A former New Yorker who lost a brother to a West Bank-Palestinian is telling his Jewish community in the U.S. to “wake up” and head for Israel.
Hillel Fuld, a Queens native who moved to Israel at age 15, said he believes that as attacks on Jews in the U.S. are up, there can be no safer place for them than Israel.
“Jews, get out now. Get out while you still can,” Fuld warned in an interview with The Post.
For the 45-year-old married father of five, who lives between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, reports on a spate of violent attacks in his native New York — as well those elsewhere across the US — have been “heartbreaking. He also called last week’s attack on a Los Angeles anti-Israel rally an ” legitimate modern-day pogrom.”
Fuld, whose brother Ari Fuld was 45 when fatally stabbed by a Palestinian teenager as he shopped near his home in Efrat last September, wrote simply: “Read the writing on the wall.”
The NYPD data reviewed by The Post in April showed that antisemitic hate crimes increased 45 % thus far this year — a disturbing trend. The fear is underscored by a rash of recent high-profile attacks, many recorded on video and unforgettable for their boldness.
But in Israel, he said, their enemy is not hidden behind a mask — literally referring to the face coverings that many antisemites have used.
While visiting Times Square alone recently with his wife and five children, ages 13 to 19, Fuld said he had kept a hat over his yarmulke.
“It’s just not worth the risk,” he said. “And that’s tragic.”
Fuld admitted that American Jews pushed back against his haunting harbingers, saying “the world is too civilized to let it happen again,” that “America is not Germany” and that “if we run away, they win,” he recalled of the skepticism.
However, he is not sanguine about growing chaos.
“We know what’s about to happen – and it’s going to happen fast. The genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “Antisemitism will only get worse and worse. Open a history book.
“I would love nothing more than to be wrong,” he said somberly. “But I don’t think I am.”
