The Hypocritical Response to Acts of Violence Committed by Jews

Jonathan Neumann compares reactions to the murderous attack on an Arab home in the West Bank and to the stabbing spree at a Jerusalem gay-pride parade with reactions to terrorist attacks carried out by Arabs:

Contrast the reaction to [the West-Bank] incident with those typically engendered by Arab terrorism, and a rank, if also comic, hypocrisy is evident. For one thing, this attack was universally designated as Jewish terrorism. Muslim terrorism, by contrast, is never so described, for the motivation is never Islamic but a “distortion of Islam” and it is never terrorism but . . . “militancy.” One might ask why [the West Bank] attack is not excused as a “distortion of Judaism” and mere “militancy,” too. . . .

[Furthermore], whereas Arab terrorists are rarely taken to represent the broader population, even though the reaction of the Arab street (and sometimes even Arab governments) to their endeavors is overwhelmingly positive and supportive, price tagging [as attacks by Jews on Arabs or their property are known] is always deemed to represent the entire settler community, despite the perpetrators being a minuscule and rather ostracized minority among them.

Speaking of vilifying the many for the actions of a few, this is where the abominable murder at the gay-pride parade in Jerusalem comes in. Every commentator . . . has linked the two events, believing them both to be manifestations of greater evils in Israeli society. The conventional assessment of the parade stabbing is that it represents a pattern of homophobic activity in Israel, a symptom of some grotesque sentiment of which Israeli society must purge itself. But to add a little context, it is the second such attack in ten years (in a country that is not even 70 years old) and was committed by the same person as the previous one. Therefore, pace those who have used this murder as an excuse to defame the whole religious community or its ultra-Orthodox members specifically, this crime in fact cannot plausibly be said to represent much at all beyond itself. . . .

The real connection between the two events is therefore a rottenness not in Israeli society but in the commentariat, which persists in pretending that Arab violence represents nothing but isolated whim and that Jewish violence by lone individuals or tiny groups is demonstrative of some elemental malevolence in the Jewish state. If these commentators were honest, they would find that the bigotry they see in the attacks is no less present in their reactions.