The word “incitement” has legal significance in many countries, including Germany, Israel, and the United Kingdom. To call certain speech “incitement” implies a desire for the state to take action against the individual doing the inciting.
Accusations of incitement often appear in the writings of Sarah Tuttle-Singer, the new media editor for The Times of Israel. For example, in June 2016, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau spoke supportively about rebuilding the Beit HaMikdash. In reaction, Tuttle-Singer wrote: “what Rabbi Lau says IS incitement.”
(Incidentally, during the Nine Days, Tuttle-Singer posted a blog titled, “I don’t want to rebuild the Temple,” and on Tisha B’Av, Tuttle-Singer referred to “Palestinian yearning” and posted a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, who said, “The martyrs were right” upon resigning from the PLO executive committee in 1993 over the Oslo Accords.)
This April, Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich argued that anyone convicted of attacking a soldier “deserved a bullet, at the very least to the kneecap.” Tuttle-Singer again reacted by writing, “This is incitement.”
Considering Tuttle-Singer’s hyper-sensitivity to incitement, one would think that she would be very careful to monitor both her own words as well as those of the people who comment on her Facebook page. No chance.
In a post on January 7, Tuttle-Singer called for an involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold on President Trump. She commented in a subsequent thread, “I think it’s morally irresponsible not to question his mental fitness at this point.” About an hour later, Russell Wolff commented: “He is a [expletive deleted] maniac and needs to be Jimmy Hoffa’d.”
Wolff added shortly after: “Tie him to a stake and burn the [expletive deleted]…on live TV preferably!”
Elsewhere on the post, he commented: “This guy needs to be taken out.”
Wolff – whose website describes him as being “a voting member of the Grammys in four categories” – doesn’t think much of America in general. Here is another gem of his: “America is a [expletive deleted] country filled with [expletive deleted] people.”
What was Tuttle-Singer’s response to the above? Silence. She was also silent when Wolff commented on a post from August 17 of last year, “I would sterilize every republican [sic] scumbag. As much as it pains me, even the Jews. Disgrace to our people.”
After Wolff’s first two statements on the January 7 post, Tuttle-Singer responded twice on the same thread to other people. It’s therefore beyond unlikely that she didn’t see what he wrote. Tuttle-Singer even hat-tipped Wolff in a post on August 2.
All of which leads one to wonder: What exactly is this rhetorical flamethrower doing at The Times of Israel? Who hired her, and why? Is she not guilty of implicitly condoning the very crime she accuses others of: incitement?