We don’t yet know precisely why a 48-year-old man chose to shoot, and in one case seriously wound, three 20-year-old men in Burlington, Vt., this weekend. The released statement from the Burlington Police declared, “All three victims are of Palestinian descent. Two are US citizens, and one is a legal resident. Two were wearing keffiyehs at the time of the assault. At this time, no additional information suggests the suspect’s motive, such as statements or remarks by the suspect.”
But we can make some reasonable inferences. There’s no indication the shooter knew the three young men. There was no effort to rob the victims. Two of the victims wore traditional Palestinian headscarves, and they were reportedly speaking Arabic to each other before the shooting. Tensions relating to the Palestinians are about as high as we’ve ever seen them. While it’s theoretically possible there was some other motivation, right now, Occam’s razor would suggest the shooter was driven by animosity towards Palestinians and/or Muslims.
As discussed a bit in a recent episode of The Editors, there’s something frustrating about the degree to which public discussions of antisemitism and Islamophobia are “policed,” with reflexive accusations that if you mention one and not the other, you’re denying that the other exists. Yes, Islamophobia, or a reflexive hatred of Muslims, exists. (We can argue about whether “Islamophobia” is the best term for this, but there is no denying that there are people in this world who hate Muslims.) We saw it in the horrific story of the 71-year-old landlord stabbing a Palestinian-American first-grader to death.
The evil of antisemitism doesn’t make the evil of hatred of Muslims any better or worse, and the evil of hating Muslims doesn’t make the evil of hatred of Jews any better or worse. In the end, it’s all just hating someone for their religious beliefs or ethnic heritage. Whatever you think of those Palestinian-American men, they didn’t deserve to get shot just for wearing keffiyehs in public or speaking Arabic.
I think, based upon the available statistics both nationally and in localities, that antisemitic hate crimes are more common, both before the October 7 Hamas massacre and afterward. While testifying before the Senate at the end of October, FBI director Christopher Wray described to Senator Mitt Romney of Utah how Jews are targeted by almost every extremist group across the ideological spectrum.
Romney: …of the attacks of a religious nature, you said some 60% are directed towards Jews in this country. Is that right?
Director Wray: I did, and that’s before, those are estimates or statistics that are before this conflict began.
Romney: So, it’s probably gone up since then?
Wray: I would expect that. But we don’t have good numbers yet because it’s so fresh. But I think that the point that I was trying to make there, which I really think Americans need to understand, is how wildly disproportionate, if you could ever use a word like proportionate in something like this, that is. 2.4% of the American public [is Jewish], [yet] 60% of religious-based hate crimes. They’re getting it from racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists; ISIS-inspired violent extremists; foreign terrorist organizations, whether they be Sunni, like al Qaeda or ISIS, or Shia, like Hezbollah. And so this is a group that has the outrageous distinction of being uniquely targeted. And they need our help.
Romney: What proportion of these hate crimes has been directed towards Muslims? For instance, if 60% were towards Jews, what percent towards Muslims?
Wray: I don’t have that percentage, but it’s obviously quite a bit smaller than 60 percent by definition.
But the fact that antisemitic attacks are more plentiful doesn’t make any attack on any American Muslim any less harmful or less deserving of prosecution. This isn’t a contest to see which group can be the biggest victim. This is America; everybody is supposed to be free to worship as they please and live free from fear that someone is going to assault them or shoot them because of who they are.
Alas, we have dumb and hateful people in this country who will claim to be angry at the Israeli government but who will take out their anger on any Jew who’s around, and who will claim to be angry at Hamas but who will take out their anger on any Muslim who’s around. No one loses anything when we denounce both these groups of detestable bigots.