There were two recent attacks that involved two sets of children. But there is one unfortunate truth that needs to be said.

Let’s start with the irony of it all because it tells you everything. Two teenagers shot up the Islamic Center of San Diego on May 18. They killed three men. A security guard named Amin Abdullah stood his ground and likely saved 140 children inside. The killers were neo-Nazis who left behind a manifesto. And in that manifesto, their writings were not only anti-Muslim, they were also intensely antisemitic, and in key sections identified Jews as the primary enemy.

One of them wrote that he didn’t really hate Muslims. He called Jews “the most evil creature in the world.” They denied the Holocaust and they praised the men who shot up Tree of Life and Chabad of Poway. They saw Muslims and Black people as tools controlled by Jews. The FBI’s lead agent said it clearly. They didn’t discriminate on who they hated.

Just think about this. The men who attacked a mosque framed Jews as the central force behind the world they hated. But now, let’s explore how the story got reported in the press.

The Washington Post framed it as an attack on Muslims amid rising anti-Muslim rhetoric. NPR did the same. It tied the shooting to Gaza, to the war with Iran, to the election of a Muslim mayor. The wire copy that seemed to run everywhere led with a “climate” of bigotry. There were the “words have consequences,” that advocacy groups declared. I will agree with that. But they seem to only count words against their selected groups, Jews not among them.

Here is what mostly didn’t happen. The antisemitism at the dead center of these killers’ own writing got folded into a line. They hated everyone, so there was “nothing to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)