A fear one should never know

I do not walk around campus wearing a yarmulke -- at least not anymore -- but I do go to Hillel on Fridays and sometimes during the week. I am a Jewish studies student. I am a Jew. And I now have a fear that I never dreamed I'd know.\nI've been taught all my life that the State of Israel is the Jewish homeland and that no matter what happens in the world, I could go to Israel and feel safe as a Jew. Now, the world has turned upside down and I don't even feel like Israel is a safe place to be a Jew. One may say that I am an American (and proud to be), why should I worry? Just stay here, where it's safe! There's no worry about anti-Semitism here in the U.S. -- and Sept. 11 had nothing to do with Jews.\nI am not speaking about the conflict in Israel, though it springs from that topic. Politics aside, the Jews of the world are no longer safe anywhere -- I do not feel safe here. The musical "Parade" playing at the theater department and the Thomas Hart Benton murals show us that anti-Semitism and racism are not far removed in this country from our time.\nTwo years ago, hate literature found its way to the homes of the citizens of Bloomington and from the hate, a group rose above to preach tolerance and diversity: Bloomington United. Today, I again need to know that I am safe here.\nThe reason we study the Holocaust is because of one phrase: "It can happen again." This past week in Europe (France) and in North Africa (Tunisia), bombs have gone off destroying synagogues: is this my generation's Krystalnacht?\nThese were not Israeli Jews who are in conflict with Palestinians. The voices of the world are so busy assigning blame to either the Israeli position (which, while a Jewish state, has plenty of Christian, Muslim and other citizens of various religions) or the Palestinian position (also, not just Muslim people) that no one seems to see the underlying world-wide effects it has brought on.\nIf you want a political position it is this: I am anti-killing -- be it Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu or however a person chooses to believe or not believe in God. And I will not allow a holocaust in the 21st century, especially not over a land/political conflict.\nJews in the world are being killed or attacked by assailants that have not been wronged and no one is saying anything. The U.S. knew about Auschwitz three years before it was liberated and we did nothing. Must it happen in the U.S. before people see that an inhuman wrong is occurring? Or are we too close to our own shameful past (that has remnants as close as the '60s) to recognize a wrong as it occurs?\nFor 50 years, world-wide anti-Semitism on a fatal scale was on hiatus. Until I can see an end, I now fear my life simply because I was born a Jew. I pray everyday that it stops; I pray that no one should ever fear their life for having a faith. I pray that anti-Semitism is not on hiatus, I pray that it is deceased.