On November 8, just hours before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, a coalition of activists pedaled through the heart of Philadelphia on a self-described “Boycott Bike Ride”. Their mission was not to debate geopolitics or lobby city hall. Protesters rode through the city supposedly to protest Israel, specifically targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants near Rittenhouse Square, with the chilling demand that these establishments “must go.”
The organizers circulated a social media flyer featuring the names of six businesses circled in red and crossed out. In their posts, organizers stated they were “acting in solidarity with Palestinians, labeled the business owners as Zionists, and accused them of supporting Israel.”
Fliers and social media posts associated with the event featured demands such as “No business for Zionists! These Zionist establishments must go! Not in our city!” and referred to the owners as “Zio business owners” and “disgusting humans.”
According to local police, the demonstration resulted in three arrests, and organizers have announced plans for another ride next Sunday.
In response, an organization called JewBelong put up 14-billboards across the Philadelphia-area that read, “Running over Jewish businesses isn’t a peace plan.”
For the vast majority of Jews, Zionism, the foundational belief in Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland of Israel, is a core part of their identity. Yet the organizers of “Boycott Bike Ride” hide behind the linguistic shield of “anti-Zionism,” claiming a moral license to harass anyone who is Jewish. This proves, once again, that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are indistinguishable.
Let’s be entirely clear: Intimidating and boycotting Jewish restaurant owners on the literal anniversary of Kristallnacht is not a peace protest. It is deeply alarming, coordinated Jew-hate.
When you map out Jewish-owned businesses, paste them onto a public blacklist, and organize a mob to march or ride against them under the banner of exclusion, you are not engaging in anti-war activism. You are resurrecting a vile historical playbook, one whose darkest chapters include events such as Kristallnacht when Nazi mobs carried out coordinated pogroms against Jewish communities across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. History shows where this road leads.
On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide anti-Jewish riot. The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. In reality, this was state-sponsored vandalism, arson, and terror. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). It is also referred to as the November Pogrom.
It was orchestrated by Nazi leadership (including Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler) and executed by the SA (Sturmabteilung or “Stormtroopers”), SS (Schutzstaffel or “Protection Squadron”), Hitler Youth, and participating civilians. The name Kristallnacht refers to the glass of the shop windows smashed by the rioters.
Officially, Kristallnacht was launched in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official. On November 7, 1938, a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish student named Herschel Grynszpan shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris to protest the harsh deportation of his family to the Polish border. On November 9 vom Rath died of his injuries.
The Nazi regime chose to use the shooting as an excuse to launch an anti-Jewish riot. Beginning on November 7, Propaganda Minister Goebbels coordinated the German press response to the shooting of Rath. Nazi newspapers publicized the attack. They incited anti-Jewish violence by blaming the shooting on all Jews. The Nazi regime claimed that Grynszpan was part of a world Jewish conspiracy. In some places, local Nazis took matters into their own hands, attacking synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.
Late on the night of November 9, instructions for the riot spread from Nazi leaders in Munich to other parts of Germany and its annexed territories. In the middle of the night and into the next day, groups of Nazis affiliated with the SA, SS, and Hitler Youth began the assault. The Kristallnacht riot lasted for about 24 hours.
According to Yad Vashem,
That same night [on November 9], a group of Nazi leaders gathered in Munich to commemorate the anniversary of Hitler’s (failed) attempt to take over the Bavarian Government in 1923. The Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, told the other participants that the time had come to strike at the Jews. The Nazi leaders then sent instructions to their men all over the country - they were not supposed to act as if they had launched the pogrom, but were to participate all the same. Within hours, crazed rioting erupted. The shop windows of Jewish businesses were smashed, the stores looted, hundreds of synagogues and Jewish homes were burnt down and many Jews were physically assaulted. Some 30,000 Jews, many of them wealthy and prominent members of their communities, were arrested and deported to the concentration camps at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald, where they were subjected to inhumane and brutal treatment and many died. During the pogrom itself, some 90 Jews were murdered.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
During Kristallnacht, Nazis burned more than 1,400 synagogues, vandalized thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, broke into Jewish people’s apartments and homes, and desecrated Jewish religious objects. They also humiliated, assaulted, and killed Jewish people.
Germany’s synagogues burned throughout the night and the next day in full view of the public. In many cases, the burning synagogue became a public spectacle, with crowds of onlookers. In some locales, Jews were forced to clean up the debris.
In some cases, the perpetrators forced the local rabbi and other members of the Jewish community to watch, or even participate, in these sacrilegious actions… In some cities, Nazi mobs even attacked Jewish orphanages, old-age homes, and hospitals.
The violent assault on Jewish people’s homes was a shocking violation to the victims. Previously, most anti-Jewish measures had been public, related to work and businesses. Kristallnacht shattered the illusion that, for Jews, home could be a sanctuary from public ostracism and danger.
Nazis also publicly humiliated and taunted Jewish people during Kristallnacht. They forced them to do demeaning tasks. These tasks varied from town to town, but included forcing Jews to: perform calisthenics and other exercises, regardless of their age or health; crawl and bark like dogs; dance in celebration of the destruction; sing Nazi songs; and read aloud from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Crowds of Germans participated in the humiliation. They spat on, taunted, and threw mud at their Jewish neighbors. The victims were often still clothed in their pajamas.
During Kristallnacht, mobs of Nazis violently assaulted and even killed Jewish people. As they invaded people’s homes, groups of Nazis often beat and physically abused Jews. There are documented cases of individuals sexually assaulting, shooting, and stabbing Jews on November 9–10.
Hundreds of Jewish people died during Kristallnacht and its aftermath. Some were deliberately killed during the riot. Others were shot, stabbed, or beaten so severely that they later died from their wounds. Additionally, Jewish people died due to medical events, such as heart attacks, resulting from the shock of the riot. During and in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, hundreds of Jewish people died by suicide.
The Nazi regime also had to deal with the economic consequences of the riot. The regime blamed the Jewish community for the destruction and imposed a collective fine of 1 billion Reichsmarks. Insurance payouts owed to Jewish business owners were confiscated by the state. The regime also rapidly enacted many anti-Jewish laws and decrees, which almost completely removed Jews from German economic and social life. They signaled a serious escalation in the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policies. The goal was to use any means available to force Jews to leave Nazi Germany and to confiscate as much of their property and wealth as possible.
As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes,
The specific violent actions were not unprecedented: vandalism and assault had been Nazi anti-Jewish tactics for years. But Kristallnacht was shocking, that night, assault, robbery, vandalism, and arson happened all at once, in a short period of time, all across Germany and its annexed territories. These were not isolated acts of violence, but systemic state-sponsored terror.
Kristallnacht marked a drastic escalation from legal and social discrimination to physical violence, serving as a major prelude to the Holocaust.
Professor Dr David Patterson, Hillel Feinberg Distinguished Chair in Holocaust Studies of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, told IDI:
Hitler expressed he Nazi Party’s intention to exterminate the Jews at least ten years before he came to power in 1933. Their first step on the road to Auschwitz was boycotting Jewish-owned businesses. The organizers of the Boycott Bike Ride said that their purpose was to show “solidarity with Palestinians,” which, certainly after Ten/Seven [2023], means “solidarity with Hamas.” Hamas is an avowed part of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission, as stated by their late leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is to complete the work that Hitler began. Indeed, Hamas has deep genealogical ties to the Nazis. Those ties can be traced backward from Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin to Sayyid Qutb, from Qutb to Haj Amin al-Husseini, from al-Husseini to Hitler. The Boycott Bike Riders are the next link in the chain of the genocidal Jew hatred that cries out for the extermination of the Zionists “from the river to the sea.”
As to how communities and individuals should respond to the rising antisemitism to ensure Jewish residents remain safe and unharmed, Dr Patterson said:
One important response to this seismic eruption of Jew hatred in our communities is to name the evil and to expose this antizionist Jew hatred as the evil that now poisons the whole society. The antizionists are anti-Torah, opposed to the Torah that “goes forth from Zion” and that summons us to love both neighbor and stranger. They oppose supporting Israel, because to support Israel is to support the ancient Jewish teaching that regards our fellow human being as a child of God who is placed in our care. Aligning themselves with Hamas, the bike riders who show “solidarity with the Palestinians” join with Hamas in a celebration of the murder, rape, beheading, burning, and butchering of men, women, and little children, from elders to infants, all while praising and praying to a blood thirsty God, with shouts of Allahu akbar! For Hamas, in the words of their founder Ahmed Yassin, “killing Jews is an act of devotion,” and Jewish blood is their ticket to paradise.
I hope the people of Philadelphia the ‘place of brotherly love’ will refute and prevent any further activities of this kind. Truly sad. We must push back against such evil. It is nothing more.