'Here I Am; Send Me': Teens Stand Against Jew Haters

by Richard Kemp 

• As every commander knows, you do not train a soldier to fight when he is in the middle of a battle, you do it before he gets anywhere near the combat zone.
• Victimhood culture, too often the corrosive first resort of those who face injustice or feel wronged, is not in Club Z's creed. Students are taught that an individual's character is defined not by what obstacles are thrown in their path but by how they have overcome those obstacles and turned them to advantage.
• Club Z teens are not aggrieved victims but active and proud defenders. They know that weakness incites while strength deters, that keeping quiet about antisemitism, meeting the bullies half way or compromising with calumnies does not protect them, does not make the problem go away and does not diminish the diatribe against them.
• Courage cannot be taught but it can be fortified, and that is fundamentally what Club Z does. It is what empowers these teens to say, as the finest soldiers say when there's a perilous task to be done: "Here I am; send me".

Club Z teens are not aggrieved victims but active and proud defenders. They know that weakness incites while strength deters, that keeping quiet about antisemitism, meeting the bullies half way or compromising with calumnies does not protect them, does not make the problem go away and does not diminish the diatribe against them. (Image source: iStock)

The Hebrew expression "hineni" means "here I am", most famously used by the great Biblical defender of Israel, Isaiah, who responded to a heavenly call to duty with the words: "Here I am; send me". Hineni encapsulates the spirit of Club Z (for Zionism), a network of Jewish American teens that are standing up for their people and their Zionist identity against the scourge of antisemitism that is on the rise across the US, with the latest FBI figures showing Jews — 2.4% of the population — were the target of nearly 60% of religious hate crimes in 2020.

Jew hate is at its most virulent on campus. A complaint filed last week against City University of New York includes a recorded 150+ incidents of antisemitism on their premises since 2015, more than 60 directly targeting Jewish students with the intent to harm them.

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