An exercise in grade schools these days is ” Comparing and Contrasting.” Venn diagrams are used as visual aids and students as early as second grade are encouraged to observe commonalities and differences in cultures, characters, or classifications. In a personal exercise, done over the last few months, I’ve observed glaring differences between the classy and the common or more colloquially: mothers and muthas.
It’s quite instructive to compare and contrast the media bias and hype concerning murders in two different communities. Naftali Fraenkel, Chaya Zissel Braun, Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Kalman Levine, and Rabbi Aryeh Kopinsky were Americans murdered for being alive. They were Jews. Michael Brown, was shot by a police officer trying to save his own life. Michael Brown was also an American, but black African- American.
In a school essay, the fact that all the murder victims were Americans would be a major similarity. In a Venn diagram it would be an intersection. The fact that the three rabbis were slaughtered praying, while Mr. Brown was killed after he robbed a convenience store and threatened a police officer certainly is a major difference. The rabbis were hacked to death by Muslims. The African American “gentle giant” was shot in self defense by a policeman.
Naftali Fraenkel was kidnapped and murdered on his way home from studying at a yeshiva. He was a teenager like Mr. Brown. Both teenagers were following in the footsteps of their parents. Louis Head, stepfather of Michael Brown, is a member of the Blood gang and incited burning and looting in the Ferguson riots. Leslie Mc Spadden, Michael Brown’s mother, got in a street fight with her ex-mother-in-law over selling Michael Brown T-shirts and accused the policeman who killed her son of malevolence “he wanted to murder someone.” The mother of Naftali, on the other hand said in her son’s eulogy : “Rest in peace, my child. We will learn to sing without you. We will always hear your voice in our hearts.”
For some reason the media, including the internet, ran stories about the Ferguson shooting for weeks. They hyped the grand jury story when there was nothing to tell except speculation and titillation. On the other hand, the story of the murdered rabbis disappeared the next day. The story of Baby Chaya. murdered by a Palestinian killer, also disappeared in a blink of the eye. The murdered and mutilated rabbis were fathers of 24 children. Those bereft children and widows are now forced to face lives without the fathers and husbands they loved . The community of Har Nof never callled for the blood of the Muslim killers. The parents and loved ones of the Jews who were murdered only ask for peace and an end to the violence. The family of Mr. Brown incited riots and welcomed race baiters and poverty pimps like Al Sharpton into their community to instigate violence and looting.
Muslims perpetrated the savage murders in Jerusalem. Muslim mobs celebrated those murders in the streets of Gaza and Ramallah. Coincidently,Muslims are part of the agitating mob in Ferguson and Oakland. Agitation and violence are what the media love to publicize, but the slaughter of innocents to the cry of “Allah Akbar” is not even newsworthy. Something is very wrong when mothers are squeezed out of the nightly news by muthas. Could it be the media doesn’t care about the slaughter perpetrated by Muslims in Jerusalem because, after all, they’re only dead Jews.