Luckily I beat back my theatre urge in London the week before last and was nowhere near Times Square on Sat. night. I’m very glad the bomb was in a purple SUV; had it been a more boring color maybe it would not have been spotted.
Just for the heck of it, I looked over the Yahoo! commentary on the event yesterday. A half dozen comments had been removed for being defamatory (presumably to Moslems or immigrants or tea party supporters or people with mental illnesses.) But despite the supposed censorship by the site managers, I spotted at least two anti-Semitic comments somehow blaming New York City’s Jewish population for making the Big Apple a target for terrorists.
I took the liberty of complaining to Yahoo! It is less than nine years ago that the Twin Towers were brought down. I cannot believe that blaming “Jew” York City is now an acceptable interpretation of events then or now.
While most American Jews support Israel’s right to exist (against crackpots from Iran etc.), we range all over the map in views of Palestinian aspirations, the settlements, Jerusalem, and Israeli politics. I happen to be a supporter of the J-Street movement supporting negotiations and a two-state solution because I want there to be a democratic Jewish state in the Middle East. But I do not want to become a target of any bomb because of my religion.
My synagogue in Paris was attacked by a murderous bomb in 1981. The Union Liberale Israelite on the Rue Copernic was targetted because it was a synagogue, but as then President George Pompidou pointed out, “innocent Frenchmen were alsco killed.” Presumably the Jewish victim was not innocent. Nobody was ever charged with the bombing, nor with that a few years later of Goldenberg’s, a deli on the Rue de Rosiers in the old Ghetto neighborhood.
Neither the Jews of New York nor the coalition government of Israel can be blamed for Arab terrorism. Let us keep things straight.
When I started Global Investing 20 years ago my then partner, Bill Bonner of Agora Inc. (an Episcopalean) told me that I should write about Israeli stocks without worrying about any supposed pro-Israeli bias. More for paid subscribers from Norway, Brazil, Israel (yup), Guinea, Britain, Puerto Rico, Canada. Three of the stocks featured are recommended banks, none Israeli, and one of them is now dis-recommended. Three are drug stocks, on of which we cannot buy, alas. Prootectionism is rife in the world.
