Suddenly, there is a new threat to world peace and stability. There has arisen a diabolical force, so sly, so threatening, so innately evil as to challenge the very foundations of Western Civilization.
This despicable, unspeakable force moves with the cunning of a cat, strikes with the force of the Mongol Hordes and, when the rest of the world is naively asleep, stealthily arrives to…
Spray Paint the Side of a Building!!!!!!!!…or even worse, unbelievably worse, to…
Slash Tires!!!!!!
Have we perhaps lost some perspective here, or is the hysteria about Price Tag attacks meant very much to be a straw man for a larger issue, against a more serious enemy.
First things first. I am not excusing Price Tag attacks. They are the criminal acts of hooligans.
But let’s also apply some perspective. Spraying a wall with paint is not in the same league as spraying a car with bullets. Slashing a tire does not quite equate to slashing a throat.
But to see the reactions of many on the Left there is no difference. Worse yet, those who find justification for the actions of Arabs and Palestinians feel no compunction in labeling these perpetrators “terrorists” or even, to quote Amos Oz, “ a monster that needs to be called what it is: Hebrew neo-Nazi groups.”
Wow. Isn’t that just a wee bit…extreme?
And it is that lack of perspective that is so telling, telling us more about the labeler than the labeled.
Why is there such a double standard for the actions of supposedly Jewish actors creating disgusting mischief – but mischief mind you – and the murderous or at the least violent-to-the-person acts of identified Arabs?
Why are some so quick to whip out their college sociology textbooks, citing the frustrations of living under “the Occupation” while never giving a thought to the extenuating circumstance of having your community ripped down or your neighbors assaulted?
This isn’t even moral equivalence, one of the great foolish indulgences of the politically correct crowd. That’s because there is no equivalence. The Arab marauders are oppressed and frustrated youth, or even freedom fighters, and the allegedly Jewish hooligans are “neo-Nazis.”
What’s even more fascinating is that the Jewish perpetrators have been tried and convicted before they have even identified. We don’t even know or care who they are, or why they did what they did. They are the utterly deplorable, the lowest of the low – monsters, as Oz would have it.
(By the way, if you were an astute Palestinian Arab trying to stick a finger in the Israeli eye, wouldn’t you be tempted to spray paint “tag mahir” on the side of a building? It gets a Pavlovian reaction in the Israeli media every time.)
So what is really going on here? I think there are at least few aspects to this, all related and each depressing in its own right. For one thing, the price tag perpetrators (PTPs) have become the symbol by which the Left can hate the “Settler” movement (to use the coded term that carries the negative connotation of occupiers), and also all Settlers. They are not human, literally, nor from the rabid language used to describe them, metaphorically.
The Useful Idiot of the Year, Tzipi Livni has managed to turn PTPs into a great security threat, and it is perhaps but a matter of time before Martin Indyk and John Kerry will lay the failure of recent talks on the doorstep of the PTPs.
For another, the extreme reaction to the PTPs clearly exposes the larger world view of the accusers. Ms. Livni, for example, has never uttered condemnations of the murderous actions of Arabs, yet she sees war crime material in the actions of the PTPs.
