From: aa824@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark Ira Kaufman)
Subject: Synagogues, Mosques, and Double Standards
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
Lines: 64
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc5.ins.cwru.edu


 
 Bill Coleman writes...
 
(responding to a discussion about a mosque in Jerusalem allegedly 
having been destroyed by Israel)

BC> In today's Jerusalem Post Magazine there is a feature story about the
BC> ongoing restoration of synagogues in the Jewish Quarter.  The author,
BC> Leah Abramowitz, writes that there were FIFTY-SEVEN synagogues in the
BC> quarter in 1948, ALL of which were destroyed, some, she says, used as
BC> donkey stables.  The building shells, that is.
BC> 
BC> I still find it really, really hard to understand why the demolition
BC> of the buildings in front of the Kotel continues to evoke more outrage
BC> than this.  Everything is so much cheaper when it happens to the Jews.
BC> 
BC> Why?
 
    The double standard of human behavior regarding the Jews must
    be manitained.

    A perfect example is the outcry over the temporary removal of
    400 men who advocated murdering Jews and destroying the State
    of Israel, compared to the deafening silence over the abusive
    treatment of Jews in Arab countries during the past 50 years.

    Compare the tacit appoval that the world gives to Muslims who
    randomly murder Jewish civilians to the righteous indignation
    expressed if people in the occupied territories are kept from
    working in Israel in an effort to reduce these random murders
    from occuring, while everyone knows that no country is at all
    required to accept foreign workers, except Israel, of course.

    Jewish blood has always been cheap.  The non-Jewish world ha
    never regarded any form of Jewish suffering important, except
    when the Jews were the models of the powerless victim holding
    the high moral ground, as it had been just after World War 2.  
    However, as soon as the Jewish people started to take care of 
    themselves, the ancient hatred of Jews was unleashed again.  
    
    I doubt if the non-Jewish world is even capable of having any
    compassion towards Jews as anti-semitism is so ancient and so
    basic to both Christianity and Islam.  
    
    Golda Meir said that there would be peace when the Arabs love
    their own children more than they hate the Jews.  And while I
    know that there are more Arab parents who love their children 
    than those who would send their children out into the streets 
    to throw rocks at men trained to defend themselves with guns,
    the world is so obsessed by a hatred of Jews trying to defend 
    themselves that they have yet to even question the actions of 
    those parents who not simply allow their children to do this, 
    but encourage them to throw themselves into harm's way.  Even 
    Arab children are expendable, if their tragic deaths are used 
    in the neverending propoganda battle to blame Israel, and the  
    Jews, for any misfortune befalling Arabs in the middle east.



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   Who is a Jew?  A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by
   the knowledge of wrong done to other people.  -  A. J. Heschel