On June 1, another horrific, evil, antisemitic attack took place on the streets of Boulder, Colorado, in the state that the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute calls home. Dr. Dobson and the JDFI staff totally reject and condemn this vicious discrimination against Jews that is raising its ugly head once again.
The attempted murderer used Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower in an effort to burn Jewish Americans who had gathered on a bright late-spring day. The peaceful group was taking part in a “walk” in honor of the Israeli and American hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas. One of those injured in Sunday’s attack was a Holocaust survivor. Hitler had not gotten her, but she couldn’t escape an antisemite in our country on a visa issued to him in 2022. This is, sad to say, not an isolated incident.
Just seven weeks ago, another antisemite attempted to kill the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania and his family while they slept in their home – because the governor supported Israel. Then, a young Jewish couple, staffers at the Israeli Embassy, were shot in the back by a far-left Marxist. The double murder occurred as they were leaving a conference at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The purpose of the assembly was to find ways for people to make common cause for peace and freedom.
Now we have this barbaric attack on the streets of Boulder, Colorado. It’s hard to imagine such brutal antisemitism occurring in Colorado, the state where Dr. James Dobson relocated the headquarters of Focus on the Family in 1991. It won’t be long before many Jews conclude they are no longer safe in this state.
[Sadly, the hatred doesn’t stop there. There is growing hostility to Christianity in Colorado on a broader scale. Laws recently passed by the legislature and signed by the governor have made it progressively difficult for Christian ministries to operate in the state without violating the teachings of our faith.]
Every day, there are increasing antisemitic attacks all over America and the toleration of vicious rhetoric that crosses the line into incitement of violence. Big media bears part of the blame. As they continue to repeat lies about Israel and the Jewish people, they provoke this kind of violence.
All day on Sunday, several major US news networks repeated the lie that Israeli soldiers opened fire on Palestinians waiting in line for food. This was a complete fabrication. The same networks resisted calling the Boulder attack what it obviously was: an antisemitic terrorist attack carried out by a radical Islamic illegal alien.
There has also been constant harassment of Jewish students on America’s major university campuses. The perpetrators are almost always far-left radicals who hate Israel and America, working with radical Islamists who are here on student visas from multiple countries.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, if people wanting student visas admitted they were supporters of Hamas, we would not give them visas. It follows that if individuals come to America and support Hamas by calling for the destruction of an American ally, their visas should be revoked.
How is this even a debate in the United States?
If presidents of major American universities are so morally confused that they will not cooperate in identifying students engaged in antisemitic activities, is it any wonder that graduates of these schools are often muddled about simple moral tenets?
In the last year, Jewish students hid in their dorm rooms. They were barred from certain parts of the campus that pro-Hamas demonstrators declared “Jew free.” They had to endure chants promoting a second Holocaust. We saw the spectacle of university presidents summoned before Congress and asked if they considered calls for a second Holocaust to be in violation of their hate speech codes. One university president after another said it depended on the circumstances.
A significant sign that something had gone deeply wrong in America occurred immediately after the unprovoked attack against Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed, and more than 250 were dragged back into Gaza as hostages. Many of them have died in captivity.
Before Israel even responded to the attack by going into Gaza, demonstrations had already broken out in major cities in Europe as well as in the United States. Faced with a conflict between the only real democracy in the Middle East and the death cult of Hamas, a shocking number of Americans, particularly young Americans, took the side of the death cult.
In large US cities, such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, posters of Israeli hostages were ripped down wherever they were displayed. Many of the groups demonstrating on university campuses, showing their hatred of Israel, quickly revealed their hatred for the United States, too.
It is no exaggeration to say that powerful forces around the world, and here in our own country, are waging war against Western Civilization, or what we often refer to as Judeo-Christian civilization.
This clash is not so much political as it is moral. Our friend Eric Metaxas has powerfully written and spoken about the shame of the Christian church in pre-war Nazi Germany. While we all admire the examples of Christians who hid Jews from Hitler’s stormtroopers, the fact is this: The majority of the German church didn’t want to “rock the boat.” So, they brought into their churches the crooked cross of Nazism—the swastika—to display next to the cross of Jesus Christ.
Such hatred of Jewish people is always a sign of a nation in deep and disturbing trouble. This is yet another reason why all people of goodwill need to oppose discrimination against Jews here in our country.
We want our Jewish friends and neighbors in America today to know they are not alone. We will stand with them, fighting this growing antisemitism. Together, we can and must defend Judeo-Christian civilization.
