Pretend it wasn’t Israel — what would the media say?

Imagine the following circumstances – What would the world’s media reaction be?

• A WASP who formerly served in the CIA, in a community outside of San Diego is sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of California. His crime? Selling a Mexican his home in the community of La Jolla. The president needs to personally sign off on his death sentence, and then the WASP will be killed.

• In Sweden, a non-political, non-factional and non-governmental organization is closed by the government – without a warning from the government — after it criticizes a senior aide to the prime minister. The head of the organization claims to have recently received threats from an aide to the prime minister.

• A Roman Catholic American donates $1 million to a presidential candidate and is referred to as controversial as he has purchased property in the heart of Vatican City where gypsies are currently occupying. The donor is a self-made multi-millionaire who donates millions to many causes, including hospitals, education and the tsunami in Japan.

• In Columbia, a few thousand supporters of FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) attempt to “enter its borders with the freely-stated purpose of violating state order, laws and legal provisions, or in order to promote an ideological position that challenges the state’s sovereignty.”

In reality, each of these really occurred exactly as stated but, they involved Israel and have largely been ignored.

• Mr. Muhammad Abu Shahala, a former intelligence agent for the Palestinian Authority, has been sentenced to death, following a hurried trial. His crime: selling property to Jews in Hebron. Abu Shahala reportedly confessed following torture sessions at the hands of his captors. The death sentence can be executed once it is ratified by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA. After he signs the death warrant, Abu Shahala may be killed.

It is appalling to think that a property sale should be defined as a capital crime punishable by death. The very fact that such a law exists within the framework of the PA legal system points to a perverse type of justice, reminiscent of practices implemented during the dark ages. What would be the reaction to a law forbidding property sales to Jews, in the United States, England, France, or Switzerland?

• The Palestinian Authority closed down the offices of the Palestinian Human Rights Foundation, which had criticized senior Fatah official Azzam al-Ahmed. PA Interior Minister Said Abu Ali, who signed the closure order, said that the work of the monitor was “not consistent” with the interests of the Palestinians.

Could one imagine if this happened anywhere else in the world what the outcry would be?

• Dr. Irving Moskowitz has donated $1 million to American Crossroads, linked to Karl Rove. Moskowitz, an Orthodox Jew who lost 120 relatives in the Holocaust, is committed to ensuring a united Jerusalem.

A Jew can buy a home in Harlem or East Los Angeles, Moscow or Tokyo. Is there a reason that a Jew can’t buy a home in any area of Jerusalem? What’s so “controversial”?

• Thousands of pro-Palestinian activists are attempting to enter Israel to protest. By doing so, they “violate state order, laws and legal provisions… in order to promote an ideological position that challenges the state’s sovereignty,” according to Israel Law Center Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who also said “It is inconceivable that Israel is the only state that allows this.”

Bluntly, if one were to read the circumstances and not see Israel in the story, these stories would all be reported radically different. As the great Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky said:

It is not the anti-Semitism of men; it is, above all, the anti-Semitism of things, the inherent xenophobia of the body social or the body economic under which we suffer.

Bluntly, it’s all anti-Semitism of the media. Plain and clear Jew-hatred.