Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
Print Edition

Was this a bias crime?

For reasons that escape us, some want the murder of a Denver Jewish student on August 17 to have been a hate crime, an instance of anti-Semitism. Our view is the opposite. There is no silver lining in the murder of an innocent Jew, but it is better if his death was not an instance of anti-Semitism.

If the murder of a Jew in front of a yeshiva was not an anti-Semitic act, then what was it? It was one incident in a long string of criminal acts that had no geographical, racial or ethnic focus, that ranged across the city.

The criminal spree began with a car break-in at gunpoint on the 2700 block of West Alameda Ave., 3.2 miles southwest of Yeshiva Toras Chaim. But the criminals did not proceed 3.2 miles northwest to Yeshiva Toras Chaim. They went in the opposite direction. They went northeast for 7.5 miles to East Colfax Ave. and Grape St., where they committed a carjacking, then west for another 2.5 miles to 1300 Lafayette St. and to East Colfax and Lafayette, where they robbed and shot a person, who is now in critical condition; then went 4 miles further west to Stuart St., location of the yeshiva, apparently as randomly as they stopped to commit their other crimes, including attempted murder, on Alameda, Grape and two addresses on Lafayette. Finally, having murdered the yeshiva student, it was apparently they who stole another vehicle still later that evening, 7.9 miles further west at 1000 So. Union in Lakewood, Colo.

To call the murder at YTC anti-Semitic, one would have to explain why the criminals did not proceed 3.2 miles directly to the yeshiva from West Alameda, a relatively short distance; and why instead they traveled 14 miles (or, if it was they who committed the robbery in Lakewood, 21.9 miles) to commit murder, felony menacing and robbery (among other crimes) all around the city, all of whose victims were either not Jewish or bore no public mark of Jewish identity.

Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News




Leave a Reply