{Reposted with permission from author’s website, The View From Israel}
From an outsider’s viewpoint, Michael Brown was a young hoodlum who violently robbed a local store in Ferguson, Missouri, violently attacked a police officer and tried to grab his gun, and finally charged the officer when challenged to submit. The office fired and killed Brown when he felt his life was in danger. His decision to fire was clearly based on the violence on his person he had just experienced. Given the evidence, this was the behavior of an aggressive petty criminal. In this case the issue became one of race. Brown was a black. The officer was white. Because of this, the incident took on a different and ugly life of its own.
Brown’s death resulted in demonstrations, violence, and demands that the officer be put on trial for murder. According to many vocal protesters, nothing short of Officer Daryl Wilson being found guilty and sentenced for racist crimes would soothe the black community.
Cries of justice for Michael Brown drowned out any call for justice for the police officer. No justice for Officer Wilson would be too much justice. The black community of Ferguson was joined in their violent protests by outsiders who insisted that Officer Wilson be charged and found guilty. No other verdict would do. The facts became smudged. Michael Brown was portrayed as the innocent victim of a brutal police regime. Evidence to the contrary became irrelevant to them. “Don’t confuse me with the truth!” was the cry on the streets of Ferguson, and around black America.
A Grand Jury, reviewing the evidence and calling up to seventy witnesses, in a reasonable, open-minded manner found the officer innocent of committing any crime and having operated according to the law in self-defense. This decision was met with a massive and angry outburst of rioting. Shots were fired; stores were looted, destroyed, and burnt to the ground, as were vehicles. One demonstrator reportedly said, “We are doing this for Michael Brown.”
Across America noisy crowds came out in sympathy for Brown, the guy who had strong-armed a store owner and robbed him, the guy who had attacked a police officer and threatened him a second time when asked to submit. Demonstrators as far afield as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia, and St. Louis marched to protest that this young man was an innocent victim of police brutality and racism. All this was irrespective to the fact that the majority of witnesses were, themselves, black people. For them, anything the police officer would have done to protect himself against a violent assailant, who was taller and heavier than himself, would have been illegitimate. None of them looked on Michael Brown as the aggressor.
Simply put, in places like Ferguson, they can’t be wrong even when they are wrong. They were in denial and rejected justice for the white officer. As such, this was racism. It was reverse racism. It was black racism against a white police officer who was attacked while going about his duty, on his own, and under threat for his life. We witnessed the frenzy of hatred and the resultant violence it left in its wake.
Now view this scenario from a Middle East perspective. The police officer was Israel, the violent section of Ferguson were Palestinians, and the major American centers that rowdily demonstrated for Brown and rejected justice for the officer were the pro-Palestinian activists who ignore justice for Israel and who don’t want to hear Israel’s rightful claims or to admit that Israel is facing an enemy that is advancing on it in a threatening manner. Justice for the Palestinians drowns out any call for justice, and a voice, for Israel. No amount of facts and truth will silence their false accusations, insults, racism charges and, if all else fails, violence.