Palestinian supporters have been attacking and beating Jews in the streets repeatedly over the past few months, with very little mention from the mainstream media. They do not seem to care about these attacks as much as they would want people to believe. We thought that all hate crimes mattered, though? Silly us.
When these attacks were taking place, the Equity and Inclusion Officer for a children’s book group called The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators decided to speak out. They took to Facebook and issued their own condemnation of the awful events. Here’s a closer look at the post:
“The SCBWI unequivocally recognizes that the world’s 14.7 million Jewish people (less than 0.018% of the population) have the right to life, safety, and freedom from scapegoating and fear.” The June 10 post went on to condemn antisemitism as “one of the oldest forms of hatred,” and asked readers to “join us in not looking away.”
April Powers is the person who is responsible for posting this message and you would think that there was nothing wrong with this. However, it did not take long before she was relieved of her duties. No one should be surprised. It was a predictable series of events. A Palestinian member of the group named Razan Abdin-Adnani decided to respond to her and ask her when she planned on condemning the Israeli attacks.
Powers is a Jewish black woman and she did not run from the conversation:
“Powers replied: “As a new member, you may not have noticed our statements are very recent & reflect surges in hate crimes & violence around the world. If we see a surge against Muslims globally as we have w/ other groups, expect us to speak out.”…
Abdin-Adnani took to Twitter. There, she repeatedly accused Powers and the organization of failing to show solidarity with Muslims and demanded a statement denouncing the violence in Gaza. She also demanded a refund of her membership dues, writing: “I had no idea this was a Zionist/politically motivated organization that doesn’t serve ALL children.”
The group members blocked Abdin-Adnani on Twitter but the damage was already done. The outrage started to build and the group’s executive director was forced to provide an apology. Powers had been told to resign and she even had to do a bit of kissing up on her way out the door.
While she has claimed that she came to the decision on her own, she has admitted that she was terrorized by online progressives. A Jewish woman is now unable to express her feelings about a wave of antisemitic violence because the far left deems it offensive. Kat Rosenfield wrote the piece for Bari Weiss’ Substack and she has gotten to the bottom of this sad story. The following excerpt is particularly galling:
“What happened to April Powers demonstrates how high-minded ideals about intersectionality and social justice now operate in practice. Jews are not seen as a marginalized group in need of protection, nor as the victims of violence fueled by bigotry, or even as voices worth listening to on the topic of antisemitic hate. In a culture obsessed with locating every group in a hierarchy of oppression, Jews simply do not count…
When a group of tiki torch-wielding white nationalists chant “Jews will not replace us!,” the condemnation is swift. But replace the tiki torch with a Palestinian flag, and call the Jews “settler colonialists,” and the equivocations roll in…”
Anti Jewish crimes have become startlingly common in the United States. There has been a long list of crimes of this nature in the New York area alone. The left loves to act as if they care about the current social climate when attacks take place between certain groups. If the attacks are taking place among other minorities, this puts them in a more awkward position. They don’t know how to speak up about those sorts of attacks without risking being accused of racism themselves.
