Recently my colleague, Rabbi Sid Schwarz, encountered a shocking example of this racism at the Salute to Israel Day parade in New York City: young religious Jews dancing ecstatically to Am Yisrael Chai (The Jewish People are alive) alternating with “Let the Arabs die!”

He wrote:
“Then a band launched into a rousing rendition of Am Yisrael Chai. I spent more than 25 years as an activist for Soviet Jewry. This was our theme song signaling solidarity both with the history of our people and with all those oppressed Jews in the world whose cause we championed. A group of young men in their 20′s with kippot and tziztzit were right in front of me dancing in a frenzy. But they alternated the verse that meant “the people of Israel lives” with “all the Arabs must die.” It rhymed with the Hebrew. Given the way all joined in, it was clear that this was not the first time it was sung.

I leaned over to a young man who was next to me, also wearing a kippah and tzitzit. I nodded at the dancers and asked: “Does this song bother you?” He looked at me with a suspicious look and replied: “This is Zionism.”

You can read his full piece in the Jewish Week.

I do precisely what they announced they were going to do. I filter out the most egregious anti-Semitic & anti-Muslim remarks from my threads as well though I don’t manually approve every comment as they seem to be saying they will do. Manually approving first time commenters & banning the worst offenders seems to work reasonably well.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/time-out-for-comments.html

For one, I actually have to agree with Bar Kochba here. I read Mondoweiss regularly, and there’s no doubt that many of the people who gather around it are openly anti-semitic. When you talk about Jewish ethnic loyalty, as Philip Weiss does, you’re bound to attach a bunch of ugly acolytes.

Normally I don’t find much to agree with you on, Richard, but on this point I wholeheartedly concur. In fact you’ve summed it up so well in those two sentences that I won’t endeavor to expand.

I do encourage anyone who doesn’t regularly visit Mondoweiss to do so; specifically to read Phil’s Gaza accounts, though the site’s regular content is top-notch as well.