(Jewish Group) How Jews have confronted the seemingly eternal scourge of hatred

“The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do,” at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage shows the destruction of once-vibrant Jewish communities. Photo by John Halpern

I learned what hate can do on March 9, 1977, when I went to work as usual that morning at the Jewish service organization B’nai B’rith in Washington, D.C. By lunchtime, I had become one of the more than 100 hostages seized and held there for the next 39 hours by an armed group of Hanafi Muslims. During that time, we were harangued with nonstop anti-Jewish rants by group leader and head hostage-taker Hamaas Abdul Khaalis.

Wielding a machete, Khaalis threatened to cut off our heads and throw them out the window. His accomplices had rounded us up at gunpoint, then forced us to climb the steps to the cavernous top-floor space still under construction. With bloody injuries inflicted by the gunmen visible for all to see, we sat on the concrete floor and listened in terror as Khaalis not only warned us that nobody promised us tomorrow, but urged us to pray to whatever God we prayed to.

That I am here to tell the tale is thanks to the lengthy negotiations that led to our release. That I feel compelled to continue to repeat this tale, all these years later, is testament both to the tenacity of hate, and to the short-term memory span of too many American Jews who prefer to regard each new violent attack against Jewish communities — in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill, the Colleyville synagogue in Texas, and elsewhere — as individual wake-up calls rather than an ever-more insistent alarm bell.

This experience has served as my personal motivation for writing so many articles over the years focused on fighting prejudice, fostering cooperation, teaching tolerance — and reviewing exhibitions like two that recently opened in New York.

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