He was American. He was 18. He was murdered this week by terrorists in Israel. This is what the US State Department said to Israel this afternoon after several innocent civilians (including Ezra) were killed by terrorists in Israel: “[We] continue to urge all sides to take affirmative steps to restore calm and prevent actions that would further escalate tensions.”
And this is what the US State Department said to France after innocent civilians were killed by terrorists in France: “These are heinous, evil, vile acts. Those of us who can must do everything in our power to fight back against what can only be considered an assault on our common humanity.”
Why the different tone? Wasn’t Ezra’s murder a “heinous, evil, vile act”?
In the case of attacks on innocent Jews and Israelis, the State Department wants “all sides” to “restore calm” and “prevent actions that would further escalate tensions”.
In the case of attacks on innocent French people, however, the State Department wants to see everyone “fight back” against “evil”, and is strikingly unconcerned about “restoring calm”. Nobody is urged to “prevent actions that would further escalate tensions”; to the contrary, such actions, in the case of France, are actually being *encouraged*, for the sake of “fight[ing] back against what can only be considered an assault on our common humanity”.
I would like to amplify the point made in Marne’s post, by asking the inverse questions:
* Why does the State Department not urge “all sides” in the ISIS/France conflict to “restore calm”?
* Why is the State Department not worried about actions against ISIS that “would further escalate tensions”?
And even more to the point:
* Who, exactly, are the parties mysteriously described as “all sides” in the State Department’s response to the terror attack that killed Ezra Schwartz? Evidently, these “sides” are (1) the Israelis, who were targeted in the attack, and (2) the “Palestinians”, who carried out the attack, and whose leadership both incited the attack and praised it after it happened.
In other words, the State Department is addressing its comments “even-handedly”, asking “all sides” — the victims *and* the terrorists — to “restore calm” and to “prevent actions that would further escalate tensions”.
So why, then, does the State Department not make such a similarly “even-handed” appeal in the wake of the attacks in France? Why does it not urge “all sides” — the French government and ISIS — to “prevent actions that would further escalate tensions”?
The answer to this question can be found in the State Department’s description of the attacks in Paris as “an assault on our common humanity”.
Israelis, in stark contrast — and even non-Israeli Jews, like Ezra Schwartz — evidently do not qualify, in the State Department’s view, for inclusion in “our common humanity”.
And — following the State Department’s logic to its conclusion — since Ezra Schwartz and the other victims in Israel are not part of “our common humanity”, the assaults upon them — as opposed to the attacks in Paris — were *not* “heinous, evil, vile acts”. And for that reason, the State Department sees no imperative for anyone to “fight back” against this assault — quite the contrary, in fact.
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Sad update: a short time ago, a 17-year-old was stabbed to death by yet another Arab terrorist…in the same place where Ezra was murdered last week. May God avenge her blood and may her family be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem and may they know no more sorrow.