Steven I. Weiss writes:
It takes an immense amount of gall to see your community set fires in the streets, torch one police car and damage another, and assault two police officers, and then complain that in the midst of it all, a police chief said “Get these fuckin’ Jews out of here!”
Even if the comment were offensive in and of itself — which it’s not — the complaint about Chief Joseph Esposito’s comment shows an immense willingness on Councilman Simcha Felder’s part to abandon all notions of proportional response.
And I can’t tell you how many people have been sending me links to the NYPD rant board discussion, to complain about the barely-present anti-semitism there from perhaps two or three NYPD officers. Again, you’d have to lack all sense of proportional response to complain about this.
And then there’s the suggestion that those who committed the truly bad acts were just some teenagers acting alone (in one person’s words: “was it yechidim or a group?”) — which is a line that for some reason the papers seem to be willing to buy into — which again shows a total inability to deal with the reality of what happened.
Here’s how people living in the real world would respond:
- A police chief tried to clear a riot by demanding removal of the people rioting. That’s about as sensible a command as possible.
- A few police officers might be anti-Semitic. So what? They’re not the ones who acted wrongly.
- A riot happened, and surely only some of them committed the violence — but that’s the way every riot goes, and one would hardly expect the same response to those attacking Jews. When was the last time any violence against Jews or Israelis was written off as the act of yechidim?