Tod wrote about the shootings in Pittsburgh and the rise of anti-Semitism nationally in this week’s edition of the Desert Sun, the local paper of the greater Palm Springs region:

“The sad thing was, no one should have been surprised. Not if they were paying attention. A thread of anti-Semitism had already been sewn into the tapestry of hate, long before swastikas showed up in Virginia. Every time the president called the media the “enemy of the people” he bull-horned a message to the fringes of American society who believed the Jews controlled the media. Every time your aunt shared a George Soros conspiracy theory on Facebook, it enforced insidious Jewish global puppet-master canards that have existed since at least The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Once FOX began doing it, too, the conspiracy theories became legitimatized, until Soros himself received a pipe bomb in the mail last week, touching off a string of assassination attempts of high-profile Democrats. And each time an immigrant — legal or otherwise — was blamed for some perceived ill in our society, it was only one step backward to land on the Jews; the blame of the “Other,” the easiest crutch of the ignorant, fault always simpler to put on a demonized group than it is to put on yourself. So when Robert Bowers burst into the Tree of Life synagogue last Saturday and gunned down 11 Jews in their place of worship, for irrational reasons, of course, but rooted no less in the rhetoric of the far right, no Jew I know was surprised.”

To read it all, click here.