UPDATE: Go here for an amusing but also distressing analysis of how the BBC reported the situation. Below is a BBC tweet which stayed up for five hours after the scare quotes around “hostage” became superfluous.
_____________
I’ve recently pondered de-subscribing from Bari Weiss’s Substack site, Common Sense, as the overwhelming majority article weren’t by Ms. Weiss herself, and I didn’t subscribe to read 90% of the pieces written by others, although many were good.
But today’s column is evidence that Weiss still has it, “it” being the ability to write a passionate and absorbing column when something gets her juices flowing. In this case it’s the hostage situation in Texas, where a devout Pakistani/British Muslim named Malik Faisal Akdram took four worshipers (including a rabbi) hostage in a synagogue. Most escaped through a fire door, and a SWAT team then rushed in and killed Akdram. Based on his desire to be a martyr (saying he wished he was on one of the 9-11 planes), his religion, the fact that he attacked a synagogue, that he demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a rabid anti-Semite in an American prison for attempted murder, be set free, how can you deny that hatred of Jews was part of this? Akdram even asked the rabbi in Texas to call a rabbi in New York, asking the NY rebbe to get Sidiqui set free. (I suppose Akdram thought that Jews are so all-powerful in America that a New York Rabbi can get a murderer freed!
And, like Weiss (click to read below; I think it’s free), I’m angrier than I am about previous attacks on Jews, though less sorrowful since nobody was murdered. Why? Because I watched the media in real time (except for the right-wing media) do its best to whitewash the story, arguing that it was not an attack targeting Jews (sure—the guy was walking down the street in a small Texas town with guns and saw a synagogue and thought, “Hey, that’s a good place to take hostages!”), and it was not motivated by anti-Semitism. Even some on this site have tried to exculpate the left-wing media for its timorous coverage of the situation, even though papers like the New York Times have a long history of distorting the news to favor Palestinians and to demonize Jews.
And even Joe Biden, at the time when his own National Security advisor said that the attack was one of terrorism and anti-Semitism, was arguing, despite all the known facts, that there was no evidence for anti-Semitism. Does the murderer have to scream “Kill the Jews” to make his motivations plausible? If you read this site, you’ll know that I often withhold judgement on hate crimes, but this case was an exception given the “facts on the ground.”
But mainly, I am angry because attacks on Jews seem to get objective news coverage (and public sympathy) in America only if two things hold:
a.) The murderer has to be of the right sort: preferably a white supremacist or right-winger. If an African-American attacks Jews, as they did so often in the last few years in NYC, that fact is to be covered up.
b.) The victims have to be of the right sort. Nice clean-shaven white people, like those at the Tree of Life Synagogue, can be mourned. Hasids with beards and furry hats—forget about it!
In other words, the situation has to meet the Approved Narrative to be newsworthy.
And this is the conclusion that Weiss has also arrived at. Her piece is well worth reading. I’ll quote bits of it.
Weiss recounts three attacks on Jews. The first was largely ignored because the murders were of the wrong sort: African-Americans.
I first felt that sinking realization three years ago on a freezing day in Jersey City. If you don’t think “Jews” when you hear that place name, it’s because the murder of Jews that happened there in 2019 did not inspire the same national solidarity that enveloped Pittsburgh.
On December 10 that year, David Anderson and Francine Graham shot up a kosher supermarket on a street named for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, killing three people in the process. We were very lucky the toll wasn’t higher. Just to the left of the supermarket is a cheder, a school for Jewish children. Federal officials discovered a bomb in the killers’ van powerful enough to kill and maim people five football fields away.
The pair hated cops and they hated Jews, a sentiment apparently driven by the twisted ideology of the Black Hebrew Israelites, who believe that they are the real Jews and that the real Jews are pretenders. Jews are “imposters who inhabit synagogues of Satan,” Anderson wrote on social media. “They stole our heritage, they stole our birthright” Anderson said, before he murdered a young mother named Mindy Ferencz, a young man named Moshe Deutsch, and a 49-year-old Ecuadorian clerk who worked at the deli, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez. (They murdered a police officer and father of five named Joseph Seals earlier in the day.)
The day after the shooting, I went to the supermarket to do some reporting for a column I expected to publish. Unlike in Pittsburgh, there was not a single flower or condolence card. Just broken glass, and Hasidic Jews working with construction workers to board up the ransacked building, which was riddled with bullet holes. There were no television cameras.
No one in my social media feeds, to say nothing of mainstream reporters, wanted to look very hard at the killers’ motives or at the responses among some members of the community. In one video I came across, a local woman said that her “children are stuck at school because of Jew shenanigans. They are the problem . . . I blame the Jews. We never had a shooting like this until they came.”
Then the Tree of Life shooting, which killed eleven and injured six. Murderer: the right sort: a white nationalist anti-Semite. The murdered: also the right sort, upper-middle-class Jews. The media lapped up the story like a cat drinking cream. The narrative was correct.
When eleven Jews who look like me were shot by a white supremacist in Pittsburgh, it was a clean story. Here was unadulterated evil mowing down the innocent. But Jews dressed in black hats and strange clothes with obscure accents? The ones in Jersey City or in Monsey or Crown Heights or Williamsburg or Borough Park?
These are imperfect victims. They are forgotten and overlooked because they are not the right kind of Jews. And because they weren’t beaten or killed by the right kind of antisemites.
And then the latest incident, where, thank goodness, no innocent people were murdered. Weiss floats the idea that “heavenly miracles” might have been involved (I’m pretty sure she’s a religious, God-worshiping Jew), and adds that “all the Jews I know—even the atheists—are thanking God.” Nope, I’m not one of them. And if God intervened to save four Texas Jews, why did he let eleven Pittsburgh Jews be murdered?
As with Andrew Sullivan, Weiss’s Achilles heel is her unevidenced (and I’d say irrational) belief in a deity. She doesn’t seem to realize that you can be a Jew and an atheist, too—it’s the only religion that has a secular, cultural version.
But that’s a trivial beef with her pieces. She’s telling the truth here while the rest of the Left-wing media tied itself in knots to avoid admitting the obvious. Why? Because Akdram was the wrong kind of criminal. He was of Pakistani descent, ergo a person of color, ergo incapable of racism. See here for more background on Akdram and how some British Muslims are calling him a martyr.
One more quote (and a Tweet) and I’ll close. Biden, who’s edging ever closer to Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the whole BDS-loving, Zionism-hating band of “progressive Democrats”, didn’t behave particularly well, either:
Perhaps it’s unfair to single out the AP when the special agent in charge of the FBI Dallas Field Office had this to say: “We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, but we are continuing to work to find the motive.”
Imagine the FBI suggesting, in the wake of the murder of nine black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by Dylann Roof, that it wasn’t specifically related to the black community.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan did call the event an “act of terrorism” and an “act of antisemitism” on television this Sunday. But his notable exception proves the rule. His boss, President Joe Biden, could not manage to describe what any normal person could see:
Biden: "I don't think there is sufficient information to know why he targeted that synagogue why he insisted on the release of someone who's been in prison for over 10 years… why he was using anti-Semitic & anti-Israeli comments." pic.twitter.com/cOxRB1xLvq
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 16, 2022
As I said, it’s pretty clear what happened. If Biden said anything, though, he should have kept his gob shut. But now is the time should speak up; perhaps he already has. I hope so.
I’ll finish with two good quotes from Weiss, one at the beginning of her piece and the other at the end:
What I now see is this: In America captured by tribalism and dehumanization, in an America swept up by ideologies that pit us against one another in a zero-sum game, in an America enthralled with the poisonous idea that some groups matter more than others, not all Jews—and not all Jewish victims—are treated equally. What seems to matter most to media pundits and politicians is not the Jews themselves, but the identities of their attackers.
. . .Today is Martin Luther King Day and I’m thinking of his understanding that the demand for equal treatment comes at no one’s expense because justice is not a zero-sum game. “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity in this Nation,” he said. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Jews thrived in an America that had confidence in its goodness. Jews are not safe—no one is—in one which does not.
This woman can write. I wish she’d write more often. And though I’m not religious like she, I can at least thank Ceiling Cat that someone can say the truth about this without getting fired from the New York Times.
Amazing how the mass media avoided identifying the hostage taker as a Muslim (or even a British Muslim)…when Islam was clearly the main and sole motivation behind this criminal act. In addition, Muslims always put their faith first and foremost before their nationality or national laws, and therefore it is completely justified to identity them as Muslims rather than as of some nationality like Great Britain. Clearly mass media editors deliberately suppressed the fact of his religion (as well as his birth country, Pakistan). Why are the media bowing down to Muslims…and to Muslim terrorists to boot? Why are they privileged? What kind of fear motivates the media to actually suppress the
truth…especially when it is completely relevant to the event??? Let’s face the truth: Islam is the
motivation for essentially all the acts of terrorism today, and anti Semitism is the second one.
I am not sure that they are particularly motivated by fear. Sometimes people and more often companies jump on the bandwagon of whatever ideology they believe will dominate the near future.
Of course they want to avoid being attacked for bias and Islamophobia, but the news media are already dominated by some of the shrillest voices of the far left.
I think the more likely answer is that the woke ideology itself is based on a number of basic assumptions that are not just false, but obviously so. Looking closely at events which should not be happening according to their ideology, threatens to undermine the foundations of their beliefs.
Plus, they don’t seem to adhere to traditional journalistic ethics. If enough outlets don’t mention events that run counter to the preferred narrative, then those events did not really happen.
In a famous (or, perhaps more accurately, infamous) editorial in 2016, the NYT blamed the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub (nearly 50 killed) on the opposition of conservatives to gay marriage and on American homophobia, when Omar Mateen had, in fact, pledged his allegiance to ISIS and, in all likelihood, simply chose a “soft target” crowded with infidels. Two years later, The Intercept posted a very sensible essay arguing strongly against the idea that Mateen had deliberately targeted the LGBT community, radical Islamism having been the motive.
“In addition, Muslims always put their faith first and foremost before their nationality or national laws”
Many Muslims from many countries may do so (I have met a few), but this is certainly not “always” the case and definitely not true for the majority of Turkish Muslims, who prefer the very secular law of the Turkish state to Sharia. I looked that up in Pew research a few years ago, only a tiny minority of 12 % of Turkish Muslims agreed with Sharia law (in stark contrast to Iraq, but similar to ex-Ottoman Bosnia.) This fits in with my extensive personal experience with Turks and people from Turkish backgrounds.
I thought the NYTs coverage was pitiful. On the other hand, and from the beginning, I thought the WaPo coverage was good and didn’t skirt around the fact that Jews and a synagogue were targeted. From today’s WaPo…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/17/texas-synagogue-malik-faisal-akram-investigation/
The FBI is now saying…
“This is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force,” the FBI said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post early Monday. “We never lose sight of the threat extremists pose to the Jewish community and to other religious, racial, and ethnic groups.”
You really think that the FBI would have made that statement unless people had expressed fury?
Since the culprit was British the BBC has been covering this with several articles. Here is a link to the latest one. Notice how it contains neither of the words “Muslim” nor “Islam”. It’s remarkable how little interest the BBC shows in any underlying motive.
Note as well that it doesn’t contain the word “Jew” either. All it says is “synagogue.”
If a white person had attacked a Mosque in the UK and taken hostages, there would be endless soul-searching in the media and condemnation of every right-of-centre politician from Boris onwards, whose “dog whistles” (= things they’ve not actually said) would be held to be responsible.
Someone commented in Haaretz that the terrorist (whose name I prefer not to use) chose a synagogue because he really believed that the Jews control the government, and the rabbi could just make a phone call and get his flunkies in the government to release the other terrorist. I think he may be right; at least it is consistent with what evidence we have.
Even if true, still pretty antisemitic.
Oh, yes! I did not mean to imply he was not anti-Semitic; thinking the Jews are a giant conspiracy is virulently anti-Semitic. But if you wonder why he chose a synagogue and that synagogue in particular, the comment has pretty good explanatory power.
YES! My thoughts entirely. Within closed Islamic communities (or Arab state education systems) the feeling that Jews control the world is alive and well – it is a GIVEN. This maniac was simply going to whoever he thought controls everything.
In Egypt and Lebanon the “hundreds of Jews were forewarned of 9/11” and that it was a Jewish plot are taken as fact.
D.A.
B.A. (Middle East politics)
NYC
sub.
I am not sure what the definition of the mass media is suppose to be? I do not get the NYTs but I do get the WP and it has had 4 or 5 different articles on this issue. This morning on CBS (that’s television) they interviewed one of the hostages for some time and got a lot of detail directly from the source. Now maybe CBS new is not your mass media – maybe television is not where you get your news. I should check elsewhere.
The FBI is fully politicized, and has been for some time. Other events that they’ve tried to spin despite contrary evidence include the Pulse nightclub shooting (2016), the Congressional baseball shooting (2017), and the Waukesha Christmas parade attack (2021).
Read your post. I’m with you.
David Baddiel is a comedian and writer based in the UK, whose most recent book is called ‘Jews don’t count’. And as you can guess from the title, it is all about the way antisemitism is downplayed and seen as a lesser form of racism. And in Baddiel’s view, this is what makes it particularly insidious. Jews get hammered by vile right wing racists, and then their would be allies on the left fail to show up and support them in many cases.
It’s a really good read. Properly conciousness raising for those who want to understand their own biases. Admittedly, many people seem to have a blind spot when it comes to antisemitism, and yet it is a form of racism that has historically been a bellwether for just how sick a society is. Given how much jew hate is around in Europe and the US, this doesn’t bode well.
Weird, the idea among gentiles that anti-Semitism doesn’t really count. For me, it’s always been the only anti- that really does. I’m not claiming any special virtue here, just that sometimes you have to stand up and be counted.
This is so maddening, Thanks Bari for running with it. I’ve recently discovered her podcast called “Honestly” on Spotify and they are all SO GOOD and insightful!
I have always found Bari Weiss’ writings to be thought provoking…sometimes I agree with her…sometimes not…sometimes, after considering her points, points of view that I had never before considered, I come to agree with her. Coincidently, I had just pulled her 2019 book, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” from the bookcase this morning to re-read it in light of the WEIT discussions of the latest Texas synagogue profanity. So this article provides me the opportunity to again recommend Ms Weiss’ short (200 pages) volume to readers. As I recall from reading it two years ago, she grew up in the neighborhood around Tree of Life and worried about her family that day as her father sometimes attended shull in the Tree of Life building. She talks about the history of anti-semitism with chapters devoted to its sources from the right, the left, and islam, finishing with specific actions we can take to fight its current growth in the U.S.
Very interesting pair of articles in the NYT today. Amazing how the Rabbi and hostages engineered their own escape.
I have a couple of observations.
1. The terrorist was British, not American. So, his actions say nothing about the rising anti-Semitism in the United States.
2. We need to differentiate between the mainstream press and the politicians regarding their muting of the anti-Semitic nature of the attack on the synagogue. For the former their reluctance to call the attack anti-Semitic is shameful since in their news stories (as opposed to opinion pieces) since supposedly a tenet of news reporting is to “tell it as it is,” and not to shade stories because of political agendas. On the other hand, Biden’s role as president and as a politician is to keep the nation calm and not to say things that may inflame segments of the population to commit additional acts of violence.
3. There were other incidents of anti-Semitism in U.S. history that were much worse than this. The Leo Frank case of 1912 is a prime example. It can be read about here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Frank
Since Weiss is so upset over the current incident, she would have gone out of her mind over the Frank case. The current incident is minor and will be quickly forgotten.
4. Incidents of inter-cultural violence have a long and sordid history in the United States as is also the case in other countries that consist of different religious/cultural/ethnic groups vying for power or attempting to keep it. Unfortunately, we are now in a period where significant elements on the left think that cultural diversity is a good thing and should be emphasized. I am going to commit heresy and say that emphasis on cultural diversity is a bad thing. This is because such an outlook divides people; members of other groups are viewed as different and therefore a threat to the values of people not in those groups. One approach to understanding human history is to view it as a continuing and eternal competition for power, which gives the “winners” power, economic benefits, and self-esteem. Societies that have the best chance of not descending into chaos and destruction are those that do the best job of stressing the commonalities between people regardless of the groups they belong it. In the United States this can be best accomplished by creating a society of equal opportunity where all people are guaranteed a good education and a decent standard of living. Cultural tensions will never be totally eliminated, but unless we tamp down identity politics on both the left and the right (white Christian nationalism being the primary threat to national survival), the future is bleak. Quite simply, I abhor the current tendency of people defining what is most important to themselves by cultural identity.
We get it….let’s Waukesha this event, too.
Though I’m scratching my head over some of your points, Historian, I won’t respond to them, save one where you state that cultural diversity is a bad thing. How do you think immigrants should assimilate into American society? The image in the past was the melting pot, and it seems that is the ideal you are upholding. It seems to me, though, that the better image for today is the salad bowl, consisting of different ingredients, each distinct in texture and flavor. Together these ingredients make a healthful, delicious repast. Of course, a good salad needs a good dressing that coats every ingredient, and so, to continue with this metaphor, the dressing is the Constitution of the USA.
My basic point is that societies in which people from different cultural backgrounds primarily define themselves in racial/religious/ethnic terms are ones that are bound to find themselves in conflict that can tear them apart. That is, cultural identity supersedes loyalty to the whole. It would be interesting if a scientific poll could be taken that asks one response: in a few words state what you believe in most defines you as a person. If the response is in cultural terms such as a religion, race, or ethnicity then the response is divisive. On the other hand, if the response is something like American, mother, or profession then that person is not consumed by an irrational adherence to a cultural group
Sometimes it is said that cultural diversity is good because the society as a whole is exposed to a particular culture’s food, dance, art etc. Aside from the possibility that if a person from one culture seems to like too fondly some traditions of another culture he can be accused of cultural appropriation, differences in certain cultural traditions is not what I mean by saying cultural diversity is bad. Throughout history and certainly in American history, cultural conflict has not existed because of differences in culinary tastes. Rather, it is because adherence to a certain culture gives a member a sense of self-worth and a feeling of superiority to members of other cultures. All too often, we have seen conflict breaks out when members of one culture feel challenged or oppressed by another. Thus, in today’s society, for example, white Christian nationalists, the heart of Trump’s cult, feel aggrieved and challenged by other racial groups.
So, I reject the salad (something called stew) metaphor as an ideal for American society. I consider it dangerous. Although the country’s “influencers” may be acting with the best of intentions, the emphasis on cultural diversity is highly dangerous. Again, the danger of cultural conflict is not over the type of food people eat. Nor do I believe that cultural conflict can ever be totally eliminated. But celebrating cultural diversity (loyalty to the group, not the whole) can only result in bad things. Yes, I do believe in the melting pot metaphor — not out of nostalgia, but to keep the society from disintegrating.
BTW, here is the a very good reader comment from Bari Weiss’s column:
“Donna Robinson Divine
When the anti-semitism comes from the right, it is recognized as a pathology. When it is unleashed by the left, it is deemed a consequences of a grievance and thus possesses some legitimacy. The left has control of most of our cultural institutions and thus more potential to inflict lasting harm on Jewish society and on American Jews.”
After voting enthusiastically for Uncle Joe Biden in 2020, I am beginning to have my doubts about him. His seeming bafflement about the fact that the Colleyville gunman “was using anti-Semitic & anti-Israeli comments” suggests certain cognitive deficits. Is he equally puzzled when Vladimir Putin expresses displeasure with NATO, or when polar bears are seen eating seals? By the way, Uncle Joe’s sort of puzzlement about terrorist behavior has not been displayed by President Macron or former Prime Minister (Parti Socialiste but later an ally of Macron) Manuel Valls in France.
You have complained in particular about the NYT, and you say that such cases and their anti-semitism would be downplayed, or even “largely ignored” when perpetrator or victim wouldn’t match. As evidence, you submit cases via Bari Weiss. Let’s look at the first one. The incident is the Jersey City, NJ shooting of December 10, 2019. Ms. Weiss alleges:
On the same day, as the story develops, the NYT reports “suspect in the firefight in Jersey City, N.J., near a kosher deli published anti-Semitic and anti-police posts online, an official said.” (emphasis on all added by me).
_nytimes.com/2019/12/10/nyregion/jersey-city-shooter.html
A day later, and with an update a day thereafter, the NYT writes in the subheader: “The Black Hebrew Israelites have been labeled a hate group. The suspect wrote anti-Semitic and anti-police posts, an official said.”
_nytimes.com/2019/12/11/nyregion/jersey-city-shooting.html
Another story on the same day titled: “Jersey City Shooting: Suspect in Attack Wrote Anti-Semitic Posts [.] He was a follower of the fringe Black Hebrew Israelite movement, which has expressed hostility to Jews, officials said”
_nytimes.com/2019/12/11/nyregion/david-anderson-francine-graham-jersey-city.html
The day afterwards, a NYT titles “Jersey City Shooting Was ‘Domestic Terrorism,’ Officials Say [.] The two attackers were “fueled both by anti-Semitic and anti-law enforcement beliefs.”
_nytimes.com/2019/12/12/nyregion/jersey-city-shooting-domestic-terrorism.html
A follow-up article appeared on Dec 15th titled “How 2 Drifters Brought Anti-Semitic Terror to Jersey City”, again with anti-semitism in the headline.
_nytimes.com/2019/12/15/nyregion/jersey-city-shooting-terrorism.html
Another follow-up story titled “After Anti-Semitic Killings, Jersey City School Official Called Jews ‘Brutes’” about an anti-semite offical called to resign.
_nytimes.com/2019/12/17/nyregion/joan-terrell-paige-jersey-city.html
I have a minor caveat that I have no subscription to the NYT and don’t know if they subvert their headlines and subheadlines in the article, but it doesn’t seem that way. I suggest to develop the urge to doublecheck everything Ms. Weiss alleges.
I’m the last person on all of WEIT who would say that media is without bias, as I recommended “Manufacturing Consent” repeatedly as a must-read book.
They are from 2019. There has been a sea change in what fit narratives since that time……You may also want to check to see the prominence that those articles were given, something that is critical and the Times plays around with that.
As I noted yesterday, the Times reported the hostage situation from this weekend in an article which was below an article featuring a Jasper Johns painting for much of the day.
They are from 2019 indeed, because Jerry cites “Weiss recounts three attacks on Jews. The first [link to Wikipedia “2019 Jersey City shooting”] was largely ignored because the murders were of the wrong sort: African-Americans.” Weiss is cited to say “No one in my social media feeds, to say nothing of mainstream reporters, wanted to look very hard at the killers’ motives or at the responses among some members of the community.” (bold by me). Further, Jerry’s trajectory comes from his post two days ago that specifically stated about the NYT “The Times isn’t fond of the Jews, of course, but we all know that.”
He also wrote elsewhere that the Times is deteriorating. However I can’t use a charitable interpretation that the NYT is only this bad recently, because the “three attacks on Jews” are cited as evidence of an older tradition that is just again rearing its ugly head, and not as evidence of a new trend. I hope that’s obvious now.
Knowing Weiss is unreliable, I found the news items weren’t delayed, they didn’t omit motives such as anti-semitism, and they also included the “black hebrew israelite” part into their reporting, so it’s also not true that being “African-Americans” somehow helped to bury the news. There were also multiple news from the NYT on subsequent days alone, thus no, you can’t conclude “mainstream reporters” didn’t care, omitted motives etcetera when they were right in the headline and subheadlines, and that numerous times. Assertions absolutely refuted, and with sources. This is dead Jim.
Bari Weiss is an unrealiable neocon propagandist, and here I am charitable. That’s why I doublecheck, and because the “Lügenpresse” angle irks me in such instances (even though I am not fond of much mainstream media myself).
Ok, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Hasidic Jews the ones that don’t educate their girls beyond a bare minimum, won’t sit next to women on planes, won’t get vaccinated, can’t put up with Wonder Woman on a poster, and otherwise act in roughly the same shameful manner as a Fundagelical or an Islamist? ‘cuz if so, is there any surprise they’re not the “right sort” of victim?
Or am I thinking of a different group of people?
Hasidim don’t just randomly explode.
Some religions are more toxic than others, (Shhh. don’t tell anybody) but all of them have hideous extremes.
“Religion poisons everything.” C.H.
D.A.
NYC
I was truly floored when I read the NYT story and saw virtually no identifying characteristics for the dead terrorist. None, really. I had to go to the Washington Post to learn that he was Muslim (as I’d expected).
I worked as a daily journalist for 25 years, am now a freelance journalist. I’m appalled at what has become of my profession.
Inexcusable.
If the MSM doesn’t ID the race of the perp. (in their view, the moist important thing about a person), then you know the perp. is black or Muslim. E.g.: Waukesha Christmas parade mass-murder.
There is a very simple way of understanding this. The attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue was not PC. Hence, it was massively condemned. The 2019 Jersey City attack was very PC and hence not worthy of comment.
The 2019 Jersey City attack didn’t prompt any media outrage because the killers were members of a protected class. Condemning the killers would mean condemning the members of a protected class, which is never allowed to happen.
It turns out the same organization (the Black Hebrew Israelites) were involved in the Nicholas Sandman affair. They attacked (verbally) the Covington Catholic kids (“They called us ‘racists,’ ‘bigots,’ ‘white crackers,’ ‘faggots’ and ‘incest kids.’ They also taunted an African-American student from my school by telling him that we would ‘harvest his organs.’ I have no idea what that insult means, but it was startling to hear,” Sandmann wrote.)
On your last paragraph: As SM melted down in the aftermath of the Covington HS “Incident”, I pointed out to my liberal interlocutors on FB: The only people doing anything offensive in those videos were the Black Hebrew Israelites.
There is an increasing trend among some regressives/race hustlers/CRT pushers (whatever term you want to use) to simply blame “white supremacy”, even in situations like this.
I’ve seen the likes of Joy Reid push it. If they can blame “white supremacy” instead of Islamism, they go with that narrative, even though it makes no sense, and whitewashes a major source of violence and hate in the world today (Islamism or Islamic supremacy).
So true, and do you KNOW any actual White Supremacists? I don’t – don’t think I’ve ever met one!
To find Islamic supremacy just fly to anywhere in that part of the world, get off the plane and you’ll find it in spades before you get out of the airport.
D.A.
NYC
Yes, exactly that: Black and Muslim perp.s are “victims of white supremacy and systemic racism” therefore they do what they do. (They are mindless chips on the wind of white supremacy with no minds of their own.) Hence: White racism is the cause.
“with no agency of their own”, I meant to write.
Of course Bari wrote about it – she is a professional Jewish person. As I’ve mentioned, I have little time for people who “lead” with their tribal / religious / racial affiliation. She’s written on some other things (and I often agree with her) but her religiosity and obsessions bother me.
I also think anti-Semitism is generally on the rise but from a low level (I live in NYC), and better than MOST of the past.
And the BBC — like Time Mag – WAS a great source/media years ago but it has been useless for over a decade now (IMHO). Their obsession with celebs is another aspect of their decline but it is their WILDLY anti-Israel stance (nearly as bad or worse than Al Jazeera) that pisses me off the most.
My first degree was in psych and Middle East politics (Georgetown), I read some Arabic and have travelled and.read extensively in/about the area and it is my fairly educated opinion that the Beeb’s coverage of MOST M.E. issues is crap. So out of context, ignorant and biased.
D.A.
NYC
“In other words, the situation has to meet the Approved Narrative to be newsworthy.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s not get too hasty here. Of course the media follows an approved narrative when it comes to Jews or the woke agenda, but let’s keep in mind that they are incredibly objective and unbiased when it comes to reporting on those evil right wingers (Did you know 5 people were killed in the Jan 6th Insurrection?). I asked Murray Gell-mann and he told me that they’re totally trustworthy. Or at least I think I asked him…. I can’t really remember.
I think you (and Weiss) are giving Biden a bad rap here. He did explicitly say, earlier in the same press conference, that this was an act of terror. When he said that we don’t have specific information, he was responding to a question about why the terrorist targeted that specific synagogue, and I think it was fair to make clear that the complete motivations of the terrorist were not completely known at the time. I do agree that he could have been more explicit in his condemnation of the obvious anti-semitism in the attack, but he did acknowledge that the perpetrator was anti-semitic (or at least, “using anti-semitic and anti-Israeli comments”, which amounts to the same thing, I think).
Biden, as usual, could have been a whole lot more articulate and lucid, but I don’t think what he said was particularly egregious.
Also, a side note: Judaism is not the only religion with a secular, cultural version. There are long-standing atheistic traditions in both Hinduism and Buddhism. In India you will find a number of people who identify as both atheists and Hindus.
It seems that everyone wants to wear the badge of ultimate victim-hood these days. There is an odd sense of honor and privilege in belonging to the most vilified or persecuted racial, ethnic, political, or philosophical group in society.
If you think that I’m trying to wear the badge of “ultiamte victimhood” for being Jewish, forget it. I didn’t not claim victim status.
What are you trying to say?
Yes. Hers is a good piece. I read it even before reading your post this morning, and I was both impressed and saddened by the truth she speaks. Jews don’t count. To some on the left, they are an inconvenient problem—a minority group that has achieved some success without their help. Consequently, when tragedy befalls Jews because they are Jews, the media tries to pretend that the reason for the tragedy is something else.