Forget Paris. These ugly scenes are playing out right here at home (via John Podhoretz):

For the third time in eight days, Boston police were forced to intervene when a small group of student Israel supporters was swarmed by demonstrators screaming anti-Semitic epithets and initiating physical contact, said students involved in the incident…A handful of Jewish students with Israeli flags was surrounded by demonstrators shouting anti-Semitic epithets and – according to two of the students – a tense minute of “pushing and shoving.” Soon after the “die-in” ended, Brett Loewenstern — a Berklee College of Music student and pro-Israel activist – entered the fray with his boyfriend, Israeli-born Avi Levi. According to Loewenstern, he and his boyfriend’s combining of an Israeli flag with a rainbow flag – the symbol for gay rights – set off a hailstorm of insults from demonstrators. Among other things, the shouts included “Jews back to Birkenau” and “Drop dead, you Zionazi whores,” said Loewenstern and other witnesses…During a gathering outside the Boston Public Library on Thursday evening, police had to protect Valdary and student activist Daniel Mael from what Valdary called “hundreds of people shouting ‘Allah is great.’”

The mere presence of a gay pro-Israel couple at the rally “set off a hailstorm” of venom from Hamas supporters that would no doubt be national news by now if the epithets had been hurled by, say, Tea Partiers. (Incidentally, I’ve never been able to square the circle of grassroots Lefties’ anti-Israel attitudes. The tiny nation is an oasis of pluralistic democracy in an autocratic and oppressive neighborhood, it boasts a robust nationalized healthcare system, and it proudly protects the rights of women and gays. And yet many on the far Left aggressively side with Israel’s violent, intolerant — and in some cases, genocidal — adversaries. Why?) In any case, let’s forget about these Holocaust- and death-celebrating slurs, and ignore disgusting scenes like this. All Hamas is (currently) requesting in exchange for a ceasefire is an Israeli pledge to lift its blockade of Gaza, thus flinging open the floodgates for even more weapons to stream into the hands of terrorists, equipping them to launch additional salvos against Israeli civilians. That’s all. Palestinian violence, the apologists claim, is ultimately about policy disputes, so “peace” requires Israel to end the blockade. Or release terrorist prisoners. Or uproot its settlements. Or divide up its capital city. Or, you know, cease to exist. The demands and pretexts for violence may be slippery, but the goal remains the same: Annihilating the Jewish State. Not all criticism of Israel’s actions is rooted in anti-Semitism, of course, but a lot of it is. Look no further than elements of the ‘Free Palestine’ crowd’s impulse to attack synagogues, rather than picket Israeli consulates and embassies. And look no further than the abominable rhetoric flying at increasingly violent “anti-Israel” protests in Europe:

Some of the demonstrations took on a distinctly anti-Semitic tinge, although the organizers said they were designed solely to protest the Israeli incursion into Gaza that has left 500 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians. French Jewish leaders Monday warned against importing the Arab-Israeli conflict to Europe following a weekend in which a radical fringe among pro-Palestinian protesters in the French capital clashed with police, targeting Jewish shops, lighting smoke bombs, and throwing stones and bottles at riot police. Eight synagogues in France have been targeted in the past week, Jewish groups said…Over the weekend, the authorities banned protests in selected areas of Paris, citing security concerns. Several recent pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Paris have boiled over into violence, and earlier this month several hundred protesters sought to storm two synagogues in the French capital during an anti-Israel demonstration in which protesters chanted, “Death to Jews!” and “Hitler was right,” according to Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary general of the European Jewish Congress, a Brussels-based organization representing European Jewry…A leader of Germany’s Jewish community said some of the demonstrators in that country had shown an “explosion of evil and violence-prone hatred of Jews.” Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Monday that “Never in our lives did we believe it possible that anti-Semitism of the most primitive kind would be heard on the streets of Germany.”

Sadly, Europe’s history of ‘primitive’ and violent anti-Semitic pogroms isn’t as distant as Mr. Graumann seems to wish it were. These Jewish businesses, including a funeral home, were destroyed this week — not circa 1937:

Eighteen people were arrested after looters wrecked shops, including a kosher foodstore and a funeral home as protesters shouted: “F**k Israel!”.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, supporters of a ceasefire have found themselves “loudly shouted down:”

It was clear that Hamas’s defiance would be answered, but the few Palestinians who had supported a cease-fire found themselves loudly shouted down. At the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, crowds gathered to throw shoes and eggs at the Palestinian Authority’s health minister, who represents the crumbling “unity government” in the West Bank city of Ramallah. The minister was turned away before he reached the hospital, which has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices. From a loudspeaker at a mosque across the street, a protester called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his government “traitors” and “collaborators” for allegedly supporting the cease-fire proposal.

That’s right, a hospital has become the “de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders,” whose rockets were recently discovered in a UN-administered school. (The UN then helpfully turned those weapons over to… Hamas). Fun fact: The US government continues to fund the Palestinian “unity government” that includes Hamas — a State Department-designated terrorist organization. Over in the West Bank, Hamas supporters are pelting police with rocks, just as they stoned the ambulance carrying the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists last month. A Hamas spokesman has openly urged Gazans to ignore the Israeli military’s pre-bombing warnings and act as human shields, complicating Israel’s extraordinary efforts to limit civilian casualties. I’ll leave you with some ‘compare and contrast’ footage. Paris:

Times Square, New York City:

“I want us to take a moment to remember the three innocent Israeli boys that were murdered, and the one innocent Palestinian boy who was murdered, too.” “Stop terror! Support Israel! — Israel wants peace! Hamas wants war!”

There is absolutely zero moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas; on this point, Jonah Goldberg and Chuck Schumer agree.