Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume XXVIII: The Coup Attempt in Turkey

As news broke of an attempted coup in Turkey last night, my mind went to many places. I worried about regional stability, about the implications for democracy in the Middle East, about the risk of repression and crackdowns regardless of who ended up prevailing, and about the persons living through what must have been a scary and tumultuous evening throughout the nation. I also thought of this series, and wondered who will be the first to go all "Zionist plot" as an explainer.

Odd as it may be to hear, I was actually modestly hopeful that we might get a pass on this one. Certainly, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not always had the friendliest relationship with Israel. But we're only a few weeks removed from a historic deal to restore ties between the two nations. Israel has never had more reason to like President Erdoğan than they do at this moment. Of all the times it might make sense for them to support a coup (not that I think they would), now is the least sensible.

Alas, sensibility is not the theme of this series:

Re turkey there was some kind of israeli connection as well as the apparent Egyptian connection judging by headlines https://t.co/4mhNNtqA4h

— Daoud Kuttab (@daoudkuttab) July 16, 2016

Interesting. https://t.co/Q4Ic6RNdff

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) July 16, 2016

The link chain ends up taking us to this article in Ha'aretz, which informs us that one of the six senior officers arrested in the aftermath of the coup attempt had served as Turkey's military attache to Israel .... almost 20 years ago.

Now sure, that may seem like a tenuous connection. But you don't control the world for thousands and thousands of years without knowing how to play the long game. Good sleuthing, everyone -- you've solved the puzzle (except, you know, for the "why would Israel back a coup attempt against a leader with whom they just signed a major deal" bit).

BLM and ISIS To Partner, Says Black Sheriff

An ongoing area of fascination for me is situations where a member of a minority or marginalized group dissents from the mainstream position of his or her fellow members of said group, where that position is taken to be central to the group's survival or equal standing in the community. In that vein, I present the comments of Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr., himself an African-American man:

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., says he believes the Black Lives Matter movement will team up with the so-called Islamic State to destroy the United States. Clark, who is black, is a frequent guest on Fox News and often attacks the minority activism group. “Before long, Black Lies Matter will join forces with ISIS to being down our legal constituted [sic] republic,” he tweeted late Tuesday evening. “You heard it first here.” Several hours later, he followed up with another word of confidence: “I have been right on every call I have made about these subversives. I will be right again.” 

I think that, if these comments were made by a white police official, we would feel quite comfortable chalking them up to racist sentiment. How is that assessment altered when the speaker is black? And how, as a white person, should one interact with such a statement in a fair and equitable manner?

I ask those questions because I think they're genuinely interesting questions. On the one hand, respect for minorities means respecting their right to form independent judgments that may diverge quite significantly from those of their fellows. On the other hand, requiring a rule of unanimity regarding "what is racism" (or other forms of oppression) is another way of saying "nothing can ever be racist." There will never be uniformity. Likewise, I don't view it as my place as a white person to police the boundaries of what is and isn't a legitimate black opinion. On the other hand, I think there would be something clearly askance if a white person structured their interracial relations by simply finding a dissident minority wing of black persons who agree with their prefigured positions, and use their presence as a means of avoiding a broader reckoning with the other community.

Again, no answers in this post -- just questions worth pondering.

Irrelevant Public Figure A Endorses Irrelevant Public Figure B

Cornel West has officially announced he is endorsing Jill Stein for President, denouncing the woman Bernie Sanders endorsed as a "neo-liberal disaster." (I guess Donald Trump's "authenticity" wasn't enough to win him over). I'm just glad someone who is committed to the practicalities of making progressive change happen was on the Democratic platform committee. One wouldn't have wanted such a valuable slot taken up by someone still infuriated that President Obama doesn't recognize his personal aura of eminence.

Water Under the Bridge

Bernie Sanders has officially endorsed Hillary Clinton. That having happened, there are only a few things to say.

Any closely contested primary -- as this one was -- is going to have moments of bitterness and animosity. There were certainly times, towards the end, where I thought Sen. Sanders was veering too far into grudge territory. But both his conduct and my assessment of his conduct were made in the heat of the moment. Now that we're out the other side, I'll say again that -- my support for Clinton notiwithstanding -- I think Sen. Sanders made the Democratic Party stronger by running. I think he effectively leveraged his considerable successes to bring about genuine and positive changes in the Democratic Party platform -- the most progressive in the Party's history. By mobilizing the left flank of the Party, he'll help ensure that Hillary Clinton is a more effective and more progressive president than she otherwise would be -- not because she yearns to be a neoconservative hack, but because politicians respond to organized pressure and too frequently the left shuns political organization.

I also suspect that the vast majority of Sanders voters will come home to Clinton -- as they should: The gap between him and Hillary Clinton is minuscule compared to the chasm between either of them and Donald Trump. Of course there are some dead-enders who are making a lot of noise right now -- that, too, is typical in a closely-contested and bitter primary (remember PUMAs?). But they're a distinct minority that misconstrues the key lesson of the Sanders campaign. Sen. Sanders shows that if you push inside the system -- he ran as a Democratic, not a quixotic independent vanity run -- you can bring about genuine progressive reforms. If your purity is too precious to even fathom compromising with 85% of your side of the political spectrum (let alone the country), you usually end up with nothing.

So as far as I'm concerned, any bad feelings or ill will is water under the bridge. Senator Sanders ran a good, strong campaign that accomplished many things he can be proud of. Focus on that, and focus on bringing about the electoral outcome come November that will best turn those political accomplishments into genuine policy reforms.

GOP Not So Interested in Adhering to Pro-Israel Redlines

Ignoring objections by, among others, AIPAC, the GOP has dropped from its party platform any support for a two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We've remarked on how this is nominally a redline for who is considered "pro-Israel" -- remarks that near-invariably come tied to an observation that this constraint is imposed only on the left, not the right. And one suspects we'll see it here again -- despite engendering opposition by virtually the entirety of the pro-Israel spectrum, I suspect we'll wait in vain for any editorials proclaiming that the Republican Party is now the anti-Israel party.

Of course, political realities are what they are, and one can understand why major Jewish and pro-Israel groups need to keep pacified one of America's two major parties, even when it seems wholly uninterested in actually listening to what Jews and pro-Israel activists have to say. But if nothing else, perhaps this can cause us to dispense with the fiction that Republicans are listening to Jewish voices whilst Democrats failed to do so. GOP Israel policy is, at this point, almost entirely divorced from what American Jews desire it to be. They're open about that fact, they're proud about that fact, and its time for pundits to forthrightly acknowledge that fact.

"Trigger Warning" -- That Phrase Apparently Doesn't Mean Anything

Jerry Coyne, writing in The New Republic, inadvertently summarizes what I consider the ur-feature of all writing on "trigger warnings" (this is apparently from last year, but TNR's Facebook feed decided I should read it now). Discussing a call from some students to provide a trigger warning for Ovid’s “Metamorphoses" due to its graphic depiction of sexual assault (a student survivor who expressed concerns about how the material was presented said she felt "dismissed" by her professor), Coyne writes the following sentence:

That professor was clearly wrong to dismiss the student, and perhaps he or she might have mentioned beforehand that there is violence and sexual assault in Ovid, but that’s as far as I’d go.

So, Coyne would go as far as giving advance notice that their might be troublesome material in the selected readings. Or, put another way, we might say he'd "warn" his students about content which might "trigger" them.

But a "trigger warning"? Heaven forfend!

Given what Coyne agrees would have been appropriate, I confess its no longer clear to me what he thinks a "trigger warning" is. But you can be sure that the ensuing 10 paragraphs will explain why -- whatever it is -- it's the beginning of academic fascism the likes of which threaten the very foundations of the American university.

Marco Rubio's Good Statement on Police Shootings; Bad Statement on Guns

I always try to give credit where it's due, and I'll thus give Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) credit for a stronger-than-expected statement regarding police shootings:

"Those of us who are not African-American will never fully understand the experience of being black in America," he said. "But we should all understand why our fellow Americans in the black community are angry at the images of an African-American man with no criminal record, who was pulled over with a busted tail light, slumped in his car seat and dying while his four year old daughter watches from the backseat." 

He was referring to Philando Castile, the man killed Thursday in a Twin Cities suburb. Alton Sterling was shot Wednesday in Baton Rouge. 

"There are communities in this country that have a terrible relationship with their local law enforcement. We need to recognize that," he said. "We also need recognize that law enforcement officers in this country are truly among the best that we have. What these people do on a regular basis, you never hear about it. You never hear about the great things they do. No one is capturing that on video or online. It's only when some bad actor or some bad incident occurs we hear something about it."

 On the other hand, this came contemporaneously with him saying "I'm not sure there's a law we can pass" to staunch the flow of gun violence. He argued that the Dallas shooting -- where of course, the victims had guns -- did not falsify the tired "if only everybody was armed" contention because "This is a very unique situation, You have snipers that are in rooftops, picking off police officers -- a very difficult situation." The report continues:

The officers were armed, Rubio conceded, but didn't know who was firing at them or from where. "The police officers found themselves in a very vulnerable situation: They are wearing uniforms," he said.

It is not immediately obvious to me that, in the relevant respects, this is all that unique. One suspects there are many circumstances where it will not be immediately obvious who is firing or from where, or who is the good guy with the gun versus the bad guy with the gun. One further suspects that the difficulty of ascertaining who is who will increase, not dissipate, the more people who are packing. Finally, recent experience makes me pretty confident that the way we'll resolve these difficulties is be simply assuming brown people are the bad guys. Which is to say, we'll persist in our all-too-normal status quo of black men being automatically treated as threats -- all the more so when they're carrying a gun.

The Whites-Only Second Amendment

Believe it or not, I've never been an anti-gun zealot. I've fired a gun before, once, at camp (it had a shooting range) -- it didn't really make an impression on me one way or the other. I'm a huge fan of Top Shot. I did some pro bono work for the Brady Campaign, even interviewed for a job there, but I withdraw my name from consideration immediately afterwards -- I knew I didn't have the true fire in the belly to work there.

I also know enough of the scholarly literature to be quite aware of checkered past gun control has had vis-a-vis the civil rights movement -- David Graham provides some of that history in this incisive piece. There were many periods where efforts to take away guns blossomed because, simply put, black people were using them to defend themselves against racist whites. The NRA has, of course, expended quite a bit of time excavating this history in order to argue that more guns, not fewer, are the solution to violence besetting communities of color.

And yet today, it is beyond clear that the Second Amendment is meaningless for black gun owners. There is no right to bear arms if you're black, and the "defenders" of gun rights like the NRA have virtually nothing to say when black people are victimized for exercising that right.

After all, if there is a right to open carry, then a black man seen with a gun is not only not committing a crime, there's not even probable cause to believe that they have. If a state allows concealed carry, then telling an officer that one has a concealed (and permitted) handgun can't justify even heightened anxiety, let alone fear for one's life. But everyone knows that black men cannot actually draw on these "rights". It doesn't matter if the gun is permitted, out of reach, or even real. A black man possessing a gun is always going to be viewed as a valid target, no matter what the law says.

And as for the NRA -- of course they're not going to stand up for these gun owners. In the NRA's world, black people don't get to own guns, they're the reason one owns guns. When they talk about guns being essential to American liberty, they don't envision an armed black population evening out the balance of force in a police encounter -- that's what justifies force in a police encounter. When they blather about a well-armed citizenry as a bulwark against tyranny, they don't have in mind Black Panthers exercising their open carry rights at the capital; they imagine Clive Bundy making an ass of himself.

Anyone who's read and takes seriously works flowing from the Black Power movement has to acknowledge the theoretical purchase of the idea that vulnerable populations are the ones who lose out when majoritarian dominated institutions gain a monopoly on the instruments of violence. But practical experience has made it abundantly obvious that this theoretical argument has no practical value. "Gun rights" has long since settled into a contented status quo accessible by whites and whites alone.

And that's unsustainable. If as a society, we feel threatened when a black man walks around openly carrying a firearm, that should mean that nobody has the right to openly carry a firearm. If possession of a gun by a black man is sufficient to justify a police shooting, then possession of a gun by anyone justifies it. In short, if we can't guarantee gun rights for everyone -- and we can't, it's clear that we can't, and gun rights organizations have no interest in changing it so we can -- then they don't belong to anyone. The status quo is racist, murderous, and toxic to rule of law. It is not sustainable. And eventually, it will fall.

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

Certainly, there's no shortage of news to be written on. But I've just begin an intensive 8-day course teaching Energy Law, which will sap me of much of my energy (for the past week and a half, I've been on vacation -- my stockpile of excuses for not blogging is infinite). So if I am quiet, I'm neither dead nor abandoning this site -- just busy busy.

Waffle House Song

The name of this blog, The Debate Link, emerged from my time as a high school debater (my first post here was June 2004, shortly after I graduated high school). The original mission statement of the blog was to link commentary on political issues to the debating world (the first tagline of The Debate Link was "The arguments, presented by and for the debating public.").

Among my happiest memories in high school were attending the Florida Forensics Institute (since closed -- read here for more on that story). One year, we adopted as our unofficial theme The Waffle House Song, communicated to us by one Jeff Hannan. A quick google search reveals no record of this song currently exists on the internet. This deserves rectification, and so, without further adieu, I present its lyrics:

We're at the Waffle House!
We're all messed up!
We're at the Waffle House!
We're all messed up!
We're gonna eat our waffles, gonna eat our waffles, gonna eat our waffles fast!
 Gonna eat our waffles, gonna eat our waffles, gonna eat our waffles fast!
[Quickly, while pointing] Drunk driving ain't funny!

And with that, a priceless bit of our cultural heritage has been preserved. You're welcome.

Elie Wiesel Dies at 87

Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate, has died today at age 87. Many have spoken of the influence his book Night, a memoir of his time in the concentration camps, had on their life. I personally was more taken by his play The Trial of God -- an essential work in post-Holocaust Jewish theology (even if it is nominally set in 17th century eastern Europe).

Wiesel, of course, was a life-long human rights advocate who never shied away from standing at the center of causes for justice. In doing so, Wiesel was never under any delusions that his status would shield him from the slings and travails that target any human rights campaigner, and Jewish ones in particular. There are too many instances of this to count, but I recall distinctly the time at the Durban Review Conference where an Iranian delegate referred to him as a "Zio-Nazi". I can't imagine how painful this must have been for him, but I also know he went into such events with eyes open.

The world is lesser for his passing. May his memory be a blessing.

Thoughts on the UK Labour Chakrabarti Inquiry into Anti-Semitism (and Aftermath)

UK Labour today released the text of the Chakrabarti Inquiry into anti-Semitism (and other forms of racism). I'm trying to think about how to describe it. "Bad" would not be fair -- it's not bad. "Milquetoast" is perhaps the best word for it. Shami Chakrabarti was put in an extraordinarily difficult situation when she was commissioned to lead this inquiry, and did her best not to offend anyone. And I'm not offended, so in that I guess she was successful.

But I am to some degree annoyed at myself that I'm not more annoyed at how small-ball it went. The non-procedural recommendations -- "Zio" is a racist epithet, "resist" comparing Israel to the Nazis (is the temptation really that overwhelming?), don't engage in stereotyping -- would be insultingly banal if they did not in fact need to be said. But banality is the order of the day.

Chakrabarti thankfully doesn't engage in any significant victim-blaming or lecture Jews on how we need to stop making anti-Semitism claims up for our own nefarious ends, so thank God for that. Yet everything in her report is calculated to be assure everyone that this problem is not much of a problem at all.  David Hirsh's reaction is here (his characteristically excellent submission to the inquiry is here), and I think it strikes some important chords. This is a superficial report to a problem with much deeper roots. One does not, upon reading the inquiry, get the sense that there is any true danger to Labour anti-Semitism. Nobody is really that bad, we just sometimes use some overwrought rhetoric in the heat of the moment that we should probably "resist". Ultimately, I doubt these recommendations will hurt, but I likewise doubt they will do much to help either. The report condemns stereotypes but gives no guidance on how to root them out; it discusses bias but doesn't even raise the issue that they might be implicit. It speaks broadly about the significant wrong anti-Semitism represents, but it shies away from directly considering anything to be anti-Semitic.

Perhaps most frustratingly, it does not address what to me is the most important issue of all -- the epistemic marginalization of Jews and Jewish voices when we complain about anti-Semitism. Any effort to combat anti-Semitism will fail if it is not coupled with a commitment to take seriously allegations of anti-Semitism. The persistent drumbeat that anti-Semitism is a bad faith charge that serious people should not waste their time with is the single greatest barrier to Jewish inclusion in communal conversations. It suggests that we are unreliable narrators of our own experience -- delusional at best, liars at worst. If that understanding is accepted, then Jews will never be able to be equal participants in dialogue because everything we say will be preemptively discounted -- at least, if it doesn't accord with the preexisting beliefs of our partners.

The Chakrabarti Inquiry should ideally represent the beginning of the conversation on combatting anti-Semitism, not its end. And judging by how the inquiry was received, well, there is more to be had in this conversation. The unveiling was yet another Corbyn catastrophe -- a Jewish Labour MP was chased out the room after being accused of organizing a media conspiracy to get at Corbyn, and Corbyn himself possibly compared Israel to the Islamic State (reports vary on whether he said "Islamic State" or "Islamic states" -- his written text suggests he meant the latter, but many people reported hearing the former). Corbyn certainly did nothing to protect his colleague who -- in a press conference about anti-Semitism, no less -- was victimized by an anti-Semitic trope of the precise sort Chakrabarti identified as being intolerable.

People who don't take anti-Semitism seriously won't fight anti-Semitism seriously. I do think Chakrabarti tried and delivered a seriously flawed but nonetheless sincere effort in her report. Jeremy Corbyn has no interest in fighting anti-Semitism, and so we can expect even the meager gains Chakrabarti gave to use to amount to virtually nothing.

Two Lessons from the Brexit Vote

In a tightly contested race, citizens of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the European Union. There are two lessons we can draw from this:

1) Don't underestimate the ability of misguided xenophobic nationalism to carry a national election. This is something for cocky American progressives to keep in mind as we face down a Donald Trump candidacy. Just because it's a really stupid idea doesn't mean it won't happen. And in this day and age, one makes a very serious mistake regarding the sentiments of the right-wing rank-and-file if one only pays attention to the opinions of the right-wing elite. The latter are rapidly losing the grip on the former.

2) A Jeremy Corbyn style left is utterly incapable of standing against this sort of tide. This is true for many reasons, but the primary one is that the sort of conspiracy-laden thinking Corbynistas like to indulge in isn't really that different from the instincts that motivate their right-wing counterpart. Ultimately, they share a sense that "Real Americans Brits" are under the thumb of some sinister foreign body -- the details of whether its the UN or the EU or the banks or the Jews or the neoliberals or the Zionists or the radical Muslims cabals really matter less than one would  think. It is no accident that even though Labour officially supported the Remain position, Brexit won traditional Labour strongholds by crushing margins.

Are Hamas Rockets "War" or "Terrorism"? Thanks To Insurance, We May Find Out

A lawsuit just filed in California federal district court seeks to determine whether Hamas rocket fire in 2014 is an act of "war" or "terrorism".

Was the suit filed by human rights advocates? Survivors of the violence? Maybe an international NGO?

Nope. It was filed by the USA network against its insurance company. You see, USA was filming a series in Israel that was interrupted due to the rocket fire. It claimed coverage under its policy, which was denied as the policy excluded losses stemming from "war or warlike action". But it does not exclude losses incurred due to terrorism, and the network contends that is the proper descriptor of Hamas' activities.

I have no legal commentary to provide -- I'm just darkly amused that this very important issue (as a rhetorical matter, if nothing else) may well gain legal resolution due to an insurance claim.

Where Would a Liberal Supreme Court Strike First?

Among the many, many reasons why it is crucial for our next President to be Hillary Clinton and not Donald Trump, the chance to finally put together a progressive majority on the Supreme Court (for the first time since arguably the Nixon administration) is among the most essential. The next President will appoint the replacements for the late Justice Scalia, and almost certainly Justices Ginsburg and Kennedy as well, offering the opportunity for a 6-3 Democratic majority (or, conversely, a 6-3 Republican one). The report that Justice Thomas is also mulling retirement would be icing on the cake, and while at this point its pretty thinly sourced, like Justice Souter Justice Thomas never struck me as the sort of person in love with the job, and so I can imagine him retiring earlier than some of his fellows.

But what would be the most likely alterations we'd see from a progressive Supreme Court? Political Scientists have long believed two things about the courts vis-a-vis political society writ large: (1) They tend to follow the prevailing political trends, at least those with traction amongst the elites of their ideological cohort, and (2) They're limited in what they can accomplish without the backing of the political branches.

Many items high on the progressive wish list would have limited purchase in absence of legislative control in Congress. A decision overturning or circumscribing Citizens United  or Heller would permit Congress to pass more robust campaign finance or gun reforms (respectively), but of course it wouldn't force Congress to do so. For the most part, courts can clear the brush for political actors, and can play defense against hostile legislative encroachments, but they are quite limited in their ability to move the ball forward on their own.

But one area where I think we may witness significant changes is in criminal justice issues -- searches, seizures, sentencing, and qualified immunity. These are areas where we are seeing a significant shift in the political terrain, at least amongst the left, and likewise are more directly under the judicial umbrella than many other areas of social reform. A Court which is less keen on believing that police brutality suits are simply frivolous harassment by social bottom-feeders is likewise less likely to give qualified immunity an expansive reading. A Court which stops seeing unlawful searches as the overzealous effort to preserve social order, and starts seeing it as a threat to social order, will do more to curb those searches and check unlawful behavior by police departments.

Justice Sotomayor's broadside dissent in Utah v. Strief, which clearly has been influenced by changes in the zeitgeist brought about by movements like Black Lives Matter, represents the tip of that particular iceberg. A Supreme Court majority which has that outlook towards the criminal justice system could bring about reforms to a degree unrivaled since the Warren Court era. Law and order, after all, includes the obligation on the state and its agents to stay within the law and follow judicial orders. This election will do much to determine the degree to which everyone -- officer and citizen alike -- are made to live under the rules set by our constitutional system.

Richard Armitage Endorses Clinton

Richard Armitage, a high-profile Republican foreign policy specialist who held senior appointments in the Reagan and Bush administrations, has endorsed Hillary Clinton. This isn't that surprising -- I predicted months ago that the neoconservative wing of the GOP would find the Democratic Party might appealing in the era of Trump, and in general those conservatives primarily concerned with international relations have to find Trump especially terrifying.

To be sure, the endorsement of a pure beltway insider like Armitage is more likely to move pundit pens than to carry over any votes. But it still symbolizes the rapidly shifting sands underneath the feet of many Republican elites.

British Politician Murdered in Terrorist Attack, Brexit Motives Suspected

A British Labour MP Jo Cox has been stabbed to death murdered* in an attack reportedly linked to her opposition to Britain exiting from the EU (known as "Brexit"). The attacker, described as a 52-year old man, reportedly shouted "Britain First" before commencing the assault. Since this was an act of violence targeted to communicate a political message and to instill terror in a particular side's supporters and backers, I feel absolutely comfortable calling it an act of terror.

Both sides of the Brexit campaign have temporarily ceased campaigning. The issue comes to a referendum vote next week.

Thoughts and prayers go to Ms. Cox's family.

* I've seen conflicting reports on the weapon used, so I've updated the post.

The Debate Link Turns 12!

The Debate Link turns 12 years old today. In the space of that time, I've gotten two degrees and started on a third, taught at two law schools, clerked for a federal appellate court, and even been a practicing attorney. This blog has managed to stay constant through all of that (though I haven't managed to keep up the frantic posting schedule of its early days).

Next year will mark the blog's Bar Mitzvah -- a momentous accomplishment indeed! Still, I suppose it's worth savoring the blog's last pre-teen years. It just grows up so fast!

The Rumpelstiltskin Theory of Counter-Terrorism

Radical. Islamic. Terrorism. Is not like Rumpelstiltskin. You do not defeat it by speaking its secret name. The politicians and pundits who insist on clinging to this line of attack -- that somehow if we only said the magic words (or said them more often, or with the right intonation, or in the right order) we'd be in a vastly different stance with respect to global terrorism than we are today -- are treating terrorism with all the seriousness of a fairy tale. It is difficult for me to express in words the contempt I feel for these people. It is perhaps the height of treating genuine important policy issues and security threats as pure theater.

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.