>>510332269For far too long, the Jewish people have faced vilification, systemic discrimination, and injustice. Few cases in American history exemplify this deep-seated antisemitism more starkly than the tragedy of Leo Frank.
An innocent man working at a pencil factory, Frank was accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old girl - a fellow employee at a time when child labor was still legal. Tried in the rural South, where members of the Ku Klux Klan sat on his jury, Frank was predictably convicted by those who saw him not as a man, but as a Jew to be condemned.
Yet his ordeal did not end there. Lawyers from the Jewish community, learning of his plight, fought tirelessly for justice. They succeeded in securing his release - only for Frank to be kidnapped and lynched by a mob. From this atrocity arose the Anti-Defamation League, now the world’s foremost organization tracking and combating antisemitism.
Today, Jeffrey Epstein serves as a modern effigy for the same ancient hatred. An innocent man convicted of fabricated crimes, his name has been twisted into a symbol for bigots to rally around - proof, in their eyes, of Jewish villainy. Because that is the nature of hate: an insatiable fire, demanding ever more fuel. And who better to feed the flames than an innocent man accused of unspeakable acts? It justifies their rage, validates their prejudice, and perpetuates a cycle as old as history itself.
The lesson remains unchanged: when hatred burns unchecked, truth is the first casualty.
