A New Low

By Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

“Kill the Jews, tra la la la la.”

That could be the headline of recent article in the New York Times (it was sent to me; why any Jew would subscribe to or read the NY Times escapes me) that described in graphic detail the music that “Palestinians” are producing, singing, and selling in the land of Israel. It is no longer possible to be shocked by the Arab culture of blood lust, violence and hate. It is deeply rooted in that society, and feeds off similar dysfunction across the Arab world. It is not fair to say it can never change; but it is reasonable to predict that it will not change for the foreseeable future, and not until there is a revolution of morality and decency in the Arab/Muslim world.

What is shocking – maybe it shouldn’t be? – is that the NYT reported this vile display of Jew hatred and genocidal fantasy dispassionately and amorally. Songs such as “Stab, Stab,” “Jerusalem is Bleeding,” “Run Over, Run Over the Settler” are treated almost whimsically, as if they represent some proud cultural achievement, as if they advance a positive agenda, objective or aspiration for Arab society. The Times writers – one of them a Jew, as no one should be surprised to learn – included not one word of criticism of the songwriters, singers, sellers, or the abhorrent content of the songs.

Is there another group in the world whose genocide could be celebrated in song and garner the same placid response from the august American media? Would KKK music achieve the same renown and would the lyrics be featured by the Times, along with the videos? Would the Times similarly gloat over Jewish music that threatened death to Arabs, necessary to safeguard the Land of Israel? Of course the Times wouldn’t – and not because such a concept would be unthinkable to Jews who, as John Adams wrote two centuries ago, “have done more to civilize man than any other nation.” (Apparently, we have not become completely successful in that quest – not in Arabia, not in Europe, and it seems not in much of America).

It is because the Times – which has always harbored a special animus for Jews and Israel going to back to when it was a Jewish-owned newspaper (it no longer is) – has reached a new low in singling out Jews as the only people in the world whose murders can be celebrated in song. This is merely an extension of traditional NY Times reporting that has always equated the deaths of the Jewish victims of Arab terror and the Arab terrorist who murdered them. As in, “Three Die as Violence Erupts,” when the eruption of violence was solely the murderous rage of suicide bomber who killed two Jews alongside him. That repugnant headline is actually benign compared to other headlines seen across the world that describe how “Israelis Shoot Palestinian to Death!” that gently omitted the relevant fact that the Palestinian shot to death by the Israelis was in the process of stabbing Jewish babies and their mothers in the neck.

In the genocidal war being waged against the Jewish people, the New York Times is an accomplice. Now is not the time to lament the death of journalism or the absence of journalistic ethics in modern media, but to make a simpler point. In the war between the civilized and the uncivilized, the NY Times and other media are on the side of the uncivilized. It would be understandable if they subtly acknowledged the hypocrisy and fear that leads them to condemn the virtuous and laud the evildoers, but it is absolutely intolerable that – good writers that they are – they make it seem as if they are sincere or even-handed, as if they are just reporting the news.

What are civilized people dealing with? Watch this, a video of an interview on Arab TV with a mother whose son was killed while in the process of stabbing Jews. Note her boasts about his achievements, her sorrow about the young man not taking his mother with him to shaheed-land, her heartfelt desire that all her sons should become martyrs while murdering innocent Jews, and the finale, when she reveals the flinty side to her own personality and how she sees herself making a future contribution to the world.

There is something that is normal, human, maternal and decent that is just missing from that woman, maybe more than something.

Of course, it would be unthinkable that the NY Times would feature that woman whose barbarity is on display for all, and whose lack of concern about the welfare of her children would, in civilized countries, attract the attention of the local Division of Youth and Family Services. She could use an intervention, to say the least. But why would the Times ignore her, if they have? She shares the same goal as the songwriters and singers. Is she less entertaining, and therefore undeserving of a Times platform? Is it that she has not set her rant to a catchy tune? Or is that her primitive rage would strike such a nerve in the average reader that they might, Heaven forefend, feel some sympathy for Israelis and come to respect a shoot-first, ask questions later approach to Arab terrorists?

It would be enough to state that the Times should be ashamed, but it is not clear that their reporters and editors are left with a sense of shame. Basic human instincts just do not register. There is a pronounced inability to move beyond even the trite expressions of even-handedness (would that there would be evenhandedness!) and observe the reality of an Arab world that has breached all norms of civilization, for whom the Geneva Conventions are a farcical sign of Western weakness, and whose violent rage is stoked by the fecklessness of the Western media, the American president, and the world’s diplomatic elitists.

Those songs incite violence against Jews. The NY Times reported those songs without a word of moral reproach, but with an abundance of empathy, indulgence and tolerance. That Arab society (to a large extent) is pathologically sick – most of the victims of Arab violence are still Muslims – is a given; that enlightened Westerners should lend it credence, support and sympathetic coverage is, on balance, even more sick. Westerners were raised with an antipathy to genocide and an appreciation for basic human rights. Those rights, in the Times’ view, do not apply to Jews, whose deaths are encouraged and celebrated through songs.

And the Jews then support the Times, so that they – the Jewish readers – effectively subsidize the promotion of even more articles that will call for their own deaths, and, of course, pardon the murderers of any responsibility for those deaths. It was Lenin or Marx who said that the Communists will hang the capitalists with the rope they sell them. Jews who read the Times with their morning coffee should know they are helping their enemies destroy themselves. Not a cheerful thought to contemplate while downing a Danish.

But those are our enemies and their songs. Now, a few words from the good guys. While Arabs sing about murdering Jews, Jews sing about life, virtue, service of G-d and happiness. Could that infuriate our enemies even more?

In a world of good and evil, good will prevail.