None of this should be normal
Many Americans have accepted mass shootings as a part of life. And now it's happening with violent antisemitism.
I was planning to write something about Jewish students barricading themselves in a college library in New York City, when news broke about a deadly shooting rampage in Maine.
October 25, 2023 was that kind of day.
As of this writing, the death toll in Lewiston is at least 22, and the killer remains at large:
A man opened fire at a bowling alley and bar in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday night, killing at least 22 people and injuring 30, engulfing the state's second-largest city in chaos.
In a Wednesday night press conference, Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said that law enforcement is not confirming an exact number of victims since the situation remains "very fluid," but a law enforcement source told Heinrich that 22 people are dead.
On Wednesday night, the Lewiston Police Department identified Robert R. Card, of Bowdoin, Maine, as a person of interest. According to law enforcement, Card is a firearms' instructor.
Authorities said that he should be considered, "armed and dangerous."
"Law Enforcement is attempting to locate Robert Card 4/4/1983, as a person of interest regarding the mass shooting at Schemengees Bar and Sparetime Recreation this evening," Lewiston Police Department announced in a Facebook post. "Card should be considered armed and dangerous. Please contact law enforcement if you are aware of his whereabouts."
Maine had 30 murders in total in 2022. One man almost equaled that in one night.
By contrast, no one was killed or even physically hurt at Cooper Union, where Jewish students had to barricade themselves in the library to protect themselves from “anti-Zionist” protestors:
A number of Jewish students at Cooper Union college in Manhattan said they feared for their safety Wednesday when pro-Palestinian protesters banged on the locked door of the library where they were sheltering and chanted “Globalize the Intifada.”
“I really, truly believe they would have done physical assault if they came in,” said one of the students, a first year, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of security concerns. “For me it was like: How could it get to this point?”
Officials at Cooper Union, an arts and engineering school, downplayed the incident, saying in a statement Wednesday night that the library was closed for about 20 minutes while student protesters passed through. “Some students who were previously in the library remained during this time,” the statement said. “All students have now dispersed.”
[…]
A video of the scene posted online and corroborated by a Cooper Union senior who was there shows a group of about 20 students heading up a flight of stairs. The senior, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security concerns, said she was worried about the safety of students working in the studios upstairs and called the police.
She said she then went into the library, which is on the first floor of the same building, where a number of Jewish students were studying.
The first-year student, who is 19, said that two Jewish people, one wearing a yarmulke, were sitting by the window, and that the protesters began banging on the glass from outside. Then, she said, they went to the library door.
The senior said a library employee suggested the Jewish students escape through a back exit the school president — whose office is on the seventh floor — had used earlier.
The other student said a librarian who was trying to comfort the students suggested a spot upstairs where they could be out of the protesters’ view.
It reminded her of Anne Frank — “like, ‘go hide in the attic,'” she said. “Really, I have to hide, in the United States of America? I can’t sit in a place where there’s windows because I might be attacked. That’s basically what she said. She was trying to be helpful, but — you know?
“The fact that I needed to hide — that really, I just couldn’t understand.”
Imagine if the students in the library were People of Color and the angry mob banging on the door was made up of white frat boys, and the school administration just handwaving it away as college kid shenanigans:
Let’s not pretend they didn’t know the library patrons were Jewish, even if Jews are now considered just another subset of white people. After centuries of being considered not white enough.
On paper an incident which claimed no lives should is not morally equivalent to one which killed almost two dozen people.
But mass shootings are a dime a dozen in the United States, right down to the use of an AR-15 (or “AR-15 style rifle,” whatever that means) while attempted pogroms are the kind of thing you associate with Eastern Europe over a century ago, not New York Freaking City in 2023. (And let’s be clear: if these people had gotten into the library, someone would have been badly hurt or even killed. Well, on pro-Palestinian Twitter, no one would have been hurt or killed and also they deserved it.)
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