Riots versus Quiet
As Black protesters chant for days on end, “No Justice, No Peace,” declaring their rejection of any rationale for the recent street execution of a Black youth near St. Louis, Missouri, by the police, worldwide Jewry is assured that there is no evidence of hate crime when a Jew was executed the same weekend on the streets of North Miami Beach.
In both of these instances, quiet is just as wrong as riot; for blood has been shed and will never be coursing through the dead bodies again.
In Missouri, innocent business owners, totally detached from the killing of the Black youth, were victimized by looters in the name of avenging the fallen man. In Florida, an entire Jewish community is fallen by its false sense of security and robbed of its right to have the highest criminal charges brought against two young Black executioners, on foot and on bicycle, casually and repeatedly shooting a Jew on a Sabbath morning in front of his grandchildren walking behind him to synagogue.
Say the police, a hate crime is not here.
Is there no continuum between quiet and riot in the hideous face of a Rabbi executed on the street? Can we watch the execution in silence? Such silence is subservience to evil, and it is evil when a Jew is massacred. The Jew was indeed massacred. Where is the rightful indignation of the masses? Will the masses watch massacres without relentless meaningful protests – in letters, articles, posters, and demonstrations – not riots or lootings in the name of “justice”?
We demand justice for the Jew. How many times can one man be murdered? The Rabbi, markedly Jewish and unarmed, walking in a sunny Jewish neighborhood, was massacred by multiple gunshots. Jews must raise their voices, with the multitudes or alone as a People, against the massacre.
“No Justice, No Peace” means that Jewish voices cannot rest until Jews are safe in North Miami Beach, where hate crimes against Jewish person and property are escalating, and across the globe. Silence in the face of violence is sin, and sin feeds upon itself until the world is covered in darkness … which we can “Never forget.”
August 13, 2014, in Loving Memory of my Beloved Mommy, Sophia Passo Katz, on her Yahrzeit.
