In Germany in late May Jews were advised not to wear the kippah, the Jewish head covering. In early June the D.C Dyke March banned Jewish symbols, particularly the Star of David which activists asserted was a “nationalist symbol” because it resembles the Israeli flag. In both cases there was pushback from the Jewish community and supporters who argued Jews should wear kippahs in Germany and that a Star of David flag with rainbow colors should be allowed at the march. But the very fact we are debating this shows how antisemitism and hatred of Jews has become commonplace in too many countries.
In the 1940s Jews were sent to the deaths, forced to wear the Star of David, and rounded up in their kippahs. Today the new hatred of Jews has decided to disappear any outward symbol of Judaism or the State of Israel, the only country in the world whose symbol is routinely banned.
The western world’s sickening return to antisemitism has sought to replace the old hatred of “the Jew,” who was viewed as an interloper, wandering salesman and corrupt cosmopolitan, to a new antisemitism which once again holds up Jews as the paragon of all that is not acceptable in the West. Where once they portrayed Jews as borderless and cowardly, not manly farmers of the land like the volk in their “blut and boden” or blood and soil, now Jews are castigated as “Zionists” and extreme ethnocratic nationalists and their symbols accused of being too “nationalist.”
How can this be? How can the Star of David, which once Jews were forced to wear, is now the symbol they ban because it is “nationalist.” A study of the world’s flags shows that around a third have religious symbols incorporated into them, including thirty-one countries in Europe which have the cross and twenty-one countries with Islamic symbols. Of those, thirteen have the crescent. But only the Star of David is banned.
When it comes to the crescent and cross the symbols are generally accepted, not called “nationalist” and not accused of representing the crimes of any of the states or groups they are associated with. No one bans the cross simply because far-right nationalists or the KKK may like it. No one bans the crescent or Islamic flags simply because Islamic State or other extremist groups also may use the symbols. Only with Israel and only with Jews are we told that “the Star of David reminds people of Israel’s abuses, you should change it.”
Let’s step back and look at these increasingly common attacks on Jewish symbols in a wider context. That Jews are being asked to even contemplate whether they should wear a kippah or be “allowed” to have a flag with a Star of David shows how the racists, thugs and bigots are winning. It’s admirable that the paper Bild ran an article with a cut-out of a kippah that readers could wear as solidarity. But this is Germany. If there is one country in all the world that must be sensitive and welcoming to Jews it is the country whose ideology of the 1930s led to the systematic murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Why would it ever be unsafe to wear a kippah anywhere? We must ask that. If a woman wants to wear an Islamic headscarf she is permitted to. It is those who harass her who are the problem. If a Muslim man wants to wear a Muslim headcovering or an Arabic-style khaffiya, he may do that. There’s no debating that. Sikhs are not told that they might be attacked on the streets just for wearing their turbans. Almost every person in the world is permitted to dress how they want in places like the US and Germany when it comes to their cultural and religious clothing. Only one group is told to tip-toe and worry: Jews. Only Jews are systemically harassed for their religious clothing, whether it is frequent attacks in New York City or elsewhere.
Only the Star of David is accused of being “too similar” to the Israeli flag. We debate that as if this is a normal discussion. It doesn’t matter if the Star of David is similar to the Israeli flag. There is no other symbol in the world that appear on a flag that is ever said to be problematic because of that. Only the Jews. Only the Star of David.
There are places in the world where one can feel safe and at ease with the Star of David or a kippah. Those countries are generally in east Asia. But any country linked to the West or the Middle East often has an obsessive and rising anti-semitism. It is so pervasive that we’ve got to the point where we even debate whether it is safe to wear a kippah, or whether or not having a flag with the Star of David might offend people. It is so pervasive that hardly a day goes by without a story of an attack on Jews, Jewish cemeteries, Jewish places of worship or symbols in some country in Europe or North America. This is how the anti-Semites have successfully rebranded everything Jewish today to once again be the one thing that their societies reject.
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