At 12:43 8-4-02 -0500, Dan Minette wrote: > > > A reasonable police reaction would be to both start a manhunt for the > > > perpetrators and police protection for all synagogue. > > > > And how exactly are we going to pay for that protection? Saying we should > > give permanent police protection to all synagogues is easy, but one must > > also keep an eye on the costs. > >May I suggest that protecting the citizens of a country is more important >than subsidizing inefficent agriculture in order to lower imports from >Australia. There is plenty of money to be found in wasted programs.
If European governments subsidise agriculture (or anything else for that matter), they just might have a very good reason for it. The US government may not be happy about it, but hey, Europe's first concern is the European economy, not the US economy. Besides, you cannot simply decide overnight to stop pooring money into something; making such a decision is a political process that takes months (if not a few years) and that can have huge negative effects on the people involved, as well as a huge negative effect on the economy as a whole. To use JDG's three favourite words, it all comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. But if you know of some huge stash of money lying around unused somewhere, the European governments would love to hear from you. > > It is simply impossible to give every synagogue 24/7 police protection. > >Well, citizen voluenteers from the community can also be used. True, but you only mentioned *government* in your original post. They could also hire the services of private security companies, install video surveillance systems etcetera. > > Synagogues are already included in regular police patrols (just like > > mosques), but no government is going to be able to assign police officers > > to all synagogues around the clock. > >I guess you've missed the rest of my most. My _family_ has been involved >with this need for protection agains racist violence in the past. It has >been done in the US in the past, it can be done in Europe now. I strongly >suggest that y'all look to our experience for leadership in this area. Um, I would argue that providing 24/7 protection for one family is an operation several orders of magnitude smaller than providing 24/7 protection for hundreds if not thousands of synagogues throughout Europe. Further, if the European governments would decide today to offer such extremely high levels of protection to synagogues, guess what will happen next. First thing tomorrow morning, the Islamic communities in Europe would come knocking on the door, demanding equal protecting for their mosques (there have been several attacks on them as well over the last several years, so they would actually be justified in their demand). >Perfection isn't suggested. An honest effort is. Every indication is that >the lack of effort protecting synagouges is a political decision. Of course it is political; deciding to provide extra police protection on such a large scale is a decision that is made by politicians, so it is by definition a political decision. I do not see a deliberate lack of effort here, though -- the problem is lack of money and lack of manpower to provide 24/7 protection, not lack of good will. FYI, European police forces have been complaining for many years now that they do not have enough money and manpower to do their jobs properly. Thousands of crimes go unsolved because police lack the resources they need. >Now, I don't mean to imply that racism is a thing of the past here. It >isn't. We're just much further down the road adressing racism than y'all >seem to be adressing anti-Semitism. Or maybe Europe is not as anti-Semitic as it is depicted in US media. From what I get from US media and US members of this list, Americans are much quicker than Europeans to call anything negative that is said about Israel anti-Semitism. > > > 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. > > > > > Well, like it or not, it *is* impossible for any government to prevent > > rape (unless they assign a police officer 24/7 to every individual woman, > > which is simply impossible). The best they can do is hunt down the > > rapist(s) and send him/them to prison. > >That's not the point. No one expects perfection. But, when a job needs to >be done, the right answer is "we'll do our best" not "we'll we're not >perfect." Even though the latter is true, it is also usually stated as a >whinny excuse. Can you quote European leaders denying our Jewish communities protection by saying "well we are not perfect"? I am not sure if this makes it to the US media, but over here we hear the governments condemn the attacks and promise they will do everything they can to stop them and find the people who are responsible for them. > > It might be possible that the French government did not consider his > > statement to be anti-Semitic, but since I do not have the statement handy > > I cannot comment on that. Can you post the comment? > >The latest quote from the list is > > >"And all of this from the same French government that declined to recall its >ambassador to Britain when he created a ruckus last December by referring to >Israel as "that s----- little country." Ambassador Daniel Bernard added, >"Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those >people?" If those are the exact words, then I must agree with the French government for not ending their ambassador's career because of anti-Semitism (although he should have gotten a firm slap on the wrist for making some extremely undiplomatic remarks). Although especially his first remark is definitely rude, and something extremely stupid for an ambassador to say, I do not see any anti-Semitism in either remark. They can be considered insulting to the State of Israel, but there is nothing there that constitutes proof of hatred of Jews. This looks like a good example of what I mentioned above: Americans seems to be quite quick to slap a label "anti-Semitic" on anything negative that is said about Israel. Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
