The Current Crisis: “Even in Laughter, the Heart Can Ache”

Jun 21, 2015 by Susan Rosenbluth

Clipart_Church of the Multiplication On June 18, in Tiberius, on the shores of the Kinneret, the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fish was set on fire, and graffiti, consisting of a passage from the Siddur, asking that “the worshippers of idols be destroyed” was found scrawled on the walls, in Hebrew. No one was hurt.

For reasons that might make sense to those who poisoned Socrates, Israeli officials immediately assumed the desecration was the work of right-wing Jewish teenagers from Judea or Samaria, and 16 such individuals were promptly arrested. According to police sources, the young people had been hiking in the region and were arrested several miles from the church.

There was just one problem: absolutely no evidence linked any of those arrested with the crime, and, after a few hours, the suspects were all released.

In fact, there is no evidence, beyond the Hebrew graffiti, that the culprits are Jews at all. Anyone with even a slight knowledge of current events in the Middle East is well aware that another religious group has been far more active against Christians, and these adherents of the Religion of Peace do not hesitate, when possible, to make sure the blame is thrown at Jews.

Throughout the Middle East, Islamists have displaced, murdered, or forcibly converted Christians, painting the letter “N” (for Nazarene) on Christian houses to identify them before destroying them. In plain sight and without an ounce of shame, Islamists have demolished churches, leveled entire communities, and raped and massacred Christian men, women and children. The Islamists proclaim they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth.

In Israel, veteran investigative reporter David Bedein recalled a meeting a few years ago with the then-Vatican representative in Israel, the late Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who complained bitterly—and on the record—about Muslim persecution of Christians “all over the Holy Land—in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Tiberius, Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth.”

According to Bedein, the Vatican representative could not understand why the Israel police “stand aside and simply blame Jews,” instead of going after the Muslim perpetrators.

“This isn’t something that came from leaders in Judea and Samaria. That came from the Catholic Church. So when we hear of a Christian institution being attacked in Tiberius, and immediately the police run to arrest some yeshiva bochers instead of opening an investigation against Muslims, when everyone knows Arab-Muslims in Tiberius have been attacking Christians, there’s something wrong with this picture,” he said.

But this did not deter one left-wing Orthodox rabbi at the Jersey Shore from shamelessly blaming the desecration of the church on Jews. He equated the event in Tiberius with the murder of nine people attending a Bible study class at the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina. Really!

If the rabbi wanted to tie the South Carolina act of terror with a similar event in Israel, perhaps he might have considered the incident that occurred in Dolev in the Benjamin region of Samaria, one day after the Charleston massacre. Two 25-year-old Jewish fellows, who had been hiking in Dolev, had just begun driving away when a Palestinian waved them down, apparently asking for help. As soon as the Israelis’ car pulled up, the Arab asked them for water…and then shot them at point-blank range. Danny Gonen, z”l, an electrical engineering student, was killed and his friend wounded.

While the world is rightly clamoring for the death penalty for the Caucasian terrorist who murdered the nine African-Americans in Charleston, no one is calling for the death penalty for the still-at-large Palestinian terrorist who murdered Danny Gonen.

White supremacist racism (some “analysts” say it is encouraged by Fox News, the Republican Party, or anyone who thinks the Second Amendment allowing Americans to bear arms should be preserved) has been identified as the culprit in Charleston. No one is blaming Arab racism for the death of Danny Gonen. Journalists are not asking how the Arab terrorist managed to secure his weapon to kill a Jew.

The European Union, President Obama, and the Orthodox rabbi at the Jersey shore expressed horror at the tragedy in Charleston. None of them—not even the Orthodox rabbi—expressed a word of condolence for the Gonen family.

And while nine African Americans lost their lives in Charleston, 56 people, most of them African-Americans, including a four-year-old little girl, were killed over the Memorial Day holiday in Chicago. Neither the EU nor the President—nor the Orthodox rabbi—said a word about that.

In the era of Political Correctness, the scope of the outrage depends not on who does the dying. It depends only on who does the killing. White-on-black crime or Jews killing Palestinians in a war of self-defense elicits charges of racism and war crimes. Arabs killing Jews or African Americans killing each other merits not a peep.

S.L.R.