President Donald Trump seems unable to behave appropriately in any situation, so his tone-deaf reaction to the murder of eleven people in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on October 27 was on brand.
“If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better. If they had some kind of protection within the temple it could have been a much better situation. They didn’t.”
It was a point he repeated several times in his remarks to reporters at Joint Base Andrews a few hours after the shooting. […]
He later added: “This is a case where if they had an armed guard inside they may have been able to stop him immediately, maybe there would have been nobody killed, except for him maybe.”
Conservatives can’t quit their fantasies about a “good guy with a gun” magically being able to foil mass shootings. Law enforcement experts know better. U.S. Army veteran and retired police officer David Grussing commented on Facebook yesterday,
at least three police officers were shot while responding to this incident. If you think a security guard could not be taken by surprise when three officers who knew what they were responding to were shot, you probably have never worked as either a security guard or a police officer.
Joe Gorton, a criminologist at the University of Northern Iowa, had this to say:
An armed guard would probably be the first person killed. Rampage attacks like this are often carried out as if they were a military attack. This is part of the killers’ delusions and fantasies. The only thing that probably would have saved some lives would have been no access to an AR. People would have still died but probably not as many. Until we ban AR’s the body counts from rampage killings will remain high.
Indeed, the alleged gunman apprehended in Pittsburgh posted on Gab shortly before the attack that he was “going in” because the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (a Jewish relief organization) “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.” He added, “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.”
Here’s a little-known fact for my non-Jewish readers: many synagogues already hire armed guards for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. While I’m grateful for the officers who keep watch at Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines, every year I feel sad that we need to worry about someone attacking us on the high holidays. In some cities, synagogues hire armed off-duty police for every service, religious school session, or major gathering.
I don’t want to worry about getting shot every time I go to a synagogue.
I don’t want my kids to think it’s not safe to be Jewish without a police presence.
I don’t want murder victims anywhere to be blamed for not having hired armed guards ahead of time.
While mainstream conservatives have not called on anyone to shoot up a synagogue, they have promoted anti-Semitic tropes about George Soros bringing in dark-skinned people to threaten the country.
I’m not just talking about the shame of Iowa, Representative Steve King, who told a right-wing Austrian website in August that Soros might be funding the so-called “Great Replacement” of white Americans and Europeans with immigrants from other cultures.
Trump falsely claimed Soros was paying people to disrupt Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. UPDATE: I had forgotten what Senator Chuck Grassley said when asked whether Soros was bankrolling the Kavanaugh protests: “I have heard so many people believe that. I tend to believe it. I believe it fits in his attack mode that he has and how he uses his billions and billions of resources.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee has been running a television commercial claiming that Soros funds left-wing protesters and “owns” a Democratic candidate for U.S. House. The ad obviously reinforces anti-Semitic stereotypes, but NRCC Chair Steve Stivers defended it on October 28 as “factual.”
Fox News features commentators who warn about the “Soros-occupied State Department” or laugh after someone sent a pipe bomb to Soros’ home.
The antidote to this toxicity isn’t Jews hiring more security at houses of worship.
Temple B’nai Jeshurun’s Rabbi David Kaufman posted a few hours after the massacre in Pittsburgh,
Your words MATTER. Demonization of Jews MATTERS. And it matters whether or not you attempt to exclude SOME Jews but not others. You demonize ZIONISTS instead of JEWS? You have blood on your hands this morning. You demonize Jewish benefactors as sources of evil, Soros, Adelson? You demonize them, Israel, or Jewish organizations? You helped cause this and you have already helped to cause the next one. You may have helped to motivate the next sick individual to act. And it doesn’t matter whether you do it in a political speech, in an editorial, or in your places of worship.
WAKE UP!!! Stop allowing people to spread hatred because the people who express it are your friends and allies on other issues. ENOUGH!!!
STOP THE HATE!!!
Top image: Dome of the Spanish synagogue in Prague, Czech Republic. By Uoaei1 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons.