There Are Jews That You Can Kill and Jews That You Can’t
This week a Palestinian terrorist opened fire, on civilians near the town of Ofra, in the West Bank, wounding 6 including a pregnant mother. The infant, only in its 30th week, has been delivered and is fighting for its life along with the mother and the other victims.
The international response? Silence.
Given the last few weeks and months, it’s becoming painfully clear that there are Jews that you can kill and Jews that you can’t.
The same Shabbat of the Pittsburgh massacre, rockets flew from launchers somewhere in the Gaza Strip, sirens shattered the desert calm of southern Israel, and Tamuz missiles streaked out of their Iron Dome launchers in another small flare-up in Hamas’ ongoing attempts to kill and terrorize Israeli civilians.
The international response? The typical watery calls for restraint “on both sides”.
Later that same weekend 11 Jews were killed during Shabbat morning prayers. The Jews killed in Pittsburgh received the sympathies of the nation and the international community, the Jews of Southern Israel did not. both Hamas and Robert Bowers felt that Jews didn’t deserve to be in those places but for some reason, the world only vehemently disagrees with Bowers.
It shows the dichotomy of the world that we live in: There are Jews you can kill and the Jews you can’t.
It reminds me of the scene in Scorcese’s “The Departed” where Mr. French explains to Leanardo DiCaprio's Costigan: “I’m the guy that tells you there are guys you can hit and there’s guys you can’t.”
Progressives like Linda Sarsour have taken on the role of Mr. French, deciding which Jews you can kill and which Jews you can’t. How else do you explain when Sarsour acts horrified by the killings in the US, but call Zionism “creepy” or insinuating that Jews who support Israel are disloyal to the US? How else do you explain a British Lord claiming that Israeli policies in the Middle East are the cause of antisemitism in the US? How do else do you make sense of the endless numbers of politicians, pundits, and celebrities who say that Palestinian terrorism is simply “resistance”?
Even the Jews of Pittsburgh weren’t spared the usual victim blaming. In spite of the fact that the killer ascribed his crimes to purely nationalistic motives, he was given a lot more credit than he deserved. There was a tide who blamed the attacks on such things as they’re support for policies (and therefore the President) on the Jerusalem embassy move, ascribing a political ideology and fluency to the killer that he made no claim to.
Some of the Jews you can’t kill live in the US; they are Daniel Stein, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Melvin Wax, and Irving Younger. They were guilty of nothing, just attending Shabbat morning prayers in America.
The Jews you can kill live in Israel; they are Ari Fuld, who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian at a falafel stand earlier this year. The Jews you can kill are a pregnant woman and her child. The Jews you can kill live in southern Israel and are guilty of nothing more than living in the wrong place for the last decade. The Jews of Judea and Samaria have made the supreme mistake of going for a drive near their homes.
But lest someone blame the settlements or “the occupation” on the Jews, rather then the perpetrators, Fuld and this weeks victims were no more guilty than Jews killed during the second intifada, killed for the crime of riding the wrong bus to work one morning, or eating in the wrong pizza place on a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem, or crossing the street at a busy intersection in Tel Aviv.
Last month Israelis in Southern Israel once again spent the night in bomb shelters as missiles rained down on civilians. Some of the missiles fired by the terrorists at Israeli civilians fell harmlessly into open areas, and maybe even some errant missiles splashed into the Mediterranean. Some ended their existence mid-flight in a bright blossom in the sky but some found their targets, with several striking civilian areas. In a moment of Irony that it seems only the Middle East can produce; the only casualty was a Palestinian man who reportedly abhorred violence.
Condemnations were not forthcoming for the attempted murder of Jews in Israel. The moment, like many others passed with no UN resolutions, no condemnations from any human rights organizations. Instead the usual equivocations, the usual explanations that somehow the victims of Hamas rocket fire were responsible for their own terror.
The most basic form of antisemitism is insisting that Jews don’t belong somewhere, or that they are the cause of their own suffering. To say that the sentiment is limited to a caricature of a tiki-torch bearing white supremacist is a self-indulgent fantasy of too many. Just think back to when veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas said that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Poland and Germany.
Barely a week ago, Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN commentator, and University Professor excused Palestinian violence against Israel as a “fetishizing” of non-violent resistance and said: “We cannot endorse a narrow politics of respectability that shames Palestinians for resisting, for refusing to do nothing”. Marc Lamont Hill said that yes, there are Jews you are allowed to kill.
The response? Thundering applause.
Following the Pittsburgh attack the New York Times published a shocking statistic: According to the NYPD, more hate crimes were committed against Jews in New York than any other minority. This comes as a surprise only to those who don’t know that Jews have been the target of more than 50% of all religiously motivated hate crimes since they started keeping such statistics. CNN readers were shocked to discover that a large number of Europeans either don’t know about the Holocaust at all or think that Jews use it as a tool. This week we found that 90% of Jews in Europe are afraid of antisemitism in Europe.
And why should this surprise you? This past weekend the United Nations failed to pass a motion condemning Hamas, a recognized terror group. This same group would go onto praise this week’s killer, and may yet prove to be responsible for the attack.
The United Nations agrees: there are some Jews that you are allowed to kill.
