----- Original Message ----- From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 4:16 AM Subject: Re: Trouble in Europe
> At 08:58 5-4-02 -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > > >The acceptance of the hate against the Jews in Europe, the general "we all > >need to not get angry" when terrible violence is done, the refusal to > >accept responsibility for protecting citizens makes me wonder about why > >the attitude of the European government is as it is. > > How are the European governments "refusing to accept responsibility for > protecting citizens"? By the way they react to the violence. A reasonable verbal reaction is "this type of violence is totally unacceptable, it has no place in France, we will do everything in our power to prosecute those that perpetrate it." A reasonable police reaction would be to both start a manhunt for the perpetrators and police protection for all synagogue. Instead, there is a statement that they cannot protect the Jewish residents and a "balanced" for both the victims and the perpetrators to stop being angry. An analogy is if a government, after a series of rapes in the community, reacted by saying: 1) There was no way for the government to prevent rape 2) men and women should stop being angry with each other. In the United States, where we've been trying to deal with our "original sin" of slavery and racism for almost 150 years, we have an awareness of the meaning of reactions. My wife's grandfather needed police protection because he was active in civil rights. The reaction of the French matches the reactions of a subset of local government in the US during the civil rights movement. This subset was more worried about the political repercussions of fighting the hate crimes than they were about the crimes themselves. Another example is the fact that the anti-Semitic comments made by the French ambassador to Britain had no repercussions on his career. A similar public racist comment by an American in government would have ended his career. The lack of repercussions sends the message that anti-Semitism is acceptable. Dan M.
