Israel Matzav

'Palestinians' become an excuse for anti-Semitism... in the United States

Seven students have been suspended from school for playing "Beat the Jew" in a town east of Los Angeles called La Quinta, California. A rabbi has been called in to give 'tolerance training.' And in the media, commenters are excusing the behavior because of the 'oppressed' 'Palestinians' (who - as far as I can tell - are not actually represented at the school in question). Are the 'Palestinians' who refuse to make peace with Israel's existence now becoming an excuse for anti-Semitism?

And La Quinta is where high school students were playing this game of “Beat the Jew,” in which some students played “Jews” and agreed to be kidnapped, blindfolded, and dropped off somewhere so they could be hunted by other kids playing “Nazis,” while they tried to navigate back to the high school campus. A “Jew” who was captured in the course of this “game” faced “incineration” or “enslavement.”

And believe it or not, this tale of the “game” is not even the main piece of information I want to communicate here. That honor goes to the character of the reader comments at the website of the Desert Sun, the newspaper that serves the Desert Cities area.

As we would expect, La Quinta High School’s officials were appalled to discover what was going on, and have suspended the seven out of the 40 “friends” of Beat the Jew’s Facebook website who were actually participating in the live game. Along with referring the matter to the police for investigation, they’ve also invited a local rabbi to provide outreach and tolerance training.

What really struck me was the reflexiveness with which readers of the Desert Sun launched into the “oppressed Palestinians” narrative in their comments. Here’s one:

As for an emergency meeting with regards to rabbis, the school, the students and the parents, I think it would also be entirely appropriate to invite Arab-Americans and in particular Palestinian-Americans to join in on this discussion of showing tolerance for all people, especially people who have been and, in the case of Palestinians, continue to not only be “beat” but massacred, robbed, starved, maimed and denied basic human rights by the Jewish state of Israel, which is propped up with US tax payers’ money and our bought out government. I think this should be discussed in “our” media, too, and by “our political leaders” as well, but I don’t think the ADL would let that happen, do you?

There are others. Click through to the different stories on this and check them out at your leisure. They reminded me, naturally, of Helen Thomas’ video screed about occupied Palestine and the rants of the usual suspects from the US media. But they also reminded me of the reporting about a Swedish mayor whose lax enforcement of the laws protecting Jews against assault has been due to this sympathy with the “Palestinian” cause. Anti-Semitic attacks increased dramatically in Sweden last year, and Jews who have lived there for decades – or all their lives – are leaving in unprecedented numbers.

This dynamic isn’t unique to Sweden; anti-Semitic attacks are up across the European continent. They’re also up in Latin America. And the line separating the USA from that fate is narrowing, as more and more people, either through ignorance or hatred, propound the morally bankrupt (not to mention deceptive) notion that basic respect and solicitude for the Jews among us, as human beings, should be contingent on Israel allowing Hamas to use Gaza to attack her territory.

Will the US join Europe on the front lines of Islamic anti-Semitism? Read the whole thing. I'm very disturbed at the prospect that the Obama administration's hostility to Israel may cause an increase in anti-Semitism in the United States.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:25 AM