Monday, September 3, 2018

The Necessity to punish for metaphysical Crimes

When used loosely in everyday parlance, the word “crime” can take on a different meaning from its use in a legal sense. In both cases, however, a crime is defined as a serious offense.

In the law, a crime is the killing of someone, the stealing of something, the written or verbal threatening of others, the forging of a document, and so on. Let's characterize such crimes as being physical in nature. When engaged in loose talk, on the other hand, a crime might refer to a decision that was taken lawfully but proven to have been ill-advised or lacking in foresight, or being self-defeating, for example. Let's characterize such crimes as being metaphysical in nature.

Offenders are punished by a jail term, a fine or both for committing a physical crime that falls under the purview of the law in the jurisdiction where the crime happened. On the other hand, offenders are only ridiculed and treated with contempt by society for committing metaphysical crimes that offend the sensibilities of ordinary human beings, but do not violate any written law.

An important question poses itself: Can there be a moment when a metaphysical offense will be so severe, it should be treated not as a junior category but an adult category offense, approaching the physical kind … and do so without violating the principle of free speech? It is necessary to probe the ramifications of this question because the day may come when we'll need a tool that will deter offenders who refuse to respond to society's revulsion at their comportment, thus remain entrenched in their destructive ways.

Before contemplating a course of action, however, we must import into our thinking the restrictive safeguards that will prevent us from going overboard in proposing a remedy. To that end, we say that the offender will have to be a repeat wrongdoer, will have to be warned that he or she is coming close to crossing the line separating the metaphysical from the physical, and that their repeated activities have a detrimental effect on everyone; especially the young minds which are not yet equipped to do critical analysis on the work of a propaganda master or a seasoned spin doctor. Only then, can such offender be recommended for punishment.

Two articles that appeared on the same day, August 31, 2018 in the same publication, Algemeiner, will help us illustrate that case. One article came under the title: “Why did Nearly 40 Percent of Norwegians Compare Israelis to Nazis?” It was written by Abraham Cooper and Manfred Gerstenfeld. The second article came under the title: “Jewish Students Should Be Prepared for Hate on Campus,” written by Paul Miller.

These are two of the hundreds of articles which are written by Jews every year to complain about antisemitism somewhere on the planet. The writers always blame others for the phenomenon and never (I mean absolutely never) hint at anything that they, as Jewish leaders, can or should do to help address the phenomenon. They treat it as if it were a defect in the genetic code of human beings, and demand only one kind of remedy to cure it. It is for every authority––be it that of government or school or whatever––to pass laws specific to Jews. They would punish ordinary citizens who mind their own business, but refuse to love the Jews and Israel no matter what the latter do; no matter what they stand for.

I wrote almost 2,750 articles on this blog alone, hundreds of which discuss this subject, each written in response to one or more Jewish articles calling on the authorities to intervene on behalf of Jews. The Jewish articles take on an approach such as this: “In any culture, the tone comes from the top –– and Norway's festering zeitgeist of antisemitism proves this point,” a quote that came in the first paragraph of the Cooper and Gerstenfeld article. The Jewish articles also take on an approach such as this: “Jewish students are rarely protected by administrators who are incapable of distinguishing between political and hate speech, or whose personal views may be affecting their objectivity,” a quote that came near the end of the Miller article.

What this attitude does is encourage and perpetuate the phenomenon they call antisemitism. It must be considered borderline criminal of the physical kind because it leads to the sort of violence that is shown in the following quote from the Miller article:

“A sophomore arrived at the screening of a documentary about Israel's [army]. She was met by chants against Israel. Such incidents are not isolated. Studies found that campuses with active anti-Israel groups are more likely to experience antisemitic incidents than schools that don't harbor such groups. 2,100 antisemitic incidents were tracked since 2015”.

Here, Paul Miller is urging that groups which refuse to love the Jews and/or Israel's army of occupation, should be banned on the campuses of America.

This being the mentality with which we're dealing, each time that a Jewish leader calls on a school authority to intervene on behalf of Jews, or calls on the Congress to pass laws that would punish citizens for not loving Jews or Israel – must be told they committed a borderline infraction, and warned never again to repeat it, or they'll be facing the consequences.

If they repeat the offense, they must be condemned to write a thousand times the following sentence: “I love Hitler as much as I wish the Palestinians would love Israel's army of occupation.” And he should have the thing published in the Wall Street Journal.