Mumbai: Deadly Media Euphemisms

By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman

The horrific slaughter in Mumbai of almost 200 innocents and injury of 300 more by terrorist commandos shouting "Allah Akbar!" has already been morphed by the international media into the murky realm of euphemism and apologetics. Al Jazeera and The Guardian label the Al Qaeda-associated Islamist terrorists responsible as "gunmen"; CNN calls them "militants." Some analysts identified the underlying cause as the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan. Others like renowned psychological guru Deepak Chopra concluded that it is the result of "collateral damage" caused by Washington's war on terrorism and the US attack on Iraq.

But where then does the especially blood-thirsty attack on Mumbai's Nariman-Chabad House fit into this puzzle palace? The New York Times theorized that Chabad House may have been an "accidental hostage scene." This speculation follows in the ignominious footsteps of the BBC, which initially chose to hide the Jewish character of the target by describing it as just "an office building," of Britain's Channel 4, which claimed that the terrorists showed "a wanton disregard for race or creed," and of Al Jazeera, which refused to show Chabad House as the site of the carnage. Some Western media outlets unsympathetically labeled victims there as "ultra-Orthodox" or "missionaries." Finally, the Pakistan Times explained it all. Mumbai was "a false flag operation" by Israel's Mossad agents disguised, apparently, as bearded rabbis and mothers nursing babies.

Contrary to these fantasies, the all-too-obvious truth is now being confirmed:

  * The Times of India reported that some of the terrorists, claiming to be Malaysian students, rented nearby space in order to scout out Chabad.

  * The Indian doctor who conducted the post mortems related in a shaken voice that: "Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th (first day of the attacks) itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed."

  * The only captured terrorist, Ajmal Kamal, confessed under interrogation that his fellow murderers were specifically ordered to target the Jews killed at Chabad.

It's not only close India-Israeli ties that the terrorists wanted to destroy. It's likely that Mumbai's age-old history of hospitality to Jews made the Nariman-Chabad House a strategic target.  For the  cosmopolitan, commercial city of  Mumbai (formerly, Bombay) is notable for two distinctive Jewish communities: Baghadi Jews, whose ancestors first arrived as traders about 250 years ago,  and the Bene Israel, descendants of Judean Jews shipwrecked off the Indian coast 2100 years ago. Among traditional Hindus forbidden to press oil from seeds, the Bene Israel found a welcome niche as the "Saturday Oil Presser Caste." Experiencing almost no discrimination, they were accorded high status in Indian society where one served as Gandhi's personal physician.

Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, director of the Chabad House, may have wrapped the body of his wife Rivka in a tallit before succumbing to his own wounds. Now the survivors and loved ones of all the innocent victims of the Mumbai massacres begin the heartbreaking task of picking up the shattered pieces of their lives. But the families of the Chabad House victims have to also live with the bitter truth that there still exists a dangerous double standard that lets the world look the other way when Jews are targets of terror.

At Mumbai's Chabad House of fellowship and prayer, 9 religious people—none of them intelligence officers—were bound, tortured, and executed because they were Jews, just as Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl had his head cut off  in Pakistan because, as he told his kidnappers, "I am Jewish."  What else must murderous groups like Al Qaeda and its cohorts  have to do to convince the media and the world that Mumbai is just the latest in their murderous global jihad against any nation or any believer—Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim—who opposes them?

Terrorism may not succeed in destroying our civilization—but politically correct euphemisms and apologetics are already crippling our ability to defend it. One cameraman who witnessed armed police refusing to open fire on the Mumbai terrorists lamented that he did not have a gun instead of a camera.  But what the world desperately needs today is—not armed media—but reporters brave enough to tell the truth.

*Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
 Dr. Harold Brackman, a historian, is a consultant for the Simon Wiesenthal Center