response to Dima on the pogrom by extremist Jews in East Jerusalem

Dima wrote:

Walter,
Your choice of words is sad. A group of people who want to get revenge for the slaughter of students in a neighborhood that was jubilant over the event is perhaps not just but I wouldn't really call it a pogrom.

You must also agree with the use of the word Holocaust to describe the unfortunate killing of 20-50 civilians who were caught in the line of fire between IDF and terrorists who seek to inflict damage on civilians.

-Dima

So, Dima, when Russian mobs smashed up Jewish houses (and much worse) in Czarist time, you call it a "pogrom" but when Jewish mobs do the same to Palestinians, you find it "sad" that I use the same word to describe it? What other word to use to describe the act of an out of control mob that attacks a town and smashes, burns and loots?

Lets look at the definition:

[Origin: 1880–85; (< Yiddish) < Russ pogróm lit., destruction, devastation (of a town, country, etc., as in war), n. deriv. of pogromít’, equiv. to po- perfective prefix + gromít’ to destroy, devastate, deriv. of grom thunder]

—Synonyms slaughter, butchery.

Well, that is what occured when goyische mobs smashed up Jewish towns and shtetls while the police looked the other way and that is what happened when the Jewish mob smashed up the Arab neighborhood of Jabal Mukhabar while the police looked the other way. Thankfully, it didnt get to the level of "slaughter and butchery" but that is likely because the residents of the neighborhood hid in their houses, knowing they would have been risking their very lives confronting a hateful mob that was heavily armed.

Dima, It is absolutely inadmissable by any standard of Jewish morality to claim that it is OK for Jews to smash up the homes and property of innocent non-Jews because the perpetrator of the massacre at Mercaz Harav happened to have lived in the neighborhood. And of course, I mourn deeply for the Israelis killed by rocket fire in Sderot and in the north of the country in 2006. I have loved ones who live in a kibbutz which was shelled during that war. But I also mourn for the larger number of Palestinian civilians killed in the IDF military response to the rocket fire. Each human life is precious, Jewish and Palestinian, alike.

Walter