Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Elder of ZiyonAn incident of cemetery vandalism at the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery in Jerusalem was documented on video on November 29, 2011. The Arab perpetrator, who was consequently found guilty due to the video evidence, was sentenced to three months in prison for his crime. He admitted that he received NIS 1,000 to commit his acts of cemetery desecration.
Did you hear about this anywhere else? Was it mentioned in the New York Times or Time magazine? Perhaps the Huffington Post or Salon? Surely the Jerusalem Post or Ha'aretz?
"This is not a freak occurrence", [said] Charley J. Levine, adviser to the Preservation Committee in Israel, "This sort of vicious vandalism and desecration occurs at Har Hazeitim every single day, some orchestrated and some spontaneous. It is a shame of enormous proportion that this takes place at the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the entire world!"
Of course not.
Arabs desecrating Jewish shrines and cemeteries is expected behavior; it is a dog-bites-man story.
While the world is riveted at the unconscionable and reprehensible "price tag" attacks being done against some mosques and other places in Israel, no one even notices this even more disgusting desecration of the dead at one of the most venerable Jewish holy places in the world. It is simply a non-event. And the reason is because this is considered normal.
Mahmoud Abbas won't even get a chance to do one of his patented fake condemnations - because no reporter will ask him about it. The story is stuck in the ghetto of an Israeli right-wing news site where such stories are reported nearly every day, only to sit there to die.
Nearly four years ago I visited Israel and saw the sickening desecration of another Jewish holy place, the Tomb of Samuel. And that incident was also all but ignored by the Israeli media, let alone international news sources. Then too, it was simply not news, even in Israel.
Why are Jewish cemeteries and shrines being vandalized in Israel considered less important than mosques? Why is there an international outcry when a stupid kid spray-paints a hateful slogan on a Muslim site but the actual destruction of historic Jewish holy sites is downplayed and ignored?
Even worse, the desecration at Har HaZeitim was paid for - there is an organization behind the destruction of Jewish gravestones! This is more than just an isolated incident of vandalism - it is literally a conspiracy to uproot all Jewish history from the land!
Where is the outrage? More importantly - where are the reporters?
In a country that probably has more international reporters per square mile than any other - where the hell are they? Why is this video not being shown on CNN?
The scandal is not only that such acts are occurring - it is that such acts are not being even noticed or reported. And if it isn't in the paper, it might as well have never happened. UNESCO won't be bothered to make a statement, the EU will continue to criticize Israel disproportionately, and the leftist crowd will never, ever say a negative word against Arabs who are fighting a daily war against Jewish history and culture.
Acknowledging such inconvenient facts isn't "progressive."
(h/t Israel Matzav)
