The Shocking Non-Randomness of Random Anti-Semitism

This weekend, President Obama told Vox.com that the shooting of four Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre represented random terrorism, rather than the targeted murder of Jews.

He characterized the terrorists as “violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” On Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said of the victims, “They were not all victims of one background or one nationality.” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest then added that non-Jews were also in the supermarket, and that President Obama simply meant that the Jews weren’t targeted by name.

These statements were odd, given that all the murdered Jews were Jewish, buried in Israel, and targeted openly for their Judaism; their murderer, Amedy Coulibay, stated, “I have 16 hostages and I have killed four, and I targeted them because they were Jewish.” And as far as being targeted by name, even that isn’t true: the one female killed at the Charlie Hebdo offices was Jewish. The terrorists had told another female that they would not be killing women. The Jewish woman didn’t count, obviously. It must have been random.

Jews represent approximately 0.2 percent of the world’s population. But they seem to stumble, unluckily, into random attacks at an incredible rate.

Weird how that works. For example, in November 2014, assailants invaded a home and raped a 19-year-old Jewish woman. They did so while telling her that it was “because you are Jewish.” Random.

Just days later, two young Jewish brothers were attacked near a synagogue in Paris. They were wearing yarmulkes. One was hit with brass knuckles in the eye. Random.

In July 2014, Muslims attacked a synagogue and a kosher shop. The rioters reportedly “chanted anti-Semitic slogans” and attempted to break into the synagogue while “hurl[ing] objects at the synagogue and the guards. The same week, attackers tried to firebomb a synagogue north of Paris. A few weeks beforehand, 20 attackers assaulted students wearing yarmulkes at a library. The month before that, Jewish teens were beaten on the streets while walking to synagogue, and pro-Nazi slogans appeared in Toulouse. Random.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, the town of Malmo, which is approximately one-fifth Muslim, has seen a dramatic uptick in anti-Semitic incidents, including the bombing of buildings, the desecration of synagogues, and attacks on Jews, prompting the Simon Wiesenthal Center to warn Jews not to visit the city. Days after the kosher supermarket attack in Paris, Jews in Stockholm began receiving “emails and letters from Islamists containing threats.” Random.

In the United States, swastikas have now appeared at a frat house on the same California state campus where Muslim students scream, “Allahu Akhbar” at Jews and one student senator posted the Facebook message, “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis.” Random.

Jews represent just over two percent of the total population of the United States. More than two-thirds percent of all hate crimes based on religion in the United States are perpetrated against Jews. Random.

Muslim terrorists always seem to have time to hit local Jewish sites, even when they’re out of the way. In Mumbai, during the 2008 terror attacks against multiple sites, terrorists went over to the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish center to murder a young rabbi and his six-months-pregnant wife. Random. In 2009, when American law enforcement arrested four Muslim men planning to shoot down American military airplanes, it turned out they also wanted to bomb two synagogues. Random.

And that’s not even counting all the attacks on Jews in Israel, whether worshipping in synagogue, trying to board a bus, or sitting at the light rail station in Jerusalem with their children. All random.

Good thing the Obama administration is on top of all of these random occurrences against Jews. We wouldn’t want to connect the dots. That would just be so random.

Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the new book The People vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against The Obama Administration (Threshold Editions, June 10, 2014). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.