certain counties.
The insinuation could also be that local counties share part of the blame for enforcing policies that create such civic disputes, but Day does not seem to think so, based on what he says.
NBC New York and the AP aren’t the only ones who have floated this theory either. The Forward once ran a piece featuring a quote making the case that black people identify Judaism “as a form of almost hyper-whiteness.” And in the Daily Beast, an author explained that anti-Semitism is “sometimes wedded to quasi-progressive concerns about racial justice, or, more broadly, to grievances against Jews as usurious landlords or agents of gentrification.”
This is victim-blaming in its own right and should be treated as such. The only ones responsible for the Monsey, New York, attack and those before it are the anti-Semitic perpetrators who carried them out.
Our culture, too, shares part of the blame for normalizing mainstream anti-Semitism, giving anti-Semites the justifications they seek. And in that sense, local communities — such as Rockland County, which has the largest Jewish population per capita of any U.S. county — should be more conscientious of this problem and do all it can to prevent it. And that means welcoming New York’s ultra-Orthodox community and passing policies that not only accept them but allow them to flourish.
Rockland County should gladly accommodate its Jewish neighbors’ “special needs,” as the AP dubbed them because the Jewish community is Rockland County’s community. These are the people city leaders such as Day signed up to represent, and frankly, Rockland’s Jewish population isn’t asking for anything that other communities — say, Brooklyn — haven’t been able to provide.
This is a legitimate problem this country must wrestle with, and it’s good that the media is starting to pay attention. This is not the example to follow.
