Senator Scott Wiener

Last week, high school students in Campbell formed a human swastika on the school’s football field. They posted it, along with a 1939 quote from Hitler about “international financial Jews … plunging nations into a world war” which requires “annihilation of the Jewish race.” 🧵

The school responded positively to this horrific incident. But we need to ask ourselves why these students believed it was ok to do this — not just the swastika but linking it to the extermination of Jews due to “international financial Jews.”

We see lots of rhetoric today, on right &amp; left, about Jews controlling institutions — governments, elected officials, financial institutions, media, etc. For millennia, this claim of Jewish control &amp; manipulation has been a pillar of antisemitic demonization, leading to violence.

Antisemitism is pervasive &amp; growing. It’s leading to harassment &amp; violence against Jews. Yet, there’s an orchestrated campaign to deny its existence. We see this in the lies spread in opposition to the Jewish community’s work this year to pass legislation on school antisemitism.

We need to take antisemitism seriously &amp; push back hard when people deny its existence — or even worse, pay lip service to it, say it’s bad, but then say we shouldn’t do anything about it.

It turns out the school at issue was in San Jose, not Campbell. Apologies to Campbell.