IF A white man hates a black man and murders him, its a classic hate crime.
But how often does it happen?
Even once is too often, but the ADL study of anti-Semitism worldwide shows that most anti-Semitism is in Arab countries.
There, it is deemed perfectly acceptable even idealistic to hate Israeli Jews.
The most recent cases are in Palestinian areas. A week ago Thursday, for example, a Jewish man and woman were murdered as their four children watched.
It was a classic hate crime. The victims werent even people. They were objects. The statement of the haters itself substantiates this.
But before we look at that, one more thing. The Palestinian murderers of last Thursday are moderates.
Just ask the US State Dept. and the EU.
The murderers are affiliated with the armed wing of Fatah, the largest faction in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the governing body of the West Bank areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
The PLO, as opposed to Hamas, is moderate, says the US and EU.
Here is moderation and liberation, PLO-style, in Fatahs announcement the day after the murder:
With Allahs help and in keeping with our peoples right for resistance and our duty to sacred jihad, our forces on Thursday night carried out a necessary action in which they fired on a car of occupying settlers that left the settlement of Itamar, built on Palestinian lands in the south of the city of Hebron. They fired on the car and killed the settler and his partner.
No human beings here.
Only settlers.
No rules of war here.
Only firing on unarmed cars.
No evidence here.
Only the assumption that someone driving a car in the West Bank is a settler.
No political pluralism here.
Jews cannot live in Palestinian areas.
No reciprocity here.
Arabs living on Jewish lands, as citizens of Israel, thats fine; the opposite is not.
No respect for human life here.
Only jihad.
No life-affirming view of the sacred here.
Only sacred jihad.
No knowledge of history here.
Only the view that Hebron has no Jewish identity.
No, there is nothing here but sheer hatred.
Nothing else.
Witness: the Jewish Israelis murdered by the Fatah-affiliated, moderate Palestinian were occupying settlers, but last November four Jewish Israeli men praying in a Jerusalem synagogue, not in the West Bank, were hacked to death by a Palestinian hater with cleavers.
No occupying settlers were hacked to death.
Just Israelis.
Just Jews.
It was sheer hatred.
Nothing else.
Occupation? To the Palestinian perpetrators of these hate crimes, the non-West Bank areas of Israel are also occupied.
This type of hate crime precedes the Six Day War, when there were no Israelis on the West Bank.
This type of hate crime precedes the creation of Israel, when there were no Israelis. Ever heard of Shlomo Zalman Tzoref? He was the first hate-crime victim of a Palestinian murderer.
The date of his death?
1851.
He was murdered by an Arab resident without provocation other than that he was a Jew living in the Land of Israel.
Not the State of Israel.
Not the West Bank.
Just Palestine.
Sheer hatred.
Nothing else.
THE ADDRESS to extirpate this hatred is not the haters.
Thats the mistake.
To go after the Arab anti-Semites implicates a religious and cultural agenda that will take centuries.
No, the address is different.
The address is the European Union.
The US State Dept.
The BDS.
The problem is this: The ingrained hatred manifested in the most recent hate crimes in Israel and in all the ones that preceded it is gaining traction among people who should know better.
Gaining legitimacy.
Its reflexive.
You hear it all the time. It goes something like this:
Oh yes, terrible that those Jews in Israel were murdered. But, you know, the occupation . . . the Israeli intransigence . . . the Israeli, the Israeli, the Israeli . . .
Its Israels fault.
Thats the translation that each of these hate crimes increasingly elicits in the State Dept., the EU, the BDS movement.
Not like in Charleston, South Carolina, for example. There, a hater killed nine blacks in a church. He was a hater. Period.
Correct.
No translation.
This was racist hate. It needs to be extirpated.
No excuses.
No translations.
That is the only correct approach.
Timothy McVeigh was not extended any understanding.
We who detest anti-Jewish hate and try to fight it need to recognize that the address is increasingly overlooked: those who sympathize with, or explain away, or understand, the anti-Jewish hate that fuels these murders of unarmed Jews at prayer and of innocent parents while their children watch.
The translators give this anti-Jewish hatred credibility.
They legitimate it.
They think the concept of hate crime only applies in the US and Europe.
One day the religious and cultural hate in the Middle East will be gone. Thats a long way off (we havent made much progress since Shlomo Zalman Tzorefs murder in 1851). Meanwhile, we need to name this hatred for what it is: a hate crime. We need to become a lot more vocal telling this to people who should know better.
Namely, the State Dept., which hoists this false distinction between the moderate PLO and the terrorist Hamas.
Namely, the European nations.
Namely, the offending Protestant chuches and student activists of BDS, along with their college administrator apologists.
If we Jewish defenders of civil rights do not call these horrible hate crimes in Israel the hate crimes that they are, what can we expect of others?
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
