The Missing Gene of Empathy for Murdered Jews

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, the ‘conscience’ of human rights was addressing the UN when he told the world that he understood that killing innocent Jews was a result of Palestinian “frustration from the occupation.” The Secretary General said, “The full force of the law must be brought to bear on all those committing crimes –- with a system of justice applied equally for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

This outrageous statement has now become the new normal in contemporary anti-Semitic discourse and media coverage.

A day earlier a young girl, Shlomit Krigman, 23, was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian murderer. The week before Dafna Meir, 38, a nurse and a mother of six was brutally slain by a fifteen year old Palestinian murderer.

In Jerusalem’s Har Hamenuchot cemetery the two women now lie side by side.

Also, one week earlier, America’s Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro spoke at a conference in Tel Aviv where he too made references about Israel’s justice system, saying, “there seems to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law – one for Israelis and another for Palestinians.” Alluding to the fact that he thought Israel was discriminating against the Palestinians. He spoke about the terrorist attack the day before briefly in his opening remarks, but he did not feel it was inappropriate to condemn Israel.

The fact that both Ban Ki Moon and Ambassador Shapiro thought there was nothing wrong with condemning Israel on the same day that Palestinians were butchering women shows the apparent missing gene of empathy for murdered Jews.

I remember in my many years working in the international media, especially during the second intifada, when I witnessed countless times how there was no sympathy at all for Israelis who were murdered by Palestinians. Palestinian suicide bombers and other Palestinians who died during the conflict had names that the media reported. More often than not, names of Israeli victims were overlooked and I often wondered why that was.

The overwhelming majority of the media coverage of Palestinian deaths at the hands of the Israeli army far outstripped any sympathetic attention given to Jews.

Last week, the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, a Holocaust denier was given a reception by the Holy See, Pope Francis. Iran is now holding its third annual, Holocaust denial cartoon competition and the regime continues to be the world’s biggest Holocaust denial industry. Rouhani is no different to his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, although the world continues to pretend that he is a moderate.

There is something fundamentally wrong when the head of a religion with one billion adherents globally has an audience with the world’s biggest sponsor of Islamist terrorism, where many of the victims are Christians worldwide.

Before leaving Italy, Rouhani was speaking on the same day as the international Holocaust Memorial Day when he was being anti-Semitic by blaming the “Zionist lobby” for the strained relations between Iran and the United States. In truth, the majority of Americans are against the nuclear deal that was struck between the P5+1 and Iran.

It did not matter to President Barack Obama that the Iran deal still left Iran on record calling for the destruction of Israel and it continues its policy of denying the Holocaust. The European Union and especially Germany had no problem in ignoring the genocidal ambitions of Iran and promotion of lies about the Holocaust. Germany should know better. This betrayal of Holocaust memory and betrayal of Israel’s right to exist is the original sin of the Iran deal.

As the world recoils in horror at the crimes of ISIS and radical Islamist ideology exported from Syria to Europe, when it comes to Islamists butchering Jews in Jerusalem, the UN Secretary General makes excuses for murder, when he said, ”it is human nature to react to occupation.” Perhaps human nature does not extend sympathy to victims when they are Jews.

I ask myself whether people just don’t get it or is it deliberate?