There appears to be a xenophobe arsonist on the loose in Queens, who firebombed New York’s leading Shiite mosque, the home of a Hindu family, an African-American family and a bodega tonight. The worst damage was sustained by the African-American family’s home and they are homeless. This reminds me, unfortunately of the price tag attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian mosques, cemeteries, and other sacred sites.
The only thing I’m thankful for is that the NYPD will be far more pro-active and aggressive than Israeli police in hunting down this lunatic before he actually burns down a mosque and ignites even worse Islamophobic hysteria against Muslims. I note that no one in Israel has yet been prosecuted for a series of grave attacks over the past few months.
Arson is a crime on uncontrolled and unintended consequences. So much so, that the intended target and the politics around that can become almost irrelevant in the aftermath.
It’s a tool of fanatics who don’t care for the safety of anyone, Jew, Arab or native New Yorker, who might live anywhere near the target. To resort to arson, an offender needs to hold a broad swathe of the human race in complete contempt.
That does seem to be the profile here.
Jews in Israel ‘price tag’ Moslem buildings and once tagged an I.D.F. base. Tagging is retaliatory.
This jerk in Queens has targeted Moslems, Hindus, African-Americans and Spanish. This Queens incident is a hate crime and not retaliatory so your attempt at linkage to ‘price tags’ is inaccurate and unfair.
When the Israeli army dismantles an illegal outpost (they leave alone the really big illegal settlements), the price taggers attack Palestinian cars or mosques. What is ‘retaliatory’ about that? Talk about ‘unfair’!
Arson is awful, but why call it “price tag”? Perhaps the arsonists is an all-purpose xenophobe (who thinks black people are foreigners). Say a white-supremacist (who, I imagine, were not pro-Jewish in times past).
Price Tag?
Are you trying to imply that Jews are behind the arson ?
What’s wrong with you ?
i guess this is just Tikun Olam contribution to the Jewish Muslim conflict.
Simmer down please. You’re adding an interpretation I didn’t intend. I likened these attacks to price tag since they both involve arson & are attacks motivated by racism & ethnic hatred. Of course I didn’t infer, insinuate or state that the perpetrator was Jewish. If I intended to say that I would have. And contrary to what you & yr friends believe I don’t make things up out of whole cloth. If I don’t know the ethnicity of the attacker I’m not going to speculate on it unless I have a lot more basis for doing so than I had last night. The rest is a product of your fevered imagination.
Why do you think these attacks are motivated by racism?
That seems an especially odd assumption in light of the suspect himself being African-American.
Isn’t it more likely that they were based on the fact that the thief was kicked out of the bodega by its owner and wanted revenge?
The bodega owner is Yemeni. Two of the victims were Hindu & one Shiite. The NYT quotes NYPD as viewing this as a likely hate crime. You think African Americans can’t be infected by ethnic prejudice?
I am not sure why, in listing the victims, you leave out the ones whose home actually suffered the worst damage. They were, incidentally, African-American Christians.
I didn’t do that. In fact, it’s right there in the story. And I resent your not reading my post carefully enough to note that.
I meant in your rundown listed above.
In your original piece you mentioned the African-American family, but in your response to my comment, now that the criminal has been found to be African-American himself, you left out those victims in your reply (you only mention the others).
Are you prepared to concede at least that racism was most likely not a factor here?
No, in fact the NYT story confirms anti-Muslim bias in his attack against the mosque:
It seems pretty clear now that these attacks were not “motivated by racism & ethnic hatred” as you claimed here.
From the AP:
A man confessed Tuesday to hurling crude Molotov cocktails at an Islamic cultural center and four other New York-area sites on New Year’s Day because of personal grievances with all of the targets, police said.
I merely reported what the NYT story said originally. We’ll have to see whether police sources confirm the AP story as they bring further evidence forward.
The information in the story comes from what was provided by the NYPD:
Police spokesman Paul Browne says the man made statements implicating himself in the attacks and had personal grievances against each targeted location.
A personal grievance can also involve a hate crime. Do you not think that the settlers & White Supremacists nurse personal grievances against those they hate?