Amanda Berman provides a timely warning from Britain and its experience of Jeremy Corbyn and rising anti-Semitism on the left as to what could happen here (“A Message to My Compatriots in the American Left From Across the Pond,” Nov. 5).

Berman observes how warnings regarding the rise of anti-Semitism on the left in Britain went unheeded with the result now that it is widespread and tolerated in the U.K.

Tragically, something similar seems to be happening here in the U.S., where, for example, among new legislators elected in the midterms are Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who calls Israel “racist” and supports its replacement with a single, Arab-dominated state; and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has labeled Israel an “apartheid” state, damned it as guilty of “evil” acts and who is the first open Congressional supporter of boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Once, such extreme positions would have been news. Today, they are almost universally ignored. Thus, PJ Media’s David Steinberg has identified 105 news stories written in the immediate aftermath of Omar’s victory, not a single one of which even mentioned her extreme statements (or, for that matter, the abundant evidence of her having committed federal and state felonies).

Anti-Semitism flourishes where, among other things, the media normalizes anti-Semitism to the point of not even regarding it as worthy of mention, let alone investigation. Fighting the normalization of anti-Semitism is the enormous challenge that American Jews have before them.

The original article was posted in the LA Jewish Journal and can be found here.