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Saturday, January 14, 2017

Think Of The Consequences

An appeals court in Germany has affirmed a decision that three Palestinian men who threw Molotov cocktails at a local synagogue were just engaged in a justified criticism of Israel.  The court upheld giving the three men suspended sentences for the attack.  They were still convicted of arson, but it was deemed not to be an anti-Semitic hate crime which carries a much greater penalty.

I know it's Germany which makes this decision all that much more eerie, but I want to focus on the consequences of this decision.  Think about it.  Dylan Roof was just sentenced to death in South Carolina for killing 9 African American worshippers in a local church.  Suppose he said that he had nothing against his victims but he wanted to protest against the Black Lives Matter movement?  The German decision would say that he was not guilty of murder because it was just a political statement.  Maybe it would be manslaughter and he could get a suspended sentence.  Suppose that Syrian rebels blew up the New York building that houses the UN mission from Iran to protest Iran's support for Assad?  Is that not an attack worthy of prison because it is justified criticism of the mullahs?  In this attack, the target would actually be the very nation whose policies a
re being protested.  Still, it is a crazy thought to think that a violent attack can ever be justified criticism.

There really are two relevant points here.

1.  There is no possible basis for deciding that an attack on members of a religion or citizens of a nation is acceptable criticism of what others of that religion or nation have done. All Jews do not get targeted for what the nation of Israel does any more than all Moslems get targeted for what ISIS does in the name of Islam.  Blacks do not have responsibility for what Black Lives Matter says any more than all whites have responsibility for what the Ku Klux Klan says.  The Germans living down the street similarly are not responsible for the moronic decision of this appellate court in their homeland.  Americans traveling abroad have no responsibility for the actions of the USA in Iraq or Afghanistan.  The very concept that a religious or national group has responsibility is totally unacceptable.

2.  Violence and criminal activity is never an acceptable form of political protest.  This is especially true when physical harm is threatened to innocent people.

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