Sherlock Holmes, that most observant of detectives, once solved a crime by noticing what did not happen that normally should have; in his case a dog didn't bark. And now, several weeks after Iran announced that a Moroccan won its demented Holocaust cartoon contest, someone else finally noticed.
No Jews have been rioting or torching Moroccan embassies in the wake of Derkaoui's cartoon depicting an image of Auschwitz on a barrier being constructed by an Israeli crane through Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock in the background.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad banked on the contest — branded an exercise in free speech but simply a grotesque headline—grabber — eliciting a frenetic response from the West that would make the Muhammad cartoon riots pale in comparison. He, of course, was dead wrong, as shown by the quieter than expected response.
Yes, Jews didn't riot or protest; very few civil or human wrongs organizations even commented on the bizarre contest, let alone criticized it. After all, all of this is normal, to be expected.
But if Jews do protest, oh say, like those in Israel when their soldiers are kidnapped from their own territory or rockets are constantly fired into their towns endangering innocents, why just about the entire world condemns them. And that is so normal, to be expected.
And when just one country, the United States, refuses to go along with everyone else at the UN and is then roundly condemned, why that too is so normal, to be expected.
And very few seem to notice that something is wrong with all of this.
Ethel C. Fenig 11 14 06
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