George Floyd’s death led to a racial reckoning — where’s the antisemitism reckoning?

An Israeli flag flutters in the wind in central Tel Aviv as a three day cease-fire between Israel and members of Hamas holds for the release of prisoners and hostages on November 26, 2023. Getty Images

George Floyd died May 25, 2020, while police subdued and arrested him.

One of those officers, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murder.

Upon Floyd’s death, America was gripped by riots, demonstrations and demands for action.

That death, we were told, was a sign America is a racist country and everything had to change immediately.

Institutions across academia, government and corporate America rushed to adopt “anti-racist” programs.

Police were defunded.

Many jurisdictions elected hands-off prosecutors whose philosophy was to let most offenders go without bail.

The near-unanimity with which top American institutions, led by news and opinion media, concluded that drastic action was needed was striking.

Though Floyd died in the middle of the COVID lockdowns, public-health officials were quick to opine that mass marches of unmasked individuals were OK because racism is a public-health problem too.

That’s what one death can do in our society.

But that’s not what’s happening now.

Compare the response to George Floyd’s death with what happened when a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, allegedly murdered a Jewish man, Paul Kessler.

Alnaji, a computer-science professor at California’s Moorpark College, was charged with manslaughter after he approached Kessler and allegedly struck him in the head with a megaphone he was carrying, resulting in Kessler’s death.

He may still face hate-crime charges.

Have there been any riots by people protesting antisemitism in America? No.

Have media and corporate voices condemned rising antisemitism in America? Not really.

Are universities responding by adopting massive anti-antisemitism programs? No.

In fact, the reaction to Kessler’s death has barely moved the meter on the national conversation.

Of course, Floyd’s death had such symbolic power because it represented a general phenomenon of black men dying at the hands of police.

But what about Kessler’s death?

Well, there’s a general phenomenon of Jews, and their supporters, being victimized by pro-Palestinian violence (ironically, often at the hands of black people).

It’s not as if Kessler’s case was a one-off.

In New York, a teacher at a Jamaica, Queens, high school was forced to hide in a locked office as a mob of hundreds of students, organized over social media, chased her down after a photo of her attending an Oct. 9 pro-Israel rally surfaced.

As a Jamaica senior told The Post, “A bunch of kids decided to make a group chat, expose her, talk about it and then talk about starting a riot.”

And they did, as hundreds of students flooded the halls, chanting, shouting and waving Palestinian flags and banners.

They put footage of their antics on TikTok, The Post noted: “Most comments posted on the videos applauded the kids and jeered the teacher, one calling her a ‘cracker ass bitch.’”

Up in Yonkers, antisemites at tony Sarah Lawrence College are targeting Jews and their supporters too.

Sammy Tweedy, son of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, says that once he identified himself as a Jew and Israel supporter, he became a “pariah.”

He reports: “As long as you’re not willing to call for the destruction of the State of Israel and the expulsion or murder of the inhabitants of the State of Israel, you’re in for some trouble as a Jewish young person or college student.”

He’s leaving Sarah Lawrence behind.

At the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, a Jewish student was punched in the head and kicked in the stomach at a pro-Israel rally.

His assailant had a knife, which he used to shred the Israeli flag the student was carrying.

The university issued a lukewarm denunciation of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The assailant, a fellow student, has been charged.

Yale’s campus newspaper censored a column about Hamas beheading men and raping women, calling those facts “unsubstantiated.”

It’s not just education.

Jewish Americans attending the pro-Israel rally in Washington, DC, this month were left stranded on the tarmac at Dulles airport when bus drivers refused to carry them to the terminal.

The Jewish Federation of Detroit’s David Kurzmann said the bus company declared it was a “deliberate and malicious walk-off of drivers.”

Even being a bigshot Democrat didn’t protect Rahm Emanuel from having his Michigan home defaced with antisemitic graffiti.

Think about what’s happened here.

Just a few weeks ago, Hamas terrorists violated a cease-fire and murdered, raped and burned alive Jewish people at a “rave for peace,” along with others including babies and old people.

The response to this atrocity: attacks on Jews.

It’s as if Dylann Roof’s shooting up of a black church in Charleston, SC, had been followed up with massive Klan rallies and lynchings.

George Floyd’s death led to a racial reckoning in America.

It’s time for a reckoning with antisemitism, too.

Instead, many of our institutions are embracing it or at least turning a blind eye. Enough.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee and founder of the InstaPundit.com blog.