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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 4, 2004 / 13 Iyar, 5764

And the world still remains silent

By RACHEL RASKIN-ZRIHEN


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http://www.jewishworldreview.com | There are only a couple of possible explanations for why the world is not out even now, protesting the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and her four young daughters by Palestinian gunmen.


I think it's clear that had the shooters been Israeli soldiers and the victims a Palestinian family, millions of righteously indignant protesters would have hit the streets and the airwaves calling for the capture and punishment of the murderers and, no doubt, the immediate dismantling of "the Zionist entity."


They do that when a Palestinian civilian gets unintentionally caught in the crossfire. They do it when actual gunmen and terrorists are killed. They do it when fences are constructed to keep the killers out. They do it when terrorists' houses — their houses, not their families — are destroyed. They do not do it when defenseless Jewish women and children are gunned down in the street.


There are only a limited number of explanations for this — none of them very pleasant.

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One must realize that we are talking about the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and four little girls. Someone had to take aim at and shoot an obviously pregnant woman and four small children ages 2 to 11. This was not a case of accidental collateral damage. This was a targeted killing. And, I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no moral equivalency between the targeted killing of an armed (or even an unarmed) terrorist mastermind, and the murder of an unarmed pregnant woman and her children, no matter how much certain people would like there to be. It is the difference not between apples and oranges, but between apples and skyscrapers.


Had the victims been any other pregnant woman and her children, practically anywhere else in the world, there would have been a deafening hew and cry.


So, either much of the world is OK with the Jews as victims or they have a very low opinion of Arabs.


What I mean is, that unless there is a collective understanding that Jews are unimportant, expendable or worse, justifiable targets, the only other explanation is that the world feels the Palestinian Arabs are simply incapable of civilized behavior. Unless the world is collectively thinking, "well, they're Arabs, what do you expect?" then we can explain the deafening silence over this atrocity only through worldwide, systemic and deeply entrenched anti-Semitism.


I'm not crazy about either explanation, but I think I hope it's the former, because there is some chance for the Arabs themselves to change that perception by behaving in a civilized manner, and by calling on their misguided brethren to do so, too.


The latter explanation, on the other hand, has terrifying and far-reaching implications that I'd prefer not to contemplate, and which people all over the world, in the United States in particular, are dismissing as impossible.


Unfortunately, those of us familiar with history know that dismissing unpleasantness out of hand doesn't make it go away. On the contrary, it allows it to fester and grow.


If the international acquiescence to or rationalization of the murder of that Jewish family isn't a function of anti-Semitism or a belief that no better behavior can be expected from Palestinian Arabs, then it can only be a fear, a terror as it were, that to speak out against the wholesale slaughter of innocent Jewish men, women and even children may bring the wrath of the proverbial Hun down upon the protester.


If that's it we're all doomed, of course, because that means the terrorists have already won.

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03/08/04 Are lunatics running the Arab asylum?
04/21/03 Big Lies at Passover
04/01/03 How the Arabs outsmarted the West — and have no reason to stop



© 2004, Rachel Raskin-Zrihen