Comments on: WATCH: Jerusalem soccer hooligans attack Arabs at shopping center

By: F Callen

F Callen — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:24:45 +0000

Let’s try another thought experiment, one where dozens of Arab football hooligans descend on a shopping mall in say Sh’chem, Gaza, Amman, Damascus, Cairo or Mecca and begin attacking Jewish workers there. It’s absurd, isn’t it?

By: Bronxman

Bronxman — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:07:22 +0000

I’m coming late to this article, but that doesn’t change either my opinion or the incident itself. The actions of the racist mob and the police reaction were both repugnant, even more so by a society that used to live according to a higher measure of morality. Real-politik types might claim that this is the only means of survival, but Israel established a State by much higher standards. Maybe the founders were made of higher quality human beings.

By: Arieh Zimmerman

Arieh Zimmerman — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:05:01 +0000

I wonder,in decades to come, if Jews will not find themselves crying mea culpa, (אשמתי), as now do Germans of good faith.
I wonder how Palestinians will react to the Jewish remorse.

By: Leen

Leen — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:38:43 +0000

Greg Pollack,
the problem with this is that it doesn’t matter if the fight was long and hard, but seriously if this happened in England, they would be arrested on charges of mob action, hate crime, and a racially motivated attack. It doesn’t matter if anyone pressed charges or not.

Do you remember a while ago there was a youtube video of a woman on a bus who was verbally harassing the passengers on the bus, telling them that they are not ‘british’ they are all ‘brown’ and then continued with other racial slurs that I won’t include in this post? I can’t exactly remember what she said but it was a large rant and you can find the youtube video. What happened to her? She was arrested, charged with a hate crime and other charges. And she didn’t even physically attack anyone. That’s what happens in a civil liberal society.

By: Lainey Fay

Lainey Fay — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 07:41:32 +0000

This is a shockingly rascist incident and the fact that no-one has been arrested is nothing short of a scandal. What kind of civilised society allows this kind of behaviour to go unchecked?

The idea that many of the young men involved serve in the military forces and in another time and another place they are in arab villages and homes, armed with weapons, is truly terrifying.

By: Mikesailor

Mikesailor — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 05:19:18 +0000

Greg Pollock:
Then why don’t you advocate not only decreasing aid to Israel but ending it altogether? Why not proclaim that the entire Zionist project has been an abject failure in that by promoting a narrow ethnocentric view toward citizenship (all those not Jewish can be freely discriminated against)it has naturally devolved into a racist apartheid view of government with a population too afraid or racist to object. Frankly, I am tired of hearing the mantra that somehow Israel is exempt from international norms of behavior by virtue of being a ‘Jewish’ state. The US is not a ‘Christian’ state. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: A state is a state is a state. It should never be exempt from law. And the US should never give succor to any state which routinely brutalizes, or quietly accepts the civilian brutalization without sanction. For what is a ‘pogrom’ except a race riot to which the authorities turn a blind eye?

By: John Yorke

John Yorke — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 04:52:42 +0000

Let’s say the police do investigate and arrests are made; what then?
Their efforts will be viewed by some as an exercise in damage limitation, by others as dragging their heels and still more will see their involvement as needless interference with every Israeli’s inalienable right to let off steam now and then.

Maybe the guilty will be tried and convicted and, if such should be their fate, well and good.
But much of the damage will have already been done and, whatever the judicial outcome, only negative aspects of the incident are likely to be called to mind in the future. This seems to be the case with every confrontation between Arab and Jew for as long as I can remember.

What if the injured party might also derive something that was very positive from the experience?
I imagine that would help assuage their feelings about what had happened to them. And what if that same something, given the opposed mindsets of those involved, could be viewed by the other side as a loss far greater than any financial outlay or lengthy incarceration?

How does what is essentially negative become a positive? Only by introducing yet another negative

Simple mathematics can often solve many of the world’s most intractable problems.
And you don’t have to be an Einstein to work that a negative, multiplied by a second negative, will always produce a positive.

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:48:02 +0000

MikeS,
.
Then that is where the fight is, is it not–in, for the judiciary? Quick and easy? No, long and quite hard. But I find it better than trying to get others to condemn along side me. The fight is always inside oursleves; goes for a State too.
.
To place my position clearly: if I thought it were all possible of actuality, I would advocate decreasing US aid to Israel; I am a US citizen. But it is not at all possible. Instead of feeling good in my isolation, I ask: are other thoughts, routes, possible of at least articulation? I have nothing other to give.

By: Muhammad

Muhammad — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 23:55:56 +0000

Interesting insight. You should provide an Arabic version of this website so that also non-English-speakers can understand it and follow the discussion.

Shukran and toda!

By: Leen

Leen — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 23:36:35 +0000

Oh I forgot, this would also be considered a hate crime in the UK. Unfortunately, we all know that Israel is not a liberal state.