Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXVII: The Orlando Pulse Massacre

I woke up this morning to hear of a horrible tragedy: 50 people murdered at a gay nightclub in Orlando. The attack, which President Obama described as "an act of hate and an act of terror", was allegedly carried out by Omar Mateen. Mateen was an employee of G4S security; he reportedly had sympathies with the radical Islamic terror organization ISIS.

Yet of course it took less than a day for someone -- in this case Scottish artist and Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz -- to come out and say, no, it was the Jews who did it.

Aimed at politicising gay community
Wanting gays to become political enemies of Islam
Israel lobby
Gay lobby#Orlando #ZionistFalseFlag

— Alison Chabloz (@AJCTmusic) June 12, 2016

If embedding doesn't work, the tweet reads:

Aimed at politicising gay community
Wanting gays to become political enemies of Islam
Israel lobby
Gay lobby #Orlando #ZionistFalseFlag

I started this feature not because Jews uniquely are blamed collectively for the wrongs (imagined and real) committed by individual members. Every group experiences to that to some degree,  as the inevitable racist backlash against all Muslims for the despicable act of one member of the faith will no doubt soon demonstrate. What makes Jews seemingly unique is that many instinctively blame us for the wrongs committed by anyone. On our heads rest not just the sins we have committed, but the sins anyone has committed.

"Things People Blame the Jews For" is normally somewhat snarky in tone, but that seems inappropriate here and today. So I'll just say this: To lay the Orlando massacre at the feet of an entire religious, national, ethnic, or cultural group is an act of someone who either doesn't care about preventing future attacks, or actively wants to see more in the future. The person primarily to blame for this act of terror is no one but the person who committed it. The persons secondarily to blame are those who call upon or promote such acts. And the persons tertiarily to blame are those -- whether they be radical Islamic clerics or radical conservative activists -- who promote the idea that such acts represent the truth or the heart of Islam. If we don't want attacks like this to occur, we must be clear-sighted about who, precisely, was in the wrong.