Sunday, November 30, 2008
I'm sorry I haven't covered the Mumbai massacres in any detail. It's such a huge event and that type of blogging demands a nose to the grindstone I haven't had the past few days.
An outraged emailer did ask that I take note of a...let's call it sloppy rather than intentionally stupid... little item at the London Times Online the other day. I am happy to oblige. In a short, six paragraph piece on the miraculous rescue of the Chabad Rabbi and wife's child, someone (an editor? author Sheera Frenkel?) decided to close the piece with this gem:
...T. K. Bhat, who lives close to the Chabad house, said: "It could be that the attitudes of the Chabad, which gives the sense of an elite club for Jews alone, is part of what provoked the terrorists to target them for the attack."
Ah yes, the Jews and their exclusivity...just asking for it they were. Lots of people say lots of dopey things, but what is the possible good of leaving the reader with such an impression? So...what...Chabad was asking for it? And what about all the other victims? Were they asking for it too?
What happened in India is the fault of the perpetrators and their enablers. It's not the doings of any victim group or government policy bringing it on themselves. This is the work of today's barbarians. Shame on the Times for wasting a paragraph throwing doubt on that.
Also see Breath of the Beast: The Holtzbergs- Not "Ultra" and Not Missionaries
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: There's always column space available to blame the victim.
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Blogs to read while watching the crocodiles eat.* 1) As a root cause, "institutional discrimination", doesn't hold much water. Especially, when it was clear that the terrorists sought out the Chabad house. Two and an orphan. 2) We're all Chabadniks now... Read More
Like non-Jews would be flocking to 'integrate' themselves into a Chabad House (They'd be made to feel welcome I'm sure.)
Their argument is so transparently lame - they must be running out of idiotic reasons to hate us. They have to lower it a notch.
Kae,
Apart from mindless hatred ignorance is responsible for a lot of grief in this world. This is apparently a human failing and is observable daily in one's interactions with those incapable of containing their envy and jealousy roused by their shallowness and incapacity to adjust to the realities of life.
As for the British "institutions" I have come to expect nothing less than arrogance and ignorance and as for the names of those apparently responsible, just sheep in the employ.
In my haste I quite forgot about those "elite clubs" where no Jew entered.
Even South Africa's Christian Barnard was barred from "English" sporting clubs until he performed the world's first heart transplants, and Jewish cricket umpires took their tea out on the grass so as not to enter the clubhouse.