A pastrami sandwich from Schlesinger’s Delicatessen from their website. (Screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Among the main targets of the protest is Schlesinger\u2019s Delicatessen, a popular eatery in the center of Philadelphia. Family patriarch Joseph Schlesinger opened his first deli, in neighboring New Jersey, in 1930.<\/p>\n
What does a pastrami on rye have to do with Israel or Gaza? Nothing, of course\u2014unless you\u2019re a Jew-hater, in which case every Jew and every Jewish-owned business makes you see red.<\/p>\n
The leaflet advertising the protest calls Schlesinger\u2019s Deli and other Jewish-owned establishments \u201czio businesses\u201d and demands that \u201cthey must go!\u201d<\/p>\n
The slur \u201czio\u201d is a recently-invented synonym for \u201cJew.\u201d 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 \u201cPhilly Writers Against the War on Gaza,\u201d the organizers of the upcoming rally.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The other relevant anniversary is the adoption by the United Nations of the infamous Zionism-is-racism resolution, on November 10, 1975.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog (father of Israel\u2019s current president) said it was \u201cfitting\u201d that the resolution \u201cshould 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\u2026which led eventually to the crematoria and the gas chambers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The resolution was \u201can abomination of anti-Semitism,\u201d US ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan said, warning: \u201cA great evil has been loosed upon the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s political leaders\u2014in Philadelphia and beyond\u2014repeat that tragic mistake, or will they speak out against the hate?<\/p>\n
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.<\/em><\/p>\n
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