OP-ED: Targeting “Zionist” Pastrami
By RAFAEL MEDOFF
On the eve of the anniversaries of two of the most notorious outbursts of antisemitism in modern times, pro-Palestinian activists in Philadelphia are organizing a rally to demand the expulsion of Jewish businesses from the city.
A pastrami sandwich from Schlesinger’s Delicatessen from their website. (Screenshot)
Among the main targets of the protest is Schlesinger’s Delicatessen, a popular eatery in the center of Philadelphia. Family patriarch Joseph Schlesinger opened his first deli, in neighboring New Jersey, in 1930.
What does a pastrami on rye have to do with Israel or Gaza? Nothing, of course—unless you’re a Jew-hater, in which case every Jew and every Jewish-owned business makes you see red.
The leaflet advertising the protest calls Schlesinger’s Deli and other Jewish-owned establishments “zio businesses” and demands that “they must go!”
The slur “zio” is a recently-invented synonym for “Jew.” It was coined by white supremacists on the far right, and has been adopted by pro-Palestinian Jew-haters on the far left, such as “Philly Writers Against the War on Gaza,” the organizers of the upcoming rally.
The timing of the rally is notable. It will take place on November 8, the day before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazi-organized mobs rampaged throughout Germany, murdering Jews, burning down synagogues and attacking Jewish stores and homes.
The name of that nationwide pogrom refers to the shattering of the windows of thousands of Jewish-owned shops. The amount of broken glass equalled one-half the entire annual production of Belgium’s sheet-glass industry, from which it was imported.
The other relevant anniversary is the adoption by the United Nations of the infamous Zionism-is-racism resolution, on November 10, 1975.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog (father of Israel’s current president) said it was “fitting” that the resolution “should come up for debate on this day [the anniversary of Kristallnacht] which recalls one of the tragic days in one of the darkest periods of history…which led eventually to the crematoria and the gas chambers.”
The resolution was “an abomination of anti-Semitism,” US ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan said, warning: “A great evil has been loosed upon the world.”
Today, that evil has been loosed upon the world again, and extremists such as the Philadelphia activists for Gaza are embracing and promoting it. In the 1930s, mainstream political leaders remained silent in the face of such evil. Will today’s political leaders—in Philadelphia and beyond—repeat that tragic mistake, or will they speak out against the hate?
Rafael Medoff, Ph.D., is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 book about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust.
