By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania – Frightful Friday left me enraged and distressed. Three new events last Friday, and another the day before, added to the tensions worldwide with which our fellow Jews must deal.
A new front in Israel’s wars opened up on Friday when Houthi terrorists in Yemen fired a drone more than 1,000 miles to murder a 50-year-old man in a Tel Aviv apartment building. The same day, Jewish journalist Evan Gershkovich was sentenced to 16 years in prison by a kangaroo court in Russia for spying, but no evidence of this was provided to the public.
What’s that? I know. Dubbing any Russian court a “kangaroo court” is offensive to kangaroos.
Anti-Israel lunatics inflamed Jewish angst in my hometown when someone defaced an Israeli flag with what appeared to be red paint on Friday morning, two blocks west of City Hall.
The day before, in New York City, police blocked most entrances to Grand Central Station as friends of the Palestinians approached. After months of obstructing foot or car travel to Grand Central, and on roads and bridges, any police crackdown on such activity has not exactly deterred them.
These incidents jolted me. There was something different and distressing about each of them, especially when they are taken together.
We are already contending with awful situations. Especially, Oct. 7, the day of Hamas’ savage raid of southern Israel where they slaughtered 1,200 Jews and kidnapped another 240. We still worry each day as Hamas refuses to release possibly 100 more hostages and we wrestle with the Israeli response that has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Now the Houthis have struck, this time killing an Israeli and wounding eight others in Tel Aviv. Israeli Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told The New York Times that dozens of drones have been launched from Yemen since October, but this is the first time the Houthis killed an Israeli. Most drones in the past were intercepted by Israeli or American forces and had not even reached Israel’s southernmost city of Eilat, which sits on the Red Sea 160 miles south of Tel Aviv.
The Houthis already attacked ships in the Red Sea supposedly to support Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Times. America, Britain and other allies responded by assaulting Houthi weapons depots, missile systems and radar facilities in Yemen.
Frightful Friday, July 19, marked a new if relatively minor escalation in the clash between Israeli and Arabic forces that want to destroy Israel. The event amounts to a psychological blow for Israelis and their supporters. Though the Houthis have already emerged as a foe, they have become a far more dangerous foe now that they have drawn first blood.
In the context of worldwide antisemitism, the conviction and sentencing of Evan Gershkovich is another harsh psychological blow to the Jewish people. One of the most powerful governments in the world dumps a Jewish journalist into prison on what are probably trumped-up charges.
Russian President Vladimir V. Putin might dismiss any antisemitism accusations for Russia’s treatment of Gershkovich, but would this have happened if he were not Jewish? His parents, who now live near center city Philly, were among thousands of Jewish emigres who left the former Soviet Union to escape antisemitism. Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.
He moved to Russia six years ago where he has held various reporting posts before joining the Journal, and he became the first American reporter arrested in Russia since the Cold War, in March 2023. When the Israeli man was killed by the Houthi drone in Tel Aviv, a Russian court convicted Gershkovich of espionage and sentenced him later in the day to 16 years in prison.
All proceedings were held behind closed doors, so we have no idea what evidence – if any – was presented by the prosecution. However, the trial could set the stage for a possible prisoner exchange. Both Russian and U.S. officials said that discussions about a prisoner swap involving Gershkovich are underway.
There is no reason to believe that Gershkovich was arrested because he is Jewish, but we are witnessing the spectacle of an American Jew facing punishment for crimes that he probably did not commit. His predicament is rooted in his family’s history since he decided to move to the country that his parents fled.
It is nothing unique to persecute a Jew who is innocent, so whatever his motive Putin created a situation that is all too familiar for the Jewish people.
At 5:30 a.m. on Frightful Friday, an Israeli flag positioned in front of Philadelphia’s Holocaust Memorial – with City Hall two blocks in the foreground and the Philadelphia Museum of Art situated one mile to the west in the background – was saturated with a red substance.
When I learned of it, almost simultaneously with news of events in Tel Aviv and Russia, I felt a sense of humiliation. It was as if someone picked a day of tension and harm for Jews to mock us and remind Philadelphia’s Jews that conditions for us are worsening.
The vandalism of the flag may well be coincidental, but the timing had a way of tying all these episodes together.
And the day before, anti-Israel demonstrators marched toward Grand Central, and police kept them from going inside. The last time, they clogged the interior of the iconic train station. Not to mention the Brooklyn Bridge and other highways and bridges. Too bad any effort to crack down was insufficient. If authorities had done enough to deter them during the past 10 months, they probably would not have bothered with a protest like that again.
Just as Hamas and other enemies of Israel feel so emboldened. After Frightful Friday, I worry more.
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist