Barry Rubin on the Jihadi Massacre in Toulouse

Mike L.

In a piece entitled, "France: Here Comes the Whitewash," Dr. Rubin writes:

A big story like the Toulouse attack can draw attention to a broader, dangerous political and social trend.

Or it can be treated as an isolated incident. Nothing to see here; move along; go back to sleep. Al-Qaida terrorists don't pull up in front of Jewish schools to murder teachers and students every day, right?

Part of the problem that the Jewish people have is the tendency among "progressive" Jews to downplay the significance of the Jihad on the world stage. If we cannot bring ourselves to genuinely recognize that there is a problem then we cannot even begin to discuss the problem. If we cannot discuss the problem then we cannot create strategies and tactics for dealing with it.

Phase one is to present any terrorist as a right-wing, neo-Nazi, or opponent of left-wing policies. If the terrorist is a Muslim, however, his own explanations—citing dominant interpretations of Islam and the goal of furthering an Islamist revolution—are ignored.

For reasons having much to do with what might be called the "multicultural imperative," the western press is largely unwilling to deal with the fact of radical Islam in a straightforward manner because they  do not wish to be smeared as "racist" or "Islamophobic" and therefore the tendency, in the aftermath of political slaughter, is to assume that the assailant is right-wing. The reason for this is because bigotry and hatred directed at "right-wingers" or "conservatives" is perfectly acceptable within progressive-left circles.

Instead, he or they are presented as confused, psychologically disturbed individuals; victims of discrimination; or, in short, anything other than ideologically motivated revolutionaries.

Indeed. The tendency, as we are seeing currently, is not to blame a growing international genocidal movement, a movement that calls quite specifically for the murder of Jews and "infidels," but to point the trembling finger of blame at the victims, themselves. The Jews are, and have been for a very, very long time now, the victims of Koranically-inspired Muslim race-hatred and when we are murdered because of that race-hatred we are then castigated by progressive-left journals for being the cause of the attacks against us and of being the victimizer rather than the victim.

In this way the progressive-left narrative of perpetual "Palestinian" victimhood becomes simultaneously a club to beat Jews with and a tool to reverse victim and victimizer. The Jews of the Middle East suffered 1,300 years of second and third class citizenship under the boot of Muslim imperialism, followed by 100 years of war against us immediately upon our release from the Sharia prison, yet among "progressives" we are something akin to Nazis oppressing the poor "indiginous" population.

This is not just a matter of misinformation. Such falsehoods encourage governments and institutions not to prepare, not to change their ways, not to learn from bloody experience, to continue denying the very existence of an antisemitic problem. And that means there will occasionally be more such tragedies but also hundreds of incitements to antisemitism, blood libels against Israel, assaults, threats, and other acts of anti-Jewish hatred that you will never hear about.

Hiding the truth only ensures that the problem grows and the tragedies are repeated. And unfortunately that is precisely what's happening.

How many times must radical Jihadis scream from the rooftops their desire to murder Jews before we acknowledge reality?

How many more little Jewish kids must be murdered by these people before we will stand up and demand that they stop teaching genocidal hatred toward us?

When will Jewish people, themselves, finally acknowledge that our problem is not with conservative or Evangelical Christians, but with a strain of Islam that is spreading throughout the Middle East under the so-called "Arab Spring"?

What will it take for diaspora Jews to yank their heads out of the sand?

What will it take?