Article in The Times of Israel by Andy Blumenthal: Day after day, week after week now, we see the vile Hamas terrorist supporters acting out in public, screaming, cursing, threatening, blocking, harassing, burning flags, pushing, prodding, and violently attacking others (i.e., Zionists and Jews). In any normal situation, the police would be there protecting the innocent, stopping the harassment, and arresting the violent agitators. But these days, what do we see? The police seem to be doing virtually nothing to stop them. Without any serious consequences from our law enforcement, courts, or politicians, we can expect things to continue to escalate and get more dangerous.

1. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 1/7
THE BLOGS
Andy Blumenthal
Leadership With Heart
The Canary in the
Antisemitic Coal Mine
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2. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 2/7
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Last night, I woke up in the middle of the night disturbed by the very real
nightmare about the rising antisemitism from dangerous Hamas supporters in
our midst, this occurring less than 80 years after the end of the Holocaust, which
saw the murder of six million Jews.
Day after day, week after week now, we see the vile Hamas terrorist supporters
acting out in public, screaming, cursing, threatening, blocking, harassing,
burning flags, pushing, prodding, and violently attacking others (i.e., Zionists
and Jews). In any normal situation, the police would be there protecting the
innocent, stopping the harassment, and arresting the violent agitators. But
these days, what do we see? The police seem to be doing virtually nothing to
stop them.
Over time, what is happening is that the terrorist supporters are seeing that
they can practically get away with murder and nothing will happen to them and
so, they are emboldened and becoming louder, more obnoxious, more
threatening, and more violent. Innocent people on the streets, in cars, or going

3. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 3/7
to dinner, synagogue services, or a concert are getting yelled at, followed, spit
on, pushed, punched, and threatened with even worse violence. This is not civil
society, but anarchy.
Without any serious consequences from our law enforcement, courts, or
politicians, we can expect things to continue to escalate and get more
dangerous.
In some cases, we have already seen windows and doors crashed in, antismitic
graffiti and violent mobs entering and threatening to practically lynch students
hiding, locked away, escorted through tunnels to escape, and fleeing in dreaded
fear. Similarly, we’ve seen speeches, concerts, and other Jewish events mobbed,
interrupted, or having to be canceled altogether while youth are attacked, an old
man was already killed, and families can no longer feel safe.
Just some recent examples:
Representative Jamie Raskin’s speech was interrupted by pro-Palestinian
hecklers at the University of Maryland, and he had to abandon the speech.
Radio City Music Hall was surrounded by pro-Palestinian protesters
swarming Jews on the street and chanting “Down with the USA” and “Al
Qassam is on the way.”
Rutgers University police had to escort Jewish students away as Hamas
supporters threateningly called for “Intifada.”
Representative Ted Cruz has been confronted in front of his own home
weekly for two months by a disturbing mob of Palestinian supporters.
Exiting a Biden fund-raiser, a Jewish woman was harassed while being yelled
at “f***ing murderous k*ke.”

4. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 4/7
Targeting a synagogue in Teaneck, violent Hamas-supporting protesters
chanting “we don’t want no Zionists here” threw objects and sprayed paint at
Jewish counter-protesters.
Tulane University Jewish students were assaulted by Hamas supporters trying
to burn the Israeli flag.
At a Jewish Community Center in Florida, a Jewish man was thrown down and
repeatedly punched by pro-Palestinian supporters.
AIPAC’s president was targeted with smoke bombs and fake blood by pro-
Palestinian supporters at his home.
In Southern California, a 69-year-old Jewish man was murdered by
Palestinian supporters at an Israel rally.
A building in Washington, D.C., was vandalized with graffiti by Hamas
supporters demonstrating and calling for “death to Israel.”
So what are the police and our politicians doing?
Daily, we see the police passively stand around, or perhaps attempt to push the
protesters back, and occasionally arrest a few, seemingly only to let them right
out without any charges pressed, so they can go back on the streets and repeat
the same or worse criminal and terrorist behavior again.
What happened to laws protecting innocent civilians, the flow of traffic, no
vagrancy, and not disturbing the peace? What happened to common decency,
morality, and ethics of our fellow citizens, school boards, public servants, and
our elected officials?

5. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 5/7
While there are many good law enforcement officers out there, we need to ask
in the context of these spiraling out-of-control Hamas-supporting protests:
are they either afraid of standing up to these hate-filled, dangerous mobs, or
worse yet, are some of them actually aligned with or complicit with them?
Have the police been given stand-down orders from their superiors and
chiefs, and therefore are they letting these dangerous terrorist supporters run
rampant on our streets and in our cities?
Are the politicians more afraid of losing some votes from these criminals and
terrorist supporters than of serving the communities that have elected them
amidst their empty promises to protect and defend the Constitution of the
United States of America?
Why isn’t law enforcement, our intelligence agencies, or the investigative
press infiltrating these pro-Hamas demonstrators to get to the bottom of it to
find out who is behind these antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-U.S. protests
(e.g., Iran, Qatar, Soros, etc.): organizing them, supplying them, funding
them, paying the protesters, and writing the scripted hateful and threatening
slogans and chants?
Is this 1933 all over again with the rise of the genocidal Nazi state, followed
by the 1935 Nuremberg Laws making it open season on the Jews, and soon to
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6. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 6/7
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Blumenthal is a dynamic, award-winning leader who writes frequently about Jewish life,
culture, and security. All opinions are his own.
follow 1938 Kristallnacht (the Night of the Broken Glass)?
What is amazing to me as well is the similarity of the Hamas supporters with
the Nazi strategy to eradicate the Jews. The Nazis deemed the Jews a racially
inferior race and a danger to German society, and so they claimed that they
needed to be exterminated by the superior Aryan Germans. So too do today’s
Hamas supporters call the Jews genocidal and racist, so that they can
freely pursue an agenda of racism and genocide against the Jewish people.
Inside every Jew after 2,000 years of exile and persecution culminating in the
Holocaust is a deep trauma that stands like a canary in the coal mine to warn us
of the next, G-d forbid, impending pogrom and genocide against our people. The
question is, at what point will the canary stop singing, and will it be too late for
our people to wake up to the threat on our very doorstep again?
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7. 4/7/24, 1:58 PM The Canary in the Antisemitic Coal Mine | Andy Blumenthal | The Blogs
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-canary-in-the-antisemitic-coal-mine/ 7/7
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H hopefullearner
10 hours ago
It’s the same in the UK. A police officer told a Jewish woman recently that the meaning
of the swastika carried by a pro-Palestinian demonstrator “depends on the context”.
Whenever Muslim men form a mob on the streets of Britain, the authorities’ instinct is
always to appease them.
So they were all...
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