A former New Yorker whose brother was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in the West Bank is imploring his Jewish brothers to “wake up” and abandon the land of bagels and smoked salmon for the land of milk and honey.
Hillel Fuld, a native of Queens who moved to Israel at the age of 15, is convinced that Israel is the safest place for Jews – while the number of anti-Semitic crimes in the USA is increasing rapidly.
“Jews, get out now. Get out while you still can,” Fuld warned in an interview with the Washington Post.
The 45-year-old married father of five, who lives between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, called the recent wave of violent attacks in his hometown of New York and across the US “heartbreaking” – and described the attack at an anti-Israel rally in Los Angeles last week as a “legitimate modern-day pogrom.”
“Read the writing on the wall,” pleaded Fuld, whose older brother Ari, 45, was stabbed to death by a 17-year-old Palestinian near his home in Efrat.
“Nobody has to lecture me about terrorism – I know that.”
He added: “You are no longer safe on the streets of New York or Los Angeles.”
The latest statistics are grim: Anti-Semitic hate crimes will rise 45% in 2024, according to NYPD data obtained by The Post in April. And the graphic nature of recent attacks, many of which were captured on shocking video, raises even more concerns.
Earlier this month, 24-year-old Anas Saleh hijacked a crowded subway train during rush hour and demanded that “Zionists” show their identification, police said. Survivors of the Oct. 7 attack were trapped at a memorial in downtown Manhattan and suffered panic attacks as a mob raged outside, chanting “Long live the Intifada” – a well-known call to violence.
“This is literally 1930s Europe,” he said of the shocking subway incident. “It’s scary that something like this could happen in New York.”
The tech guru with a massive social media presence claimed he is not a “fearmonger” when he draws parallels between what he hears in his hometown of New York and the dangerous climate his grandmother, an Auschwitz survivor, experienced as a child.
Those whose strategy is to wait and see are in a “phase of denial,” says Fuld, referring to the German Jews of the 1930s.
“We always say: ‘But we are the most German people,'” he said, quoting a common saying about German Jews who did not believe that the Holocaust – and the systematic murder of six million Jews – could happen to humanity.
Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli told the Post that Jews are “obviously” safer in Israel than in the United States, especially after successive presidents of American universities failed to condemn and control the raging anti-Semitism on their campuses. American Jews need to start thinking about an exit strategy, he stressed.
“One of the options – and it is an important option – is a return to the Jewish homeland,” Chikli said.
According to an Israeli non-profit organization, more than 700 Jews from all over the world have emigrated to Israel or made “aliyah” since the October 7 attacks.
Fuld stressed that he is not a Meshugana and acknowledged that Israel has its problems, especially in light of the massive security breach on October 7. But the engineer stressed that the people – and those who are supposed to protect them, namely the Israeli Defense Forces – will always stand behind them.
In Israel, he said, they know who the enemy is, but in New York they are masked – literally – referring to the face coverings behind which so many anti-Semites hide.
Fuld admitted to hiding his kippah under a hat when he recently visited Times Square with his wife and five children, ages 13 to 19.
“It’s just not worth the risk,” he said. “And that’s tragic.”
Fuld acknowledged that American Jews were resisting his urgent warnings, saying, “The world is too civilized to let this happen again,” that “America is not Germany,” and that “if we run away, they win,” as he recalled the skepticism.
But his assessment of the escalating chaos is not exactly optimistic.
“We know what’s going to happen – and it’s going to happen quickly. The genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “Anti-Semitism is going to get worse and worse. Open any history book.”
“I would like nothing better than to be wrong,” he said grimly. “But I don’t think that’s the case.”
